If You Liketh the Vinyl?

I inherited my grandfathers record player not to mention his record collection consisting of, Merry Christmas Bing Crosby, a variety of ol' German polkas with an occasional, polkas and waltzes with Ron Terry tossed in to the mix. (Let me just beat you to the punch...SWEET!).

Now this is no ordinary record player...this thing is so old it makes Herbert from Family Guy look like a spring chicken! Plus, it weighs like 5000 pounds!!! Hello hernia. It resembles an antique piece of furniture an 80 year old would throw a doily over. On top of that... I for some reason keep picturing a gaudy crystal bowl filled with pastel colored candies delicately being placed in the middle of this thing I now call the biggest record player I have ever seen in my life! (Does anyone know the type of candy I’m talking about? The kind of candies that you would get offered as a kid...candies you knew were stale and/or may have gone rubbery...sick... but you would eat it anyway ‘cause I mean...come on it’s candy right)!?

Anyway, this wooden mammoth of a record player masks its speakers in the front and secretly opens at the top. (When I was little I often wondered if NARNIA was inside? Now when I say 'when I was little' I also mean that yesterday I went in search of a trap door or something inside of this record player with elephantitis but it was a no go...Where’s the wardrobe when you need it)? Yet, what you can find inside this multi-purpose piece of furniture-magic is a hidden record player/radio with built in shelving slots for record storage! 'They sure don’t make things like they used to'. When my brother, my cousins and yours truly used to play hide and seek...this was one of the 'killer' hiding spots! (Yes that’s right a small child can fit inside this thing...and when I say small child a mean full grown adult ‘cause we all played yesterday and I totally scored this tried and true spot of all seekers oblivion)!

Again, can I just say multi-functional! I held up my tiny mp3 player next to this beast of a music box and this juxtaposition was shocking...'times sure have changed'.

Still, there’s something to be said for the sound of a record player...in my opinion this is one department that my mp3 player is no match for. My mp3 will always pail in comparison to the sound of a needle on vinyl. Also, for me this inherited record player has a sound of sentimentality. As cheese ball as it sounds...when I turn this thing on I can not only hear an old record I can hear the memory of my old grandpa singing along to it, laughing and stomping his feet to some stupid freaking German polka! My new/old record player looks totally out of place and takes up half of my living room! Too bad it’s now my prized possession and like the coolest thing I own!
For those of you who are vinyl lovers I’ve heard about an urban myth of a giant record garage sale that happens in the Maples (a.k.a. the MAPS) once a summer possibly on Pickley Crescent? That’s all I’m saying...