Category: lifestyle

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I’m Bored. I Think I’ll become a Beatnik !


My Journey to Become a Hep Cat.

Sluggo-nik

I am bored and uninspired. Writers’ block has crippled my creativity, and painting a picture on canvas no longer holds my interest. My guitar rest in a closet, untouched for over two years. It calls me, but I refuse to hear. My tubes of paint have dried and died. My hair hasn’t been cut in four months, and my facial hair speaks of radicalism, so the time is right for a change. My wife says I look like Kenny Rogers; I see myself as Buffalo Bill, but minus the buckskin and rifle.

Consistently pissed off about everything is my nature at this time in life. Restlessness on the pillow takes its toll. Two major surgeries have left me with a gait like Frankenstein; the waltz of the monster mash. Children recoil in fear when I stumble in their direction. Old ladies in the grocery store give me the evil eye and cross themselves. I view my titanium cane as a weapon instead of an aid and have used it as such. Either I change, or the world changes to meet my demands, and that will not happen, so I will accommodate myself.

I will splatter my canvas with vibrant colors, the ones you see in dreams. Your art is the Holy Ghost blowing through your soul. I will marry my novels and have little short stories for adults who see themselves as children. A raconteur of genial ditties that will keep them amused or disturbed.

No, my dear, this will be different and life-changing. “This coming Monday,” I say, “around 9 AM CST, I will no longer be a grumpy old dude, but instead, will become a finger-snapping, beret wearing, caffein guzzling, poetry writing, deep thinking Hep Cat, a Beatnik or a Bohemien Pontificator, and a Deranged Poet”

She touched my whiskery cheek and said, ” now won’t that be fun.” She thinks I am not serious this time, but she can hide and watch.

I didn’t realize a change was afoot six months ago. This transformation has been deadly silent and gradual. It’s as if Tinker Bell, or the Beat Fairy, has visited every night and sprinkled pixie dust on my pillow.

Last night, after a few cocktails and after watching Wheel Of Fortune, during our supper, I announced to my wife, MoMo, that I have decided to become a Beatnik. Without looking up from her plate of manna, she asked, “So it will be like time when you decided to become a Hare Krishna and move to India to become that Beatle guy and play the sitar and hang out with Yogis.” Ouch, that stung. She knows me too well.

A month back, out of boredom, I re-visited “On The Road” by the great beat author Jack Kerouac. It’s a challenging read, but I made it through for a second time. The free and rebellious nature of the characters piqued my imagination. If I can capture their “cool factor,” it might add a few more years to my punch card. Dreams of change have no age limit or shelf life.

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Back When Beer Was For Real Men And Real Women


“I may not always drink beer, but when I do, it won’t be an Annhiser Busch product.” You can bet your sweet Bippy on that one. The country musician boys are banning Busch products from their shows, and Kid Rock will be touring the country, shooting up 12 packs of Busch beer to cheering crowds of rednecks all through the southland. Let’s hear old Neal sing about this one. This shit is about to get serious, stat, and pronto.

Bring back the bull terrier dog with the spot on his eye, the dude with the beard and the European accent, and the happy young folks on the beach around a roaring campfire. Hell, even Hank Hill and his buddies standing in their alley sipping on a cold Alamo can of beer, anything but this transgendered mutt, Dylan Mulvaney, or whatever its name is. If you have a pecker, you ain’t a girl because you don’t have a babushka and never will. Beer is not a social statement vehicle; it’s a brew to be enjoyed with Mexican food, hamburgers, and hotdogs at the ballpark, not at a drag queen children’s indoctrination show. It’s a sacred piece of Americana, Texana, and Rosanna-Rosanna-Dana; she was a beer drinker too, as is my wife MoMo.

