Something I always get enjoyment out of, when I have free time, is going thrift shopping for records. It’s always a mystery as to what you will find. Sometimes the selