Living in a Cassette World

Recently I managed to get my SONY dual cassette deck working again and it works great. I had thought that it was not that old, and that I had gotten it only 10 years or so ago. Stashed underneath the deck I found the receipt from when I purchased it (I know, weird huh?) and I had gotten it from Circuit City for $99.00 in March 2000. Twenty-four years ago last month.

With the help of YouTube I replaced all four belts on the deck, cleaned the heads with alcohol, and blew out the interior with compressed air which was impressively clean.

So now I had a working dual cassette deck and I still have quite a few cassettes. Going through them I picked out a few and have been listening to them in the quiet of the morning. One is a crazy combo of Julie London, Peggy Lee and Grace Jones. Another is the tango and Satie & Tango tape I used to play at the Biograph through the sound system in-between the movies. I haven’t found the tape of Vivaldi’s the Four Seasons yet which I also regularly played at the Biograph. But I will keep looking.

The tapes, most of the over twenty years old play great. I even fixed a Reggae tape that had jammed up and I used to play all the time.

Unfortunately, the Diana Ross & the Supremes tape was missing from the case. Misplaced many years ago.

Glad I did not purge all of my tapes. It’s like opening a musical time capsule and revisiting a forgotten time and old friends.

January

January…

It has taken a while for winter to arrive, but the winds have blown winter in.  It is definitely here today… at least for the rest of the week.

We have had many days in the 40s and 50s. Not too many of those frigid below freezing days.  The big story has been the rains. Full days of rain and cloudy skies. Inches of rain. I don’t know how much rain we have received but it has wiped out those dry summer months and we are now above average in the rain department.  

Although it has been warmer and wetter than most, the winter of 2024 is finally here.

Now bundle up and choose a book and enjoy the quiet repose.

Before you know it the skies will clear and daffodils and forsythia will be starting the cycle all over again.

The James River out of its banks – January 2024.

Tuxedo pants

Overwhelmed with stuff and not only my own, but caretaker of family photographs, old High School diplomas from the 30s, travel journals, carbon copies of letters, note books, holy cards from extended family funerals, and bits of family mementos that go back over 100 years.

So many memories which brings me to the tuxedo. My father’s tuxedo, or should I say the last one that he actually wore; as he wore many over the years. Many styles…narrow collar, wide collar, velvet ties, red ties, plaid cummerbunds and of course bell bottoms. Being a musician, he wore his tux a couple of times a week until he stopped playing regular in his 80s. I have this, his last Tuxedo or at least I still have his tux jacket, the pants met their demise by moth and only recently I put them into the trash bin. I did cut off the buttons, as you just never know, and removed the label on the inside of the waist band.

The waist band says it was from Masters in Washington, D.C. Googling Masters, they are still in business after 80 years on M Street in NW. A tailor shop and supplier of tuxedos. I remember going into a tailor shop as a child with my father numerous times for a fitting or to pick up a new jacket. This must have been the place. My father was always specific about the number of buttons and vent slits in the back, whether it was a center vent, two side vents or no vent at all.

He always looked nice in his suits and tuxedos. He really did not start to wear more casual clothes until he retired, but I don’t think I ever saw my father in a pair of jeans and shorts only occasionally. As my mother used to say, “Your father always looked nice.”

The current purge was necessitated by some renovations and changing the function of some rooms in the house. I have had to go through some of my family archives and my own personal items so I am pleased that I at least managed to dispose of one pair of moth-eaten tuxedo pants and to collect a few bags of stuff of my personal stuff to donate.

I will go through some other items and memories another day.

Checking Out

I was reminded today that the community of artists, musicians, dancers, shop owners, restaurant workers, actors, DJs, club owners and fearless bike riders that helped shape what Richmond has become today goes back a long way. Many relationships go back 50 years or more, and that community is large. Many of these folks making up this community are no longer with us and many are now reaching an age where they are slipping away at an increasing pace. So many folks have left us over the past few years.

Here is one of the latest who has stepped off the planet, Wayne Shields of Shields Collectables. For many years his store was at 822 W. Broad Street where he sold his wares and where this photo was taken in the early 1980s.

He was one of a kind.

Rest easy, Wayne.