If he were still with us, my grandfather would be having a conniption fit over this latest bow to wokeness. He drank his beer with a few shakes of salt to give it effervescence and increase the foamy head. He drank his brew like a real man, the one that killed German soldiers with his bare hands in the muddy battlefields of France in 1917. There was no room for pansy-assed young folks printed on his beer bottle or in his life. The Busch family might want to reconsider their blunder before their American beer drinkers switch to Irish Whiskey like this old guy has done.

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“Influence-inza,” Making Folks Sick, One Video At A Time


I am not easily influenced by anyone or anything. Putting a pretty gal with Kardashian eyebrows, trout lips, and a big butt on social media is not going to make me buy any product or service she is pushing. I am immune to such nonsense. Please excuse the first word in the title; I made that up and happen to think it’s appropriate.

Apparently, the younger folks latch onto these women known as “influencers” like they are their long-lost-fairy godmothers. How can a young woman, or someone pretending to be a woman, it’s difficult to tell these days, tell anyone to stick their head in a freezer for an hour, and it will take away their facial wrinkles? Oh my, but it may also give you frostbite, and you might lose your nose, ear, or even eyesight. Who are you gonna call ( my apology to Ghostbusters), the “influencer” chick or 911?

“Like wow Doc, like I tried really-really hard to call the influencer girl to help me, but her Tik Tok number is not listed, I can’t find my phone…have you seen my phone….oh no…I’m going into withdrawl.” says the dumbass teenager to the emergency room doctor.

Who are these people on social media, Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube, and all the other platforms? Has our society gone so low as to believe what a “faked-out” extraterrestrial-looking person/thing says or, worse yet, instructs you to do? I have read articles from good and reasonable professional sources that the majority of these young women/things are as stupid as pasta noodles but not so stupid as to make millions of dollars in the process. Who watches this drool? Would you believe our children, pre-teens, and teenagers, even college-educated, supposedly intelligent twenty-somethings, with or without a paying job? That is their core audience. I’ve watched a few of them on Youtube to see what the fuss is about. There is no fuss, only stupidity, narcissism, and worshiping at the “church of social media,” Pastor Zuckerberg officiating and leading the service.

It came to me in the middle of the night. The Kardashian women are responsible for this scourge on society. They have turned American teens into a warped, weird version of themselves while making gazillions in cash and influencing our young. Look at the women on television. Our local news outlets have female presenters who look strangely like a Kardashian; big butts, swollen lips, and large, clownish eyebrows. I can’t get through the five-o’clock newscast without turning my television off. It makes me yearn for the 1980s newscasters, as bad as that was.

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Thoughts On Being A Texas Writer


In the past, I have considered myself a writer…not an accomplished one, but a pearl in the making. I’ve been at it since I was ten, using No. 2 pencils and a Big Chief tablet. At that time, I seriously considered becoming the next Mark Twain if I could somehow channel his spirit and his talent.

I soon gave up on that dream and changed course to become the next John Steinbeck, although he was still alive and writing at that time. I read his novel, “The Grapes of Wrath,” which was a daunting feat at the age of ten, but I made it through the book in a few months, understanding about a third of it, and when finished, considered myself a literary genius. My mother politely busted my bubble, reminding me I was still a kid with a Big Chief tablet that was a pretty good reader that wrote cute little stories about my friends and animals. I did send a rousing story about our neighborhood idiot to our local newspaper, the Fort Worth Press, but never received a return comment. I watched the paper daily for months, expecting my story, written on tablet paper, to be published. I likely offended someone in the guest editorial section.   

     My late aunt Norma introduced me to the alien world of books. She and my mother taught me to read at the age of five. Until then, my childhood was spent watching cartoons, staging elaborate World War 2 and Alamo play battles with my neighborhood friends, and dealing with the bad boys across the tracks, “the hard guys.” My next-door neighbor, Mr. Mister, an Air Force veteran and an aircraft designer at Chance Vaught, was our neighborhood mentor; his wife, Mrs. Mister, was our second-in-command mentor. She was also a rabid reader of books and a devoted disciple of American literature. Although from California, she loved our revered Texas authors, J. Frank Dobie and Walter Prescott Webb. Larry McMurtry hadn’t come into his own yet, or she would have followed him to his Archer City home and camped on his porch.

