Drabble by Kevin Fagan for September 06, 2024

We had it so good and didn’t know it.

You need to read more history, Patrick.

After almost 50 years my Thorens TD104 still does its job perfectly.

Old technology that still works.

Uh, Norm? The needle needs to be on the record. I think that’s just the radio.

I have a record player that also plays cassettes and 8-tracks.

Dad brought home a portable record player, some 45s and an LP of Newfoundland sea shanties …. I’s the b’y that built the boat, and I’s the b’y that sails her …

A phone that doesn’t get lost? It’s called “Find my IPhone” or put an Air Tag on it.

Now, do you want to hear something REALLY old? Before Vinyl came out, records were breakable. Drop a stack on the floor, and a $100 (big money in those days) collection was gone, baby, gone!

Vinyl is coming back. People like to hear the clicks and pops and hum, I guess. I was glad to convert to CDs and streaming, myself, clean sound. And I never heard all the sounds that I was supposed to hear on a $3000 unit back when.

I noticed the blue reflectors for the fire hydrants aren’t getting replaced. I wonder what they’ll do if the GPS system fails?

and the old ones never lost power

They already did have a phone like that. Tethered to the wall.

This hurts me and I’m not even 40…

Already had a phone that doesn’t get lost, it is called a landline.

I glued my landing phone to a table top, so it wouldn’t keep falling off. My wife still reminds me how stupid that was. It never fell off again.

Norman needs to learn the proper way to handle a record.

Your great-grandparents thought of that first.

This is actually funny, as opposed to the usual sarcastic humor.

And doesn’t need to be recharged.

Unless you spend thousands on high-end equipment, vinyl sounds like utter garbage. Even with great analog equipment, it’s idiotic because most new vinyl is mastered digitally. You can also get more faithful reproduction with lossless digital, than with analog equipment. If you “prefer the sound”, what you prefer is fuzziness, and you can digitally add that back in if you want.

Plus, this strip is now officially Boomer fuel.

Too much manual labor involved with record players. You got to flip it over to hear the other side.

Growing up, we had a really great kitchen clock. It was electric, ticking analog, and totally accurate. It also had a little red dot that showed up when the power had been off. If you saw that, you knew to reset it. I thought that was a new feature that was coming in, but no. That clock was over 40 years old, even back then, and the alert-dot had never caught on. Here, I thought it was a cutting-edge new idea! Nope.

And everything old is new again.

Even back before answering machines, I didn’t answer the phone if I didn’t feel like it. Still don’t, even with voicemail.