Old Punk Moment 574

At the community college swap meet, amongst blankets piled with used tools and booths selling cds from singers who resemble The Frito Bandito , I came across a sectioned wood cassette case filled with weathered old tapes. I took a look, and if I had Sandy Duncan's Eye (obscure punk band reference!) it would have flown out and migrated home to Daddy.

Here were home tapes of The Cramps, The Dickies, The Pandoras and various surf mixes, all lovingly compiled with the maker's bestest handwriting on the covers and spine, all fifty cents each. Do you kids realize how much time it took to fill up a 90 minute cassette tape from albums and singles? It's my generation's walking to school ten miles each day, in the snow, uphill both ways, wearing old newspapers for shoes. Kids today know nothin' of hardship.

A quick glance at the AARP member in charge told me these weren't hers. I innocently asked where she found them. Her smile faded and her thirty word English vocabulary shrunk to four.

I looked down at these labors of love with both pity and nostalgia. Ah, but for the grace of god goes my cassette collection. I couldn't take them all home, but I did buy 2 surf tapes, a 1985 Dickies bootleg and the original Dickies ROIR concert. I paid my two dollars and didn't look back at those I had left behind. I can only do so much.