     The reality of my situation is such that I may never get a book written and published. I have started on one but am stuck, and can only go as far as the few chapters I have written; I’m not sure if the world is ready for a Horned Lizard (a Texas Horned Toad) that turns the tide in the battle of the Alamo. It’s a tale for children, but some adults might find it amusing after a few drinks. My wife believes I still have it in me, and she may be right. There are days when I feel the spirit and will churn out a short story about my childhood experiences, what happens in my small town, and the state of Texas. Sometimes I write about politics, which I shouldn’t do. My social filters vanished years ago, and impromptu offending gibberish may spew forth at any time. Anyone wanting to write serious stories poisons himself when he enters that political corral full of bulls.

     Recently finishing one of J. Frank Dobies books, and in the middle of another, and once again, I feel the spirit and yearn to write again. Short stories, anecdotes, and tall tales are well and good, and I grew up reading and listening to them as told by my uncles and grandfather, but my gut tells me to write “the book.” It’s a dream all writers have: to write that great American novel that will make you famous, or perhaps wealthy. Some, like McMurtry, hit the magic button and got his first one published and made into a great movie, then it was feast and famine for the rest of his career: mostly feast for old Larry.

     Below is a quote from one of our famous Texas authors, Walter Prescott Webb. His quotes and campfire tales alone are enough for their own book. He is right, of course, about writers and authors, himself being one. I am guilty of all the below.  

A quote from Walter Prescott Webb, a famous Texas writer, and historian.

           ” It takes a good deal of ego to write a book. All authors have an ego; most try to conceal it under a cloak of assumed modesty which they put on with unbecoming immodesty. This ego manifests in the following ways: 1. The author believes he has something to say. 2. He believes it is worth saying. 3. He believes he can say it better than anyone else. If he stops doubting any of these three beliefs, he immediately loses that self-confidence and self-deception. That ego, if you please, is so essential to authorship. In effect, the author to write a book spins out of his own mind a cocoon, goes mentally into it, seals it up, and only comes out once the job is done. That explains why authors hide out, hole up in hotel rooms, and neglect their friends, family, and creditors….they may even neglect their students. They neglect everything that may tend to destroy their grand illusion.”

I think Mr. Webb said it about right.

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OCD, OCD, Life Goes On, Brah, La, La, How The Life Goes On


At my age, I admit that a tidy home is a pleasure. I grew up in one, and can’t imagine having to live in a house that is only cleaned once a week.

My mother was a fanatic when it came to keeping things in their proper place. Her kitchen was a work of wonder; disinfected floors and counters, dishes aligned perfectly, glasses were arranged in order by size and color, and food items were alphabetized and stacked perfectly in the cabinets. We had more Tupperware than the stockyards had cattle. The rest of our home was as clean as her kitchen. I didn’t appreciate her obsession then; I was six years old and didn’t know an obsessed person from a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Everything was fine until she started messing with the few toys I owned. My plastic army men were off-limits to everyone.

Attempting to recreate the Battle of the Bulge, pitting the US Army against the Nazis, I had spent hours arranging my tiny army on my bedroom floor. Plastic soldiers with carbines, tanks, half-tracks, and jeeps were all in place, awaiting my signal to begin the battle. I needed a bathroom break, so off I went. I wasn’t gone more than three minutes, tops, and when I returned to my bedroom, the battlefield was gone. Both armies were packed into their box and placed on my twin bed. My mother was there running the vacuum over the former field of honor.

“Oh, I thought you were done, so I picked everything up for you,” she said.

Hours of work, kaput. That was my first real experience with what we now know as OCD, “Obsessive Cleaning Disorder.” This was the mid-1950s, so new disorders and mental conditions were discovered daily. Housewives seemed to suffer from almost all of them. Family physicians were prescribing pills like candy.

