Hillbilly Aunt's recent excellent post about her conception made me jealous.  My parents were exceedingly square and would never have shared with me the circumstances of my conception.  In fact, I strongly suspect that, in contrast to Hillbilly Aunt, I was conceived in complete silence.  I share my parents' utter squareness (c.f., the title of this blog), but Hillbilly Aunt's post reminded me of a time and place where I was able to break out of the lines.

Sometime in 1976 my oldest brother, Wade, dropped out of high school and left for the Navy.  His parting gift to second brother, Clay, was a stereo system complete with 8-track player.  Clay thus passed on to me the lovely grey plastic stereophonic record player.  The grey altar, as it came to be to me, had also been passed from Wade to Clay.  Lots of stuff came to me after years of misuse and abuse by these two ruffians.

I've dug up a photo from Christmas 1967 (shown below) that shows that the record player was Wade's gift that year.  He must've passed it along to Clay when the 8-track player came into our house. (The photo also reveals that Mama gave me a toy sewing machine that year, the first of her many futile attempts to interest me in the needle arts.)

 Christmas, 1967

I also inherited an eclectic collection of 45s: the amalgamation of Wade's and Clay's tastes along with some of Mama's records from the fifties.  My taste in music has been screwed up ever since.  I powered through these records over and over again, alone in my room, dancing and singing along. 

After reading Hillbilly Aunt's post, I went dashing out to the garage to find a small, secret box which I will probably lug from home to home for the next 40 years.  Below are some of the treasures from the box. 

In addition to blaring this one frequently on the grey plastic altar, I must've skated to it at the Rainbow Skate Center every Friday for two years running.  Isn't the label design awesome?

Next, there's the one I will tell my kids about.  The 45 of Don McLean's American Pie was actually a two parter.  Midway through the song the music just sort of faded.  You had to get up and flip the record to hear the whole song!

Here's a good one. Stands the test of time.

Here's some weepy crap that Clay bought.  Fails the test of time!

My first ska.

Thanks to Mama, my first classical.  I can still hum huge chunks of this in my head.

Mama had some good swing stuff, too.  This was a classic. 

 By 1978, I was buying my own 45s.   Not so square, eh?