Relationship Remnant

The Panasonic receiver.

Music players have come a long way in my lifetime.

The earliest 'stereo' I can remember is a record player. A small, suitcase-looking unit with a handy plastic handle. I think it was painted blue and white and made of some type of press board. I'm not sure if it was a really high grade of card board or a really low quality wood product. Within the sturdy case was a turn table and it's necessary components (arm, needle, that silvery peg that holds the record in place and a volume knob). The speakers were built into the sides of the faux-something case. This was the height of music machines at the time. Nothing like listening to the Beach Boys Little Deuce Coupe in mono. (Considering the nature of this blog, it probably won't surprise you to know I still have that album.)

Then we upgraded to a unit that was still quite portable but more cumbersome. Kind of a table top machine, black with speakers that hung off the sides of the turn table or (and here was the sales pitch clincher for my dad) detached from the body of the record player and could be placed a couple of feet away for that true 'immediate vicinity' sound that everyone longed for. (Dolby had nothing on us.) Another amazing feature of this newfangled music device was that you could load three or four albums on the tall, silver peg in the middle and secure them with some type of arm apparatus. They hung suspended above the album playing, then dropped down one at a time after the end of the proceeding record. It was a marvel of modern technology. I'm still not sure how they did that.

My grandparents had the granddaddy of stereos. This was a piece of furniture. Wood, for the most part. A large rectangular cabinet with two sliding doors on the top surface. The internal layout varied from one brand to the next but in my experience, if you slid the two doors to one side looking down upon it you could see the turn table, a radio receiver dial and if you have the deluxe Cadillac style an eight-track tape player. When you slide the doors to the other side, you find storage space for as many Lawrence Welk and off-name polka albums as you could possibly imagine. Well, okay probably twenty or so. But too much of a good thing and all that. Again the speakers were built into the unit but now we're talking about "Ah-one, and ah-two and ah" in STEREO-baby! If you were the recycling type and you stumbled upon one of these music monstrosities today, you could probably gut it and use it as a platform coffin. (You know, like platform shoes?)

These all-in-one units were kind of high end in my elite circle. Mostly people I knew owned a record player but had a little transistor radio somewhere else in the house. (For the "rest of the story.") Eight track players were mostly in your vehicle if you were lucky enough to have one. (Tape player, not vehicle.)

It was on my fourteenth birthday that experienced a stereo with four speakers: one speaker hanging in the four corners of a room. I was told to listen to how cool that was. I think Bachman-Turner Overdrive was taking care of business. The other three people in the room seemed quite impressed with the quad aspect of this set up. I personally didn't notice much difference.

Then it became popular to buy your stereo components individually. A receiver, a turn table, a tape player, speakers and possibly even an amplifier and an equalizer. Unlike the four-way stereo sound at Rick's house, this impressed me. Compared to our family record player with the speakers hinged to the side, this was very cool and very grown up and quite rebellious. It was true music appreciation.

All through high school and just after, I longed for this type of stereo system. I wanted to be an all-grown-up music listener. But even if I had gone into my local stereo store, I would not have had a clue what to ask first. To those slick sales people, I would have looked like the sick and weak gazelle left behind by my herd, and at the mercy of some Wild Kingdom photographer who would helicopter in a hungry alligator from Sea World to tear the flesh from my bones so he could get it all on film. Man-enforced Law of the Jungle money shot.

I went off to college after the cliche taking of 'one year off.' That first year in the dorms, I saw many examples of the cool-kid stereo set ups. Guys were especially prone to this music configuration. Big Bose speakers in all corners, the bigger the better as size matters in such cases. Everything is a competition with this gender. There's always a yard stick laying around.

I fell in love in college. It was a temporary condition but in the end I was granted custody of the cool stereo system. I was given two medium sized Bose speakers, a turn table and a Panasonic receiver. It was a relatively amicable end; Kevin gave me his stereo before he left me to move to Alaska. He was lightening his load of personal possessions. (Wow, do you feel that deja vu swirling around me right now?)

That was 26 years ago. The speakers were the first to go. I kept them for quite a few years but the spongy foam material behind which hid the tweeters and woofers was pretty quick to disintegrate. The speakers which still sounded fine but looked like hell, headed for a thrift store.

A cassette tape deck that I had added to the stereo ensemble also didn't last long. It was bottom of the line quality and it seems you get what you pay for where home electronics are concerned.

Left were the turn table and the receiver. The turn tables sits today on a large stack of albums on the bottom shelf of my leviathan of an entertainment center. It's job is safe, as far as I know. The receiver has been out in storage; I haven't used it in years. Probably twelve or fifteen. It works fine. Or it did do, the last time it was plugged in and put to the test. The thread I've kept hanging onto with this inanimate object is the person from which it came. Kevin.

I have great affection for this past relationship. That brief time in my life. Plus I have some regrets which make it very difficult to come to peace in reflection. I've hung onto this item for years because Kevin gave it to me. I have not been able to let this go. As I've thought about this specific instance of worldly possession clinging, it occurs to me that I've kept it out of guilt. Because Kevin gave me his heart and I failed to take good care of it, I feel some how I can make up for it by taking care of his stereo. Crazy thinking when you drag it out of the dark corner of my mind and look at it in the sunlight.

I took the receiver to the Salvation Army this week. Someone with a good eye for such things will be shopping there soon and be able to make use of it. Not that it stands up against today's technology but as a piece of good quality nostalgia. Or as the mother of all paper weights.