My father got it; he would leave a sock on the dining room floor or move a few books around, and on one occasion, he re-arranged the plates and saucers. My mother came close to a nervous breakdown, so he backed off a bit. I admit that my sister and I got a small dose of her affliction because it appears to be transferred through genetics. There is no escape. My poor friends had to live in their “pig-pen” of a home while my sister and I lounged in our sanitized and orderly dwelling.

I have accurately diagnosed my wife MoMo with a version of the OCD. No doctor was consulted or needed; I have, as a child, suffered through years of the affliction. I know it well. MoMo has a whopper of a case of it. There are no germs in our home. She seeks them out and destroys them by the millions. Vaccumes, mops, sprays, and dust collecters are her armaments. The 2-second rule is not needed in our kitchen. I can drop a sandwich or a pork rib on the floor and place it back on my plate, knowing that it is germ-free and delightfully edible. When it comes to germs and filth, she is a downright serial killer.

I hate to end this story, but I need to re-wash my hands and roll a lint collector on my black tee-shirt.

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Rantings and Observations From The Cactus Patch


Our illustrious president, ‘ol’e shuffling Joe,’ made a surprise secret squirrel visit to Ukraine by plane, first in the dead of night, then taking the Orient Express to Kyiv. It’s unknown why he chose to visit the war- engulfed country. Political speculators on both sides of the aisle of crooks suspect he will ship another C130 cargo plane full of taxpayer dollar bills to rebuild every demolished structure in the country. Zelensky is so excited he is dancing the Ukranian “spring maiden shuffle” as he saunters alongside our demented leader. Back in Moscow, Puti-Putte is getting ready to ramp things up; maybe send in a missile or two to scare ol’e Joe and Ukrains favorite funny man, Zelensky.

Meanwhile, back home in “our country,” Mayor Butterboy and his crew have yet to make it to East Palestine, Ohio, to witness the eco-tragedy caused by the derailing of multiple freight cars full of toxic chemicals. FEMA and the “suddenly uninterested” EPA, the guys that think every puddle of rainwater and stock tank belongs to them, says the town is “on your own; We must in all haste now go to Africa for a 7-day conference on why the constantly poor Africans have no food, water, or money.” A good rock to look under for spiders and snakes would be those countries’ leaders who take the money the US gives them and live like king Faruk or a Saudi Prince. We can assume that as soon as Mayor Butterboy pumps enough breast milk for his kids to survive for a few days, he will do a “drive-by” on his new mountain bike and then release his standard word salad statement full of wilted contents and no meat. Wildlife and domestic animals are dying, creeks and soil are ruined, groundwater will be affected, and humans are getting sick. “Nothing to see here, folks; move along, please.” Why isn’t good old NBC Lester Holt reporting from the scene with his sleeves rolled up and a shovel in his hand; wrong kind of tragedy, the wrong state, a conservative town, and low-income country folk; not his bag. He’s also sure that no soul in that town watches his newscast. Former President Trump will visit the town on Wednesday. Not certain what he can or will do, but at least the man is doing what a president should in a crisis.

Those pesky young liberal college and high school students in Austin are at it again. Street racing, rioting in a mass gathering of youngsters throwing things that explode at Police cars, and breaking into and destroying a private home for a ‘mansion party. Fellow Texans, these are young high school, mostly white kids doing this, not Black Lives Matter hoodlums running through the streets of Portland. We should ask ourselves, “what in the hell has happened to the young people of our country?” Social Media, bad parenting, and liberal schooling take a large piece of this society’s poison pie. The “everybody gets a trophy” generation grew up and became these little devils. I never cared much for Austin, not even in my long-haired fake hippie days. Since my once favorite magazine, Texas Monthly, has gone to hell in a wokie handbasket,’ I don’t see myself ever visiting that crime-ridden forsaken city again. I know folks that live there and wonder why they stay? It’s not the Austin I knew in the 70s. Maybe because they can swim topless in Barton Springs during the summer or attend the SXSW music festival and smoke a lot of righteous weed.

