All That Music and Not a Note to Hear

I’m in the massive task of downsizing 44 years of living so I can move into an apartment. Actually, it’s more than the years I was married but an additional 40 years of memories from my mother-in-law. My wife and I adopted them like they were orphans.
These orphans are 78 vinyl records. For years we rationalized storing them in closets because they were going to be some magical source of retirement income. We even had one extra-thick record from the Thomas Edison Company. No, not the one of him reciting Mary Had a Little Lamb, but some kind of music. I looked it up on eBay, and it was worth only a buck fifty. A lot of Bing Crosby too, but he was so popular his records are worth less than Edison’s.
If you wanted to get any cash out of this stack they had to be by someone no one ever heard of before. Well, not just any nobody. It had to be somebody whose talent was been discovered after the artist died with only one or two albums made. And those album covers had to be in pristine shape. Vinyl with no cover was only worth molding into salad bowls.
Believe it or not, my wife Janet and I found a few records that fit that criteria. We thought we’d at least put them on display in our living room bookcase. Like a conversation item. Then we let this woman sleep in our living room because she had left her husband and her parents wouldn’t let her bring her pet dogs into their house. The doggies just loved the glue used on those record covers so there went the conversation value of those.
Since Janet died I kept them thinking I might want to listen to them myself. That way, they’d have some value, even if it were just for me. Recently I tried to play them but they didn’t sound right. Then I realized my player only had speeds of 45 and 33 1/3. I wouldn’t even know how to begin to find an old Victrola to play them. And if I did find one, it would cost too much. I’m old. I’m trying to save money, not spend more of it.
My deadline of clearing out the house is coming up after the first of the year, and it looks more and more like I’m just going to make several trips to the local dump ground. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I won’t make any money from them. I’ve never been able to sell anything so why would I want to ruin my perfect record. And there’s no real sentimental value to them, since they had been bought and listened to by my in-laws when they were youngin’s themselves.
My only regret is that I won’t get to listen to them even one time. These were the songs played in the thirties and forties when radio was just catching on and television was some cock-eyed invention in the future. There’s Guy Lombardo waltz tunes, the Ink Spots, Mills Brothers, Perry Como and some group called the Blind Coal Miners of Virginia.
I guess I’ll have to rely on imagination, like I depend on it to visit the Eiffel tower, the Pyramids, the Great Wall of China and Machu Picchu. At least in my mind, the records won’t have any scratches on them.

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