That Turntable

Now up is Dire Straits, Love Over Gold, the deep blue album cover with its stroke of lightning sitting on the copper tray beside the turntable in the living room, a Radio Shack album sleeve (one of many that I bought many years ago to protect the albums in my small collection) sitting nearby.

Yesterday started with Burundi Black, the royal drums beating loudly down the hall to wake up the boys, then Bachman Turner Overdrive Not Fragile -- royal drums of their own sort, I suppose. Then was Terri Gibbs, Somebody's Knockin'; Johnny Cash, Live at San Quentin; Spyro Gyra, Free Time; Earth, Wind and Fire, All 'n All; Linda Rondstadt, Living in the USA; and a Roxy Music best-of.

The boys have never heard music like this, I said to Trudy as we sipped out coffee in the dining room. She nodded.

And they've probably never seen a turntable either, much less one like that turntable over there. The turntable Trudy had fixed by some stereo guys on the other side of town. Guys who gasped to see a Dual and were very impressed by this babe who had one. The babe who took my turntable. The turntable that I didn't even know was missing from its box. The box out of which she had snuck the turntable in some secret moment and slipped in a Don't Panic message (just in case). That turntable that hadn't played for seven years for a short in its patch cables. Cables that were fixed by those guys across town who also replaced the belt. The new belt that came from some place deep in the Black Forest so that I could play those albums for the boys in the morning, and for Trudy who didn't know I had music like that, and for myself because I had saved my best albums just for this day.

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