My amp blew up. I could have died. A sea of tears I cried, I cried.
Well, I worked until about 2. This was on Saturday. On the way to the job I couldn't resist stopping at a garage sale, though it was called a tag sale. The only difference is price. Sometimes people tell you how much they originally paid for an item in order to justify asking for a selling price higher than the market will bear. Such items eventually find their buyer, once desperation kicks in and the number on the tag becomes more realistic. But that can take several days. For instance: Exercise bike $200. Originally paid $600.
That's like saying: I was taken when I bought the darn thing. Now it's your turn.
Eventually, someone gets it for $25, which is what it should have been in the first place. There was a lot of that kind of thing going on at this particular sale. But all the boxes of books were marked "Free." Why, you may ask, did I not walk away with all the books? That is a very good question, and one for which I have no good answer. Oh, I grabbed about 20 - a handful, or arm-load as it were. I even told the geezer I could take all his books off his hands if I had the room for them, but I didn't have the room for them. But the fact is I did have room enough in my vehicle, so that was a dirty lie. I was a dirty liar.
See, I worked till 2 that day - as I said - and, on the way back from the job I stopped at another garage sale. This one was less pretentious. Signs pointed the way down a dirt road through the fields and into the woods. This was up in the hills. The sale was located at a house accessible by long, steep driveway. And the items at this one were priced to sell. I purchased a shelving unit made of good, solid wood with a pegboard back - obviously utilitarian but not unattractive. It was finished in such a way that it might be a bookcase, (though it was a tad deep), or it might be a kitchen storage unit. When I saw it I immediately thought of how well my stereo components would fit into it - and a few LP's as well. The pegboard back could be easily cut to allow for the egress of electrical wiring. But it was a substantial piece of furniture. Twenty smackers, sold.
Well now, I had all the room in the world for it - didn't I? The rear seats in the car fold forward. A few things could be jostled around. The young man who sold it to me - I think he was about 10 - helped me to wrangle the beastly thing into the back of my vehicle. Of course, if I had taken all that one geezer's books in the morning I'd never have been able to shoehorn that shelving unit into a car that isn't quite car and isn't quite SUV - sort of a mutant hybrid of the two possessing no good qualities of either.
Despite my dirty lie, retribution would be further delayed. My sons happened to be here at The White Lodge waiting for me. That was unexpected but fortunate, for I needed help getting the bloody big thing out of my vehicle and into the house. And at last - with the rest of the afternoon free - I began to devote my efforts to setting it up, at times with my sons' help. In the meantime there arrived a strong electrical storm, and in the midst of it the boys' mother arriving to take them home - she of the famous fear of all lightning. If that woman hears thunder twenty miles away she heads for the storm cellar. She wasn't like that when I knew her. She was fearless then. (Had to be.)
Retribution came only after the boys were gone, the storm passed, and all computer and other electronica re-plugged into their outlets. (I may have no fear of lightning but I'm no dummy.) And, it was only after I had at last transferred all my stereo components to their new home that disaster struck. When I powered up my beautiful Onkyo amplifier there was a pop, a hiss, a little curl of electric smoke from its vent, and... it gave up the ghost.
(Here we kneel and observe a few moments' silence).
You all know what we say at moments like this - It's not the End of the World? Can't you just hear your own mother's voice saying that? It's not the End of the World. Well, I was very calm. I took it very calmly. The amplifier was several years old, after all. It had served me well. It had been assembled during the early 1990's, the last of its kind. Analog equipment was being phased out, of course, but a few companies continued to make it. Of course, there are still such things being made today - for a very limited market of audiophiles, like me, who cannot abide compressed digital sound with its lower fidelity and electronically enhanced lows. Such things can still be purchased new for about three times their analog period price at quality audio retailers in New York City. I knew just where I could find a replacement for my dear lamented Onkyo.
I continued to assemble the other components in the new shelving unit, calmly, calmly. Afterwards I would have a few more tasks to keep me busy - the books to maintain, a few business calls to make, some mail to open, checks to write, other checks to prepare for deposit on Monday morning. I thought maybe - just maybe - I would look through the Yellow Pages to see if there might be an audio retailer nearby...
Now, where I grew up - down in the city - a telephone book was often used in place of a high chair when you were a wee bitty thing - a young boy or girl - too grown-up for the baby treatment but not yet able to reach the dining table on rear-end alone, unaided by a boost. Well, you sat on a telephone book. One telephone book would usually suffice - the Five Boroughs Directory. But here - where I am living now - this quaint custom is completely unknown. It would take at least 20 telephone books to boost a child up to table level in this rural region. When I picked up my own the silly thing was so light it flew right out of my hand and I had to cross my kitchen to retrieve it.
