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While growing up as a kid of the 1970s and 1980s we had an ENORMOUS stereo system downstairs in our family room. I think that my Dad bought it while he was stationed in the Philippines during the mid-1960s. I think that it may have actually been custom-made. I do know this. It was HEAVY – several hundred pounds. If the insides of it had been gutted out and made hollow an adult version of me would have been able to lay down inside of it rather comfortably, and you could have stacked another 9 of me on top of me inside of it.
I don’t know how it got there (because of its MASSIVE size and weight), but it was there in our 1969-1972 apartment in Greenbelt Maryland, our 1972-1975 house in Bowie Maryland, our 1975-1980 house in Lanham Maryland, and our 1980-1996 house in McLean Virginia. It did NOT make the move to Jacksonville Florida when my family moved out of the Washington D.C. area.
The ENORMOUS stereo system had a really bad AM / FM radio with no antenna and no reception, but it had a rather decent record player. Down below it all were compartments that were chock-full (a couple hundred) of vinyl records from two distinct time-periods. Half of the albums were from the mid-to-late-1960s, and they were bought by my Dad overseas and stateside. The other half were albums from the late-1970s to early-1980s that I bought via the mail from the old Columbia Record Club.
Since Disco was King back then a large majority of these albums bought by me were from the genre. It was mainstream back when it was the hottest thing going in the entire free nation. Nowadays it’s looked upon in mostly negative ways, but it’s just so very easy to criticize something that’s past its prime, or run its course, or faded out into oblivion. You can’t deny that it’s a vital part of Americana.
The Village People – currently LIVE on tour here in South Florida – released a half a dozen albums during a short period of time from 1977 to 1980, and they were one of the hottest Disco groups around. I think that I had all of their biggest albums of the time. One of them – “Go West” – included this 1979 Disco smash:
The music video was shot aboard the USS Reasoner (FF-1063) which was owned and operated by the U.S. Navy from 1971 to 1993. It is now a Turkish ship.
Back during the Spring of 1996 I visited my Mom, Dad, Brother, and two cats in the Washington D.C. area for the final time. (About 6 months later that year they all moved southward to Jacksonville Florida.) It marked the end of a 27-year homestead (1969-1996) within the D.C. area for my family (55 years for my Dad going back to his birth).
During that final visit my Brother and I drove down I-95 early one chilly foggy drizzly morning to spend the day at Kings Dominion. We had free tickets to the amusement park because my brother won a prize package on DC-101 (heritage rock radio station) related to the world premiere of the first “Mission: Impossible” movie that was a week or two away.
This song in history – although it reminds my brother of a particularly bad relationship with a former girlfriend at the time – reminds me of those good times that we shared when we went on that short road trip for a day to have some fun.
Here’s the MTV award-winning music video for “Glycerine” from Bush. It’s one of my favourite songs of all-time:
This morning I visited the often-rumoured-to-go-out-of-business Lowe’s in Homestead for the first time ever, and I took a nearly hour-long grande tour-de-farce of the not-so-jumpin’ joint. It was essentially me walking around the warehouse and spending money in my mind on various home improvements. In my mind I had all-new bathroom sink faucets purchased and professionally installed as well as a couple of ceiling fans. I even had a new front door ! Maybe some day in the not too distant future I’ll actually do that for real !
(I actually did buy nearly $60 in merchandise including sales tax.)
This week’s Shenanigan of note actually occurred early yesterday afternoon when my longtime plumber (company) arrived to remove and replace my 10-year-old kitchen sink garbage disposal that totally stopped working and made no sound whatsoever for the past couple of months. He also came to bring my longtime malfunctioning guest toilet back to life. The toilet – he actually fixed that genuine problem. It works fine now, and I’m using it on a regular basis.
But before he did that he repaired my non-working garbage disposal – by dumping and jamming a whole bunch of ice cubes in it ! He had it working again in less than 60 seconds ! He said that it was simply jammed up, and that ice cubes generally does the trick. I felt stupid that he was able to bring a non-working garbage disposal with no sound back to life louder and prouder than ever before within a mere New York minute !
Now THAT’S what I call a true Shenanigan ! Be sure to check back here on future Saturday mornings as I reveal how dumb I really am when it comes to fixin’ things.
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