So, I have mentioned that my friend Dave sold me a nice stereo somewhere early in my college years, and I listened to it through college. But when I returned to my sainted mother’s house in House Springs after I graduated it, I didn’t need it because I wasn’t home that much to listen to music, and we had a console stereo inherited from my grandmother in the house. So I put the stereo in my mother’s annual garage sale, and it sold–to our family friend Pixie. Who reached out to me because I left the record Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd on the turntable while it sold. Did I want it back? Nah, I told her I should get the CD anyway, and I gave her the sleeve when I next saw her.
It took me probably twenty-five years to actually get the CD, but whatever. Fast forward to 2026.
Some years ago, when we were burning through Crosley/Victrola/Chinesium’s Choice all-in-one units with turntables we wore out, we wore out one such unit and let my oldest put it into his bedroom–he could still use the tape player, the CD player, Bluetooth, and radio. And he did for a while. But when he rearranged his room last year, he took the unit out and put it onto the donations stack in the garage.
This weekend, I was sorting the donations and tidying them up–we can actually, you know, donate them to a church fundraiser soon. And I came across this unit and thought, hey, some of the units we “burned out” might have been because I made that determination on Sunday mornings when spinning the Swedish Gospel Singers and thinking the first song sounded slow. Well, when playing it on a new and better turntable, it still sounded slow. So maybe I was getting rid of functional units.
So I repatriated this unit into my office and turned it on.
In a moment, I started hearing something from it, and I checked. The button was set to CD, and I ejected it to discover…. My son had left the CD of Dark Side of the Moon in it. I’m not sure if it’s the replacement I bought or if we had bought him his own copy, but….
Like father, like son.
Note: Not like mother, like son. I gather this crap up and donate it instead of having a garage sale because:
- It’s a bother.
- It would not net much.
- I would not like to see how little other people value the things I divest myself of.
- Donating it to the church yard sales means if we have second thoughts, we can buy back our stuff, cheap. This has happened. More than once.