Let's see... Audio... Audio... Audiologist... Automobile... and, oh yes, a check for a short beer...
A young lady living upstairs saw me. She stopped dead in her tracks on the staircase. My hair was sticking straight up. I was in tee shirt and boxers, standing there, torn remains of the pathetic telephone directory in hand. She was thinking Mom was right about this place.
"No Audio," I was mumbling, "No Audio... It's the End of the World! The End, I tell you!"
Then, I thought of Nick, dear sweet Nick, that beamish boy; Nick of Village Music who somehow landed up here on the frontier, like me, and opened a record store in the grubby little city to the south. Nick would know what to do. Nick would know where I could find another amplifier - today, this very minute. Nick had ways. Nick was in the audiophile underground. Shh! - Mum's the word!
Problem is, Nick had moved away. Nick was gone. Nick is dead man, miss him, miss him. His little shop on the corner in that pathetic, dying town, from which he ended up buying more from college students needing drugs and food than he ever sold, was now vacant. Yes, despite my best efforts to keep his out-of-place-and-time enterprise alive by buying records, Nick ended up taking a job with one of the big chain retailers you see at shopping malls. I told him he would be unhappy. He knew that he would be unhappy. He moved away. Alas, poor Nick. I knew him, Horatio - a man of infinite jest...
It had been a very long time since I fired up the Time Machine. It stands in the corner of my big room, between the fireplace and my Kirby vacuum/home cleaning system, a relic itself. The last time I tried it I ended up spending 40 years on a planet called Fphlaflopp married to a giant slug. (It didn't work out.) I came back two weeks earlier than I left and had to endure all over again the Fifth Grade concert at my son's school. The memory still haunts my dreams. No - the Time Machine was no longer an option. I have not the expertise in metaphysics to repair it.
Oh, what to do?
I could drive. I could get into my half-SUV half-car monstrosity and drive. Drive where? Just drive - just drive to where the amplifiers are - wherever that might be. I knew then that I would find a replacement for my Onkyo that very same day, even if it required driving the four hours to New York City. I knew I would find eventually - at the end of an Homeric journey - a 24-hour audiophile paradise full of home stereo components the like of which have not been seen assembled in one place since 1982. Not a single MP3 player in sight. Row upon row of glorious, gleaming, glowing magical music boxes, each of them capable of handling every spatial nuance of Miles Davis, every harmonic sustain of Ravi Shankar's, every blast of bass from Parliament/Funkadelic.
Mingus. I had to hear Mingus. I had to hear Mingus today.
I was driving by now. It is fortunate that I somehow had the presence of mind to wear pants. I drove south to the grubby little city - on the off chance. Perhaps Nick will have returned! Perhaps all would be as it once was. Perhaps this whole nightmare of living in a world without true lows would simply vanish. Perhaps the vehicle itself would tesser into the past. Madly I searched the console for the appropriate switch. (Hey - you never know. The thing has 17 cup holders, for goodness sake.) But alas, no time travel switch.
There was a Stereo Lab I knew of. It was my only hope. Back in the day, Stereo Lab stores carried just the sort of thing I was looking for. This particular outlet, I happened to know, specialized in the installation of bass cannons in the drug dealers' Audis. They're the only people with any money in the grubby little city to the south. The place is kept barely alive by the presence of two colleges. Its Main Street is nothing but head shops and bars. There are defribulators on each telephone pole - just in case the city should begin to breathe its last.
Stereo Lab closed at 5 PM. That was 15 minutes ago. I had passed the site on the corner where Nick once had his store, still vacant these two years. The theater had finally closed down. Letters hung off the marquee. I gather Charlton Heston was sitting alone within, screening the Woodstock movie, like in The Omega Man.
I had hope, but that's all I had, as I headed back into the gutted remains of the grubby city's business district - the inner city, as it were, all four blocks of it. Perhaps in one of these decaying homes along the way there was a man who had stayed when all his neighbors fled. Perhaps he was thinking How nice it would be if some stranger from another time came knocking on the door right now to buy this well-maintained stereo equipment of mine.
David Bowie was singing plaintively on my car's CD player Down in space it's always 1982 - the joke we almost knew - They slip away...
