The Victrola<\/p>\n
My Father\u2019s job took him from farm to farm
\nSometimes he came across treasures tucked away in barns<\/p>\n
One day he brought home a cabinet Victrola
\nFour feet across and standing on spindly legs,
\nit boasted two compartments for records
\nand a front panel that could be slid away to reveal the horn
\nBut the magic happened when you lifted the lid<\/p>\n
Here, in a velvet lined compartment, lived the turntable
\nA lever underneath it controlled the speed
\nNext to that, a small built-in dish held spare needles –
\nsome made of steel and some made of wood
\nWe learned to lift the arm and replace the needles often,
\nespecially the wooden ones, which didn\u2019t last long<\/p>\n
Before a record could be played
\nsomeone volunteered to turn the crank
\nAt first, we worried it could be over-wound
\nBut a resistance built up as you cranked,
\nso the last go rounds were slow and hard<\/p>\n
Somewhere we found a stash of records
\nbig heavy 12-inch disks
\nthat withstood a steel needle\u2019s abuse
\nWe listened to Count Basie, Tommy Dorsey,
\nFess Williams and his Royal Flush Orchestra
\nand many, many more a lot less famous<\/p>\n
When the power went out
\nand TV, radio, and high-fi were of no use to us
\nwe\u2019d open up the Victrola
\nAn ordinary cabinet revealing its secret self
\nlike an enormous pop-up book unfolding
\nand play the records at half speed for a laugh
\nsearching out the silliest lyrics
\neach discovering a favorite or two<\/p>\n
Our Victrola – a little trip into the past<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Victrola My Father\u2019s job took him from farm to farm Sometimes he came across treasures tucked away in barns One day he brought home a cabinet Victrola Four feet across and standing on spindly legs, it boasted two compartments for records and a front…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1047,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1047"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73593"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73602,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73593\/revisions\/73602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}