Unlike Ralphie Parker, I never wished for a Red Ryder air rifle. Music was what I craved. Each Christmas, I’d petition my parents for the season’s hottest new vinyl albums. They always delivered.
Never the patient sort, I’d sneak into their bedroom days before Christmas and explore the closet where they “hid” the gifts for my sisters and me each year. My heart would skip a beat when I’d see Lechmere and Ann & Hope bags stuffed with records. “Abbey Road” and “The White Album,” “Astral Weeks,” “Music From Big Pink,” “Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake.” Pure heaven for a shy, awkward kid like me. I feigned surprise as I tore off the wrapping paper.
In my preteen years right through junior high, I had a small portable GE solid state record player in my bedroom. The turntable, needle and speakers were all encased in a beige plastic carrying case. I lugged it and my favorite 45s and 33s everywhere, even on vacations, and couldn’t wait to turn my friends onto my discoveries.
The Brotherton children would spend a week every summer with our paternal grandparents in Worcester; I still remember buying mono versions of albums by The Kinks, The Hollies, and other British Invasion heroes for a buck each at a store in Webster Square and racing back to their apartment to listen to them on that GE phonograph. My grandma was a Lawrence Welk fan; hearing the Rolling Stones’ “Flowers” LP blasting through their apartment must have been an ear-opener.
At home, we had a huge walnut-colored AM-FM stereo three-speed record player console cabinet in the living room. It had a spindle in the middle and would hold five albums at a time, dropping an LP when the one before it was done. My mom was always playing Broadway soundtracks and albums by Sinatra, Bennett and Streisand. My dad favored Dixieland jazz, Neil Diamond and those ubiquitous Herb Alpert records.
They must have gotten sick of my hijacking the hi-fi and being assaulted by Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, because when I was about 15, they surprised me with my best Christmas gift ever: a Realistic direct-drive turntable from Radio Shack and bookshelf speakers. When I opened that gift I burst into tears, because I knew we’d be spending lots of time in my room together. Daily, I would escape into the worlds and words of Ray Davies, Van Morrison, John Prine, Tim Harden and countless others. It changed my life.
I also realized it was an extravagant gift. My father worked two jobs, including an overnight shift every Friday and Saturday as a security guard. My mom stayed at home, but every holiday season for extra money she’d labor as a salesgirl at the old Paine Furniture at the Northshore Shopping Center. My sisters and I never wanted for anything. We were three lucky kids.
My Radio Shack system was a reasonably-priced upgrade, but the sound quality was light years better than that old GE record player. “A Day in the Life,” “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” and other psychedelicized classics were mind-blowing.
When I graduated from college and moved into my own apartment, even though I’d bought a high-end stereo system, that Radio Shack phonograph went with me. When I married and we bought our first house, that Radio Shack phonograph made the trip. I kept it for years, but when it languished on a shelf, unused for about a decade, I donated it to Goodwill.
I hope it found a loving home in the bedroom of some young music lover. I hope it had as big an impact in his/her life as it did mine.