Obituary

clip swish…

Clip swish…clip swish…

Old pruning shears

quiet

manual

no smell of burning fuel

no clouds of dust

no extension cords or recharging of batteries

I can do this at 6am or 10pm and no one is the wiser

No one is annoyed or disturbed

The clip swish sounds remind me of my mother clipping around her flowers

wearing blue jean pedal pushers and white sneakers.

my mother clipping around her flowers.

clip swish

clip swish

I am clipping the edge of the sidewalk and wayward grass that has grown tall

among the moss

clip swish

clip swish

clippers 30 years old if they are a day

sharpened with the wet stone and put away in the shed

quietly, patiently waiting

ready for another day.

The Beach

I found this photo recently at an antique/junk store. It reminded me of when I was a child and we would travel to the beach and stay in weathered hotels or musty smelling beach apartments for a few days.

I remember one time we had stayed at a beach apartment and my mother was pissed. She was standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes. “This is no vacation for me!” she said. I think we ate out the rest of our trip. It seems there was one large living room where the kids slept on the floor and couches and one bedroom with a door my parents stayed in. We would usually leave home on a Sunday after church driving east on Rt. 50 to the ocean. We typically stayed only 4 nights. Coming home Thursday. I remember only one time when I was 12 when we stayed an entire week at Ocean City, Maryland. Probably my favorite vacation, but it was the last one we took as a family. I am not sure why. We were getting older and then my oldest sister got married and shortly after that my brother got married. Suddenly there were a lot fewer of us at home and our own lives did not center around family as much.

But this photo of the cars in the blaring sunlight at the shore brought me back to Ocean City, Maryland almost 60 years ago as we prepare to travel to the North Carolina coast to have another adventure at the sea shore.

A Chevy wagon on the left and a Ford on the right.

105 Years ago

This week my dad would have been 105 years old.

He never met a stranger and lived quite a full life.

Happy Birthday, Dad.

(Photo is from a Selmer Saxophone ad when he was 17)

For a little bit more about my father’s life and his connection to music and how it saved his life you can read a post I wrote 10 years ago.

Sunny Day in January

Today, this sunny mild January day in the 50s reminds me of a day when I was about 5 years old. The last day of winter over 60 years ago.

I was outside playing on the concrete stairs that led from the basement to our backyard. The stairs had a sturdy railing painted black that protected one from falling into the well of the stairs as well as helped steady oneself when going up and down the steep stairs. At the bottom of the stairs was a drain. Where it led to was a mystery, but whenever it rained my mother rushed to the stairwell and cleared it out, sweeping away the leaves and grass clippings so that water would not seep into the basement under the door. Clearing the drain for my mother was a constant worry for her well into her 90s when she finally had to move from the house she lived in for 60 years.

On that last day of winter, I remember that it was so beautiful and bright. The kind of light that you only see in the winter. When the sun can stream through the branches on the trees that have yet to sprout their new buds.

I was playing alone on the stairs with my soldiers. Which war I was reenacting I can’t remember.  I had so many soldiers. But it easily could have been WWII as at this point the end of that horrible war had only been over less than 15 years. It still lived in the front of everyone’s mind, even those who had not actually gone to war.

Such a beautiful day that last day of winter.

The other part of this memory was that the next day, the first day of spring, was cold and windy with snow flurries. Looking out the big picture window from our living room this reality was so confusing to my 5-year-old mind. It just seemed impossible that this very cold day was the first day of spring when the last day of winter was so warm and welcoming.

I continue to look forward to the first day of spring and this year I hope for no snow flurries.

A Book of Days

A Book of Days by Patti Smith

366 days.
I have read January.

Photos, comments or captions and sometimes poems.
Should I read it straight through?
Or one page for each corresponding day?
What about February 29?
Wait for a leap year to read it?
I think there’s one next year.

I don’t want to read the entire book at one sitting.
I want to savor it. Read it slowly.
I am thinking of reading a month of days at a time on the first day of each month.

If I want to I can reread the current month as many times as I want over the course of the month.

This will give me something to look forward to on the first of each month.
A much more pleasurable task along with paying bills and the mortgage and cleaning the kitchen drain with baking soda and vinegar.

One month at a time.
To make it last all year.

————————————————————————–

The first Patti Smith book I purchased was Seventh Heaven.
I purchased it in August 1977.

I still have it.

One has to wonder…

One has to wonder why someone left these white flowers on the banks of the James River.

They are propped up on a fallen log. Maybe to get a better view.

I wonder if someone’s ashes had just been scattered into the river or maybe another, happier event, had taken place.

Maybe an act of love, a remembrance of something special.

One has to wonder.