I wasn’t always stuck on this shelf gathering dust.
I wasn’t always waiting for some jive turkey to take me home. Nah, back in the good days, I was the hottest thing since Freddie Mercury’s sequined jumpsuit. I can still remember the rage when I first entered the shelf fifty years ago, all sleek and shiny.
I had an orange label back then. “A Night at the Opera” in bold. Some cool cat with flared jeans and a “Keep on Truckin’” patch on his denim jacket picked me up at the record store. He grinned ear to ear—I was about to become the soundtrack to his first date. And to much more, afterwards.
Truck and I went on plenty of adventures. I rattled around in his glove compartment of a VW Beetle, singing Bohemian Rhapsody at the top of my lungs as windows fogged up from more than just the weather. I’ve spun through house parties, nestled in boomboxed, and even survived a drop into a shag carpet after one of Truck’s clumsy friends knocked the tape deck over with his big platform boots. I didn’t care. It was all worth it. The people back then? They felt the music. They lived it, man.
But one day, Truck put me in a box and I stayed there for a long, long time. Some years later, I felt the box move. A lady who smelled like stale perfume opened it up and set me up on a metal shelf. She propped me up between a stack of outdated DVDs and some lame knock-off board games. The store’s fluorescent lights buzz overhead, and the air smells like mothballs. Not at all like Truck’s smokey music lounge. I didn’t like it.
I still don’t.
Folks have strolled by for years, scrolling on their magic boxes and barely giving me a glance. To them, I guess I’m just some weird… thing. Nothing like the headphones they wear, or those little white tear-shaped devices in their ears. I’m a freak. An antique.
A joke.
I miss Truck. The people who come here are nothing like the cats he and I used to roll with. Back in ‘75, you’d find folks in a store like this, digging through racks of vinyl and tapes. They searched and searched for the next big sound. Now? It’s all digital. I don’t understand the way it works, but they speak of their magic boxes. Tiktok. Spotify. The kids don’t notice the tape decks and boomboxes across from me. They wouldn’t know good music if it hit them like Roger Taylor’s drum solo.
I mean, take the kid who came in yesterday. Some hipster type—he had ripped jeans that looked like they’d been mauled by a bear. He picked me up in his hands, turning me over like he were inspecting a fossil.
“Oh, cool,” he said, “retro Queen.”
The flash of his magic box hurt as he snapped a picture for his Instagram and put me back. I had barely moved an inch. I don’t get excited when they pick me up anymore.
Don’t get me wrong, though; I’ve still got my pride. You don’t carry tracks like “Love of My LIfe” and “I’m in Love with My Car” and not know your worth. It’s just hard to not get a little bummed out, sitting here while everyone streams their music through the air. Music used to have substance. You had to rewind me, man. Effort. Now, all they do is swipe. Click.
Ain’t no respect for the classics.
So I’ve lost hope that anyone will see that I’ve still got a few spins left in me. Sure, I’m not as shiny as I used to be, but I’m real. Analog, baby. I’ve got heart. Soul. So long as Freddie’s voice rings within me, I’ll always be a champion.
Today, it was the same. A kid here, a teenager there. The old lady with the stale perfume had long since gone and been replaced by a younger employee. The store was pretty quiet this morning and I found myself almost startled when the bell above the door jingled.
In came a groovy lady in her 60s. She had a sparkle in her eye behind her big round glasses as she drifted up and down the aisle, before spotting me and letting out a little gasp. Something about her seemed familiar, and when she picked me up and turned me over, she smiled. Really smiled. She even started humming “39” under her breath.
“Well, would you look at that?”
“What is it, mom?” said another voice, belonging to that of a younger guy wandering around the corner. He looks a lot like Truck—his hair not as big, though. He stepped over to look over the ladies shoulder, and then down at me. “What is it?”
C’mon, man. At least a little respect?
“Music,” Glasses replied, looking at her son with a wide smile, “this one was a favorite of mine growin’ up!”
“Are you gonna get it?”
Ah, there it was. Soon, she’d put me down after realizing that she could jsut listen to the same tunes for fre—
“Yep!”
She carried me to the counter, hands gentle like she knew me. I could barely contain my surprise when the cashier rang me up, beaming at the lady as they exchanged some cash. And soon enough, for the first time in decades, I was on the move again. Wrapped up in a small brown paper bag, I could feel the bumpy ride of a car—almost all too familiar. I thought I’d be popped into a player and let loose to belt out Freddie’s falsetto again, but no.
Hands wrapped around me as I was picked up yet again, brought inside and soon placed on what I could only assume was a table. I slid across the surface and toward another set of hands.
A gift.
“Happy birthday!”
And when the paper was torn away, there he was. An old man with silver hair, laugh lines etched into his face. But that wasn’t what shocked me, no. On the chair behind him draped a familiar washed out denim. With just a glimpse of the patch.
Keep on Truckin’.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Truck murmured, his voice thick with emotion, “I thought I’d lost you.”
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4 comments
OMG! Really enjoyed it. I was a reporter, and I used cassettes for much of my career -- stacks and stacks in my office. And the cassettes I played to get me sanely through story assignments in the middle of nowhere. Went through three copies of "The Color of Money" soundtrack alone. Cool story!
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I thoroughly enjoyed reading this story, Emma! The ending really got me, as I honestly didn't expect it. Well done! :)
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Awesome turnaround, Emma. Welcome to Reedsy. This was a great album. I loved your line about Freddie's voice being inside. Fantastic. This was a fun story. Funny how fast that technology changed from album to 8-track, to cassette, to CD, to digital. In 1975, cassettes were top of the line. I copied many LPs onto cassettes so I could listen to them in my car. I even had a portable CD player with a cassette adapter! As long as the music is within us is the most important thing!
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Thank you! Cassette Tapes are a little before my time, as I was an early 2000s baby, but I still have family members that collect them. I've also got one of those portable CD players that have a cassette adapter! And I agree! I'm glad you enjoyed it.
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