Victrolas and Records

An Essay by Gil French

 

I have a Victrola. Actually it’s not really a Victrola. I must admit that it is a record player. I even have a bunch of old records, not the seventy-eight rpm records but the thirty-three and one-third ones that, when they first came out, were called “long play records”. We had a few forty-fives but I think we got rid of them. We don’t get rid of very much. My record player doesn’t really work anymore. I suspect that it’s O. K. but the speakers for it are missing and I don’t feel like getting new ones. But it’s really my old record collection that I want to talk about.

I have mostly classical music and some really classic ones by ancient conductors  like Toscanini, Eugene Ormandy, Serge Koussevitzky (I hope that I spelled his name correctly) and several others whose names I can’t remember right now. Even if I had a record player in working condition, I probably wouldn’t play them because their sound is rather ancient by now. They are scratchy, tinny, hard on the ears and other body parts and, besides, I find it annoying to have to get up and change records when the side finishes playing. As much as I loved the old timers, I like the new ones better.

But I remember some of the records that I had a number of years ago, during World War II. We were engaged in the war effort. There were songs like, “Remember Pearl Harbor” and “Coming In on a Wing and a Prayer” and “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” and lots of others. There were songs about how nasty the Germans and Japanese were and what hideous things we were going to do to them. I don’t even want to mention the names of them, even though I remember some of them, because we happen to be excellent friends with both of these countries now and I wouldn’t want them to take offense at what I wrote.

Some of my fondest memories of that time involve my listening to, and trying to sing, in my adenoidal teenage rasp, some of those patriotic songs that inspired our country to pursue its battles with the repulsive enemies described in these songs. Our courageous uniformed defenders were fighting the most horrific and despicable creatures that ever existed, creatures that are now our staunchest friends and supporters. It’s amazing that we didn’t have patriotic songs in the years since, extolling the virtues and endearing features of those former foes. It doesn’t seem fair.

Among my favorites both then and now were records of Nelson Eddy singing “Short’ning Bread” and Kate Smith singing “God Bless America.” These two inspiring songs left me throbbing with fervor and ablaze with the desire to support my country. I wish that I had kept those records although I probably wouldn’t be able to play them now since advances in technology would have left them forever silent. How terribly human to be able, at the same time, both to embrace and to curse the blessings and good fortunes that modern engineering has bestowed on us. Naturally, I am not sure that I would want to go back to those simpler but more primitive times.

I must admit that with the passing of time, I have brought some changes, maybe even improvements, to my audio system. I forewent my records for an impressive set of magnetic tapes that contained the same music as did my ancient records, but allowed a much greater amount of music to be heard before having to arouse myself to unwelcome action and change the tapes. But alas, even the tapes were doomed to a brief existence, since compact disks shortly thereafter made them obsolete. So now I have a collection of beautiful musical offerings, most of which are duplicated (triplicated) in three formats: records, tapes and disks. Furthermore, our home is abulge with records and disks that are never played and take up a large fraction of our living space.

I can think of a few ideas that would use old records. For example they could be glued together in a stack and used to support a TV stand or a workbench or any flat horizontal surface on which work can be done or objects can be laid. Such columns could also be used to fashion a wall, but this would take a lot of records. They could be suspended on strings over a vegetable garden to discourage birds from invading the premises. We tried this with compact disks but it didn’t work very well. They could be laid horizontally in the back yard to form an attractive walkway. They could have many uses. Unfortunately, I can’t think of a single thing for which to use old tapes. I hate to dump them in the trash, our environment doesn’t need any more debris like that, but what else does one do with them?