Santa Claus (the dear!) gave me a the latest in technology; a FM/AM radio (complete with antenna) that plays cassette tapes! The others will be mad-jealous they don’t got one. 

In the closet in The Dragon Room are several plastic boxes of homemade and purchased cassette tapes that have been sitting on the shelf for decades and I am going to hear them again. It is an odd emotion listing to mix-tapes* I haven’t heard since the 80s. 

The first to be heard (as it was in the front) has the hand-written title “78s”. Such sonorous tunes we used to hear once upon a time!  As I edit this entry someone (not Someone) is singing “Don’t fence me in”.  Possibly Bing Crosby.  

The second to be unearthed is one of the many holiday tapes Father made each Christmas morning. ‘1992’ starts with a carol sung – by all people! – John Denver. Every once in a while the tunes are interrupted by a radio announcer wishing us a Merry Christmas from the staff at WJR in Detroit. Do they still exist I wonder. 

I have lots tapes to hear and sort; it will be my 2021 house project. Unlike the tape players from my youth this box has an outlet into which to insert a cord or ‘transfer stick” to record the tapes (before they become tangled, as was their wont) and transfer the tunes into the iPhone, the great-great grandchild of the AM/FM radio. 

I hope I don’t overdose on all this nostalgia rehearing tapes I made and given to me by friends, some of them now deceased.  While this emotion makes all me feel like an old fuddy-duddy mostly I feel thrilled beyond description. 

 

*I suspect Spo-fans are of a certain age ‘mix-tape’ needs no explanation but for thems who may be young let me explain. A mix-tape is where you put a series of records on the stereo and record songs from this and that one onto a long ribbon of brown tape wound around two white knobs. This antediluvian activity was quite popular in its day. Don’t ask now what is a record or a stereo – that’s prehistory and there are no written records or survivors.