Boxes

 

I was running around before the sun came up this morning, catching up the housework so the decks would be clear for the day. In deference to the other people who live here I was listening to my threecollie walking playlist with earphones and trying to be quiet. No sense in waking them up.

Brown-eyed Girl, by Van Morrison, came on, and I sang along, very, very softly....and thought about boxes.

The song came out in 1967. I was fifteen and enthralled by it. As teenagers did in those days, I wore the 45 rpm record out, just wore the grooves away, lying on the floor in my bedroom and listening to it on a different sort of box than the one I have now.

It was my own little portable record player, if I remember correctly it belonged first to my folks, who were also driven by music. They got something better and it came down to me. Snapped closed it looked like a little suitcase. Open it brought me great joy.  I was forever losing or breaking those little plastic adaptor inserts that made a 45 playable on a spindle intended for a 33. 

I could never have imagined that lo, these many years later, I would be listening to the same song on a little rubber-padded box containing all the knowledge, music, media, and mystery anyone in the world might want to employ for any kind of reason. 

We have come a long way, baby!

I want to thank Becky, who keeps me in music and books, for the wonders conveyed by the magical time machine in my pocket. There are a few songs I can't add to that playlist, but most anything I want to hear is available. I added the song above to my walking (10000 steps a day) playlist just the other day. Most of that list consists of Irish and Scottish music, Canadian music, a bagpipe song or two, a little Beethoven and the like, but there are just a few classic favorites from the fifties, sixties and seventies on there too.

However I do not miss the clumsy box on the bedroom floor and my mama hollering up the stairs to "turn that darned thing down" one little bit. (Well, part of that is a lie....I do miss Mama every day.) I do not miss saving my 25 cents a day lunch money for weeks to afford the next new song I wanted either. 

This is a lot easier.

Next on the playlist: C'mon Marianne, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.