Did I say too much? Probably so.

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It’s A Philly Thing


“The thing is, win or lose… philly still gonna be philly bc ITS A PHILLY THING,” Twitter user @Annie_Wu_22 wrote, sharing footage of a crowd yelling, “F— the Chiefs.” Words of wisdom from the city of brotherly love and high-cholesterol steak and cheese sandwiches. Ben Franklin is begging God to send him back down to earth, like Clarence the Angel, so old Ben can kick some ass, ring a bell and get his wings. While here, he should spray a large can of kick-ass on that devil dog-worshiping Illuminati princes Rihanna and her little demon children. Up there on stage, strutting around in her rubber red devil attire, surrounded by dancers in hazmat suits. It’s a wonder she didn’t go into labor on live television; it would have increased the ratings.

What’s so special about the Super Bowl? Why is the winner called world champions when the United States is the only country in the league, and they compete against themselves? The rest of the civilized and uncivilized parts of the globe play “football,” also known as soccer. I am unimpressed with the “big game” and have been for decades. But that’s only my opinion, which doesn’t count for Jack Shit, who I met back in the 70s. Come to think of it, no opinions from senior citizens count for anything. All we are good for is keeping big pharma in business. I take so many pills I forget what they are for.

I used to be a Dallas Cowboys fan, but I overcame that communicable disease a few years back. My son had it bad, but he’s slowly recovering, like a Catholic that escaped from the church but can’t stop eating fish sticks on Friday. It’s a slow process. Now, it’s 28 years since a super bowl appearance, and if Jerry Jones doesn’t check out soon, it will be 30-plus years. Please, Elon Musk, make Jones an offer he can’t refuse; we saw you on the television, sitting there in your expensive seat drinking a can of beer, so we know you like American football. Sir Paul McCartney was also in attendance and could afford to buy the team, but he would have to play every half-time show, and he’s about done with music because he sounds like Carol Channing when he sings. Lennon and Harrison are up in the clouds looking down and saying, ” hey mate, give it up and come for a visit?” Of course, the downside of a celebrity buying a team like the Cowboys would be if Adele purchased the franchise. She is caught in a continuous state of mental breakdowns, and her auto-tune machine is unrepairable. Besides, she cries too much.

I likely said too much because my filters are gone, and my opinions don’t count.

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The Days of The Big-Haired Gals


Folks in the southeastern part of the states don’t consider Texas part of the south; it’s too far west, too close to New Mexico and Mexico, and too many cowboy types. Well, we tended to ride horses to work and school and live on ranches, but somebody had to do it.

The southeastern folks are dead wrong about this south thing; Texas is as much the south as Mississippi and Louisiana. We have deserts, mountains, miles of cactus, and even the Gulf of Mexico, but we don’t drink mint juleps for every meal and have black gardeners and maids. Our claim to fame is we were the first state to have what the southeast loves; women with big hair. The bigger and taller, the better.

My uncle Jay was a hairdresser in Fort Worth; that’s what we called them back in the 1950s. He was a World War 2 veteran that shot down Jap planes from the deck of a destroyer and loved every second of it. Yet, he was an artist when it came to teasing, combing, and coaxing women’s hair into things of beauty. There wasn’t a fairy bone in his body, and he could have killed you with one hand and no weapon when he was drinking. He was a legend because he was the man who invented “big hair.” It was purely accidental, but it made him as famous as Rock Hudson’s wedding album.

Up until 1956 or so, women in Texas wore their hair down straight, rolled a bit on spools, or a flippy-do at the ends.

Jay was working hard on an old lady who didn’t have much hair left on top, and she was ragging his butt about why he couldn’t do something about it. He started combing, teasing, spraying, and sculpting until she had a bubble of hair a foot high sitting on top of her head. He didn’t know it, but a monster had been birthed.

