Sing a Song Down Memory Lane

I discovered the 33 1/3 rpm "Songs from Sesame Street" record I received for Christmas in 1975 and decided to put it on the other day.

Fire up the old wood-panel-sided Ford Country Squire station wagon for a trip down memory lane.

I was whisked away.

Now, my kids are totally "digging" it.

I'm not sure if it's the music that they like (it's definitely '70s style) or their fascination with the record player.

It's funny to me that records are no longer the "in" thing -- and haven't been for quite awhile now.

Funnier still to me that my kids have grown up only hearing the "legend" of them, mistaking 45s on the wall of a '50s-style ice cream parlor as "big black CDs."

In the 1970s when I was a little kid, records were all we had...all we knew, really. Oh, there were a few people we knew who had "8-track" players, but we didn't. And cassette tapes were up-and-coming, but we stood by our record players.

So, despite all the cool technology out there, we still enjoy pulling out the old, sometimes-warped-and-scratched records to sing along with the oldies.

Record player...$10 at a garage sale
Old records...50 cents at the Goodwill
Sharing with your kids the memory of the unmistakable scratchy beginning sounds of a record as the needle traces around it...priceless.