Of Change and Changers

My father used to marvel at the speed at which things were changing in his era.

We'd be sitting in the rocking chair, I perhaps 9 years old or less, on his lap in the evening darkness in the living room. I would drape myself over him so that I could be hypnotized by the small red "pilot light" on the bottom of the high-fidelity console that our family had had for a number of years. In the changer was about ten pounds of Tchaikovsky's ballet, Swan Lake, in the form of half a dozen 12-inch diameter, 78 rpm records.

He would release the changer, and with a "whamp" the first disk would land on the turntable, and the arm would jerk feverishly to the left and then lower with reasonable precision on the lead-in grooves. The speaker would respond with a thump and a click, and some noises that I later learned were dust particles. Soon, an orchestra guided by Sir Thomas Beecham or some other notable would begin the overture, and I would settle back as the rocking began, my eyes rooted on the red button light which created pinkish fading streaks on my retina as the chair moved.

My dad had long ago learned that when you sat in a rocker, it moved too fast, and took too much effort. So he locked one leg in an outstretched position for as much as ten to fifteen minutes at a time, which changed the geometry and the physics of the entire movement to something more gentle and amenable to the ballet. Then he would change legs.

It must have taken considerable engineering and musical skills to shoehorn those great orchestral works into the limitations of a 78 rpm album. Some of our albums had one record, the last, on which the second side had only a single, abrupt groove in a sea of polished plastic. Its purpose was to lead the stylus to the end so that it would lift and shut off without going astray, since the musical opus ended on the other side. I do remember one record where the orchestra warped to hyperspeed in order to complete the work before the needle kicked off.

As he sat there listening to the music and the changer, Dad would inevitably comment, "My oh my. If my Dad were here he would be astounded at the sound of this hi-fi." And later, when hi-fi became stereo and albums changed from 78 rpm to 33 1/3 with entire works on one side, he would comment on "If only Dad were here to hear this symphony." Of course, when a record warped so that the next one slipped on the surface below it and the music didn't get up to the proper speed, it was not thrown out, but relegated to a heavy green footstool box that could only be moved by a forklift.

At one point, as a surprise gift for Mother, Dad recorded his own tenor rendition of a song whose title is lost to me now but might have been "My Blue Heaven", on a ten-inch 78 with a piano accompaniment. I believe this performance may have taken place at the school where he taught, but wherever, we were enthralled. He belonged to a men teachers' choir for many years on the strength of his musicality and his attendance record.

So now I find myself looking at the iPods and the MP3 players and the online music sites, and thinking, "Man. If Dad were here today, he'd be blown away by the sound of this computer system."

And some day my sons will sit in their rockers and shout, "Too bad The Old Guy never had one of these nifty Dolby 5.1 micro-implants. They rock!"

So what has really changed? Technology? Certainly. Rocking chairs? Mainly in price. Music? For sure. But what I can't figure out is how my dad locked his knee for so long without feeling fatigue. Believe me, I've tried, and found it difficult to walk afterwards. He did it into his 80s without ever revealing the secret.

Dad, you lock!