Women came to his shop wanting their hair styled in “one of them big bubbles.” The word was out. the cutting and curling days were gone; now, everyone wanted their hair puffed out like a cotton ball or a fluffy poodle and piled as high as the sky on top of their head. He would use two cans of hair spray on every hair-du. The gals couldn’t replicate the hairstyle themselves, so they had to return to the shop, which caused him to work more hours, but make more money too. He was soon driving a new Caddy convertible and wearing Brooks Brothers shirts. My grandmother said he was “shittin’ in high cotton,” and she knew all about cotton.

I came home from school one day, and this giant mass of hair with a small framed woman underneath was standing in the kitchen; it was my mother. She had gone to the dark side and got her brother to give her the full treatment. She dared not stand too close to the gas stove burner in fear of igniting the Spray-Net that held the mess together, but she cooked supper without burning up or falling over. I have no idea how she slept on a pillow with that mass of hair attached to her small head. My father didn’t have enough room in the bed, so he moved onto the couch.

At about the same time, women in Texas started talking strangely. The accent was still there, but the big hair made them articulate differently.

I was with my mother at the Piggly Wiggly on Berry Street. Most of the women in the store had the now obligatory “big hair.” One of her friends she hadn’t seen in a while came up to her and said, ” well lookit yeeeew, is that a new dresses? hows your momma and them? I just love your hair-du.” It sounded like Martian to me. My mother returned the greeting in the same manner. A new language had been born because of the big hair. Pretty soon, all the aunts and neighborhood ladies were talking that way. It was as if Texas had been styled out of us with a can of hair spray and a teasing comb. My uncle Jay didn’t seem to notice the cultural shift he had caused. He was making more money than he could spend, and man, could he spend it like a big boy. The trend spread to Houston, Lake Charles, New Orleans, and on east until it hit Florida and then up the east coast.

In the mid-sixties, thanks to the hippie chic movement, the young girls went back to wearing it long and straight, and so did their mothers, and the bubble head died out. Uncle Jay made a nice chunk of change from his invention, and to this day, in parts of the south, you can see old women with that “big hair” piled on top of their heads.

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“The Legend of The Mountain Boomers of Santa Anna Texas”


My childhood vision of a Mountain Boomer

Every so often, I feel a story or a rousing recount should get a second visit and be shared again. I wrote this one a few years ago because it made it’s way back to me in a dream. I watched one of the Jurassic movies earlier in the week. I had a squirmy nightmare for a few nights in a row, which usually results in me making a hot cup of Ovaltine in the microwave and reading for an hour or so to quieten my brain a bit. The problem was, it wasn’t a nightmare; it was a true account from my childhood. I swear on a stack of good books, not the Bible, of course, but maybe a few by Hemingway and Steinbeck. My two long-deceased and loveable uncles were the best storytellers, beer drinkers, and liars I have known. I never knew where the realism ended, and the bullcrap started, but they both swore, in between gulps of cold Pearl beer, sitting there on top of their Coleman coolers out on my grandparent’s front porch, that this one was as real as a bad case of chickenpox.

At seven years old, I learned of my first, but far from the last Texas legend. One of the best storytellers and liars I ever knew, my uncle Bill told my cousins and me about Santa Anna’s “Mountain Boomers.”

Supposedly, man-size lizards that ran on two legs came down from the Santa Anna mountain searching for food. Anything would do, but they were partial to goats, chickens, and tiny humans. If you were caught outside in the wee morning hours, it was a sure bet a Mountain Boomer would get you. Us kids were scared shitless of even going out after dark.

With no air conditioning in the farmhouse, we were forced to sleep with the windows open and would lay in our beds shaking all night, waiting for the monsters to break through the window screen and carry us away. Our Granny was no help; her standard goodnight to us was ” sleep tight and don’t let the Mountain Boomers bite.”

Summer evenings on the farm were made for sitting on my grandparent’s covered porch, watching lightning bugs dance, listening to the crickets chirp, and catching the far away howels of an occasional Coyote pack running the pastures.