On Main Street the bars were coming to life. College girls roamed in packs, wearing - nothing. Yes, they were nude. They crawled from bar to bar, looking for - what? What were they looking for? Flames were licking up from under the sidewalk, and the dead girls out walking were unaware. The universe, bored to death of us, was opening its cosmic mouth to spit us out like so much phlegm. The mushroom cloud was rising at the end of the street. The girls went on regardless, talking into their stupid plastic telephones. There will be no amplifiers here. This is the Audiophile Apocalypse. This is the end!
I thought perhaps if I parked my "car," and perhaps waited on the street, someone would eventually emerge from a dark alley and say, "Hey buddy - You need an 80 watt per channel Technics amp with phono jacks and a graphic equalizer?"
It could happen.
I steered towards Southside, avoiding the burning bodies and fallen debris the best I could. Southside is where all the businesses moved - like a shanty town of strip malls, the buildings little more than boxes. Wal-Mart was there. I knew that visiting Southside would make me throw up. The architecture... Well, I was desperate. I was about to make the turn, the right hand turn, when I saw it - the sign, the sandwich sign at the side of the street, up on the curb. White plastic with red letters, a few short of whole words but adequate:
Vinyl LP's Reco_ds Antiques C_llectibl_s
I went right by it. There it was. I passed it. I know I saw it. I'm not crazy. Well, I am crazy, but not crazy. I must turn around. There's a gas station on the left just before the intersection. I could turn around, go back, investigate. I waited to make the turn. Made it at last. Pulled up over the curb cut and steered back to face the other direction again. And then I saw it, the store next to the flower shop, the store announced by the sandwich sign. I thought well, anybody who sells records must know where to find an amp. And there he was - the store's proprietor - a man of about my age, balding, a bit on the heavy side, with a slightly withered arm, in a tee-shirt and blue jeans. He looked beautiful to me!
He was closing the shop. He was turning the OPEN sign around to CLOSED. He was turning the key. And I was stuck, stuck on the other side of the road, stuck waiting for about a hundred fifty cars to make their turn from the highway, released at last by the traffic light. I thought of jumping out, dodging traffic, racing across the busy road.
He was walking to his car - a primer-coated '73 Malibu (of course) - I could see the last of the train of cars blocking my way was nearing - the light was turning. The beautiful limping man - the man who could answer my questions, or at least sympathize with my plight - was getting into his car. (Fortunately, it required some doing. He had to reach inside the plastic-covered window to open the door.)
I wasn't going to make it though. I wasn't going to make it. I thought of throwing myself on his hood. I thought of leaning on my horn and just flooring it. There would be an accident, and he would be prevented from leaving until the tow truck arrived - and the ambulance. He would probably cross himself with his good arm while he watched the nice men in white load my body in.
Then - just as the last car in that endless train was passing me - that beautiful man got back out of his car, appearing to have forgotten something within the shop. He was limping back to the door. I was able at last to cross the road again. I think I nearly killed him pulling in. Well - I just ran right up to him, and I said (in my FM voice), "Do you know where I can find an - amplifier? A real amplifier?"
The blessed blighter scratched his balding head. I felt like I was in a Don Mclean song. The men there said the music wouldn't play...
At last he spoke: "That's tough. I dunno. That's a tough one alright," he said, "Amplifiers, huh?"
"Yes, my Lord."
"Receivers..."
"Receivers? Did you say receivers? That's what I mean!" I shouted, "A receiver will have an amp in it! I live in Templeton - we can't receive anything - there's no radio stations. I just need... Mingus! I just need to play some Mingus."
"Well, I got one receiver right now," he said.
I looked at him in such a way - Well, if I had looked at either of my wives in just such a way I would be a married man today. If I looked at both of them that way I would be a polygamist.
I calmly said, "That'll do."
Well, it turns out what he had was a Fischer 80 watt-per-channel receiver/amplifier with a few digital bells and whistles - but, most importantly, phono jacks. He was using it as his store stereo. He still had the book. I ended up staying about an hour looking through his records for some King Crimson. At one point he produced a remote control for the receiver. He said, "Look, it even comes with a remote."
"Screw the remote!" I shouted.
He tossed the silly thing over his shoulder, and said, "Remote screwed!"
Anyhooooooooooooooooooooooooo...
I got back, listened to Nostalgia in Times Square. The new amplifier seems to work very well. In fact, there doesn't seem to be much of a change from the late lamented Onkyo. Later I drove up into the hills to visit my caterer friend. We had a few things to discuss. When I arrived she said, "So how was your day?"