The sky was black as pitch, the Milky Way as white as talcum powder, and heat lighting in the West added to the drama of the evening. We kids were ripe for a big one, and my uncles never disappointed. First, homemade ice cream was eaten, then the cooler of Pearl Beer came out, and the stories commenced.

Already that June, my cousin Jerry and me had been to see the hero pig and the three-legged chickens, so we needed a new adventure. But, unfortunately, the hobos had left the railroad bridge down the road, and our summer was losing air like a punctured tire.

“Did you kids see that over there in the trees? I think that might have been one of them Mountain Boomers,” says uncle Bill, in between swigs of Pearl. Then, of course, we strained our eyes to see what he said he saw, but nothing. Then a few moments later, ” there it goes again, I tell you kids, that was one of them sumbitches running on two legs carrying a goat.”

He had us hooked and scared. Then he starts in on the story.

Uncle Bill took a swig of Pearl and says, ” Right down this road here, about twenty-years ago, a families car broke down. The daddy, a man I knew well, walked into town to find some help. He left his wife and small son in the car. It was late at night, so he figured they would sleep until he returned. The little boy, got out of the car to pee along side the road. His Momma heard him scream and came out of the car in a hurry, there was a 7 foot Mountain Boomer standing there with the little kid in it’s mouth. The poor boy was almost chewed in half already. His guts were hanging out and dragging on the ground. The big lizard took off running with the Momma chasing it. Another of them Boomers was hiding in the scrub brush and got her too. A few days later, the sheriff found their bloody remains up on the mountain. They knew a Mountain Boomer had got em because they found their tracks. That’s why we never go outside after midnight around here.” Jerry and I were almost pissing our pants.

When we stayed at the farm, I don’t believe either of us ever slept well again after that night. But, even after we were adults, my Uncle Bill swore the legend and the story was true. I still dream of them.

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Life At 33 1/3 RPM


Since my teenage years in the sixties, I have been a vinyl album collector. It was out of necessity; we didn’t have CDs, flash drives, and such, but we did have 8 track tapes, which I despised. I was a rock musician in those years, so I bought all the most popular records. I’ve long lost many to thievery, unreturned loans, and negligence. At last count, I still have about 125 albums, most in good to perfect condition. I lost a box of my most treasured ones when a moving company absconded with them during a move. It was clearly marked ” favorite 60s albums.” The culprit also relieved me of my coveted ” Ray Ban” classic sunglasses. I curse the man daily, although I shouldn’t carry a grudge. I hope his turntable broke.

Last week I made the plunge, purchasing a new Sony receiver, an Audio Technica turntable, and two Klipsch speakers. Now my wife and I can listen to our eclectic collection of albums by the likes of Joni Mitchell, Cat Stevens, Crosby Stills and Nash, Chicago, Buffalo Springfield, Hank Williams Jr., Billy Joe Shaver, Jerry Jeff Walker, and of course, the Beatles and everything in between. I even have a greatest hits album by Sonny and Cher, if you can picture that. I own two coveted albums of “Meet The Beatles,” on VeeJay records, the one released in the UK, not the states in 1963.

I have a nice collection of CDs, but they don’t count since everything is digitized and sanitized, and I own a nice collection of music on my computer.

Thanks to Apple, I lost around 350 songs off of my iPod Nano while trying to download them to my laptop. Steve Jobs be damned.

There is something magical and soothing about that slight hiss and skips of a classic vinyl disk recorded on analog equipment with a 4 track machine. I can picture Sir George Martin sitting in the control booth pushing knobs while the Fabs struggle to produce the perfect tune on ancient equipment. I am deaf in my left ear, thanks to standing in front of large amplifiers playing at level 11 for many years, so my right ear is my musical one. Like the RCA dog, I can trick myself into hearing stereo high-fidelity if I turn my head just so.

No need for that flat-screen television anymore. We plan to live our life at 33-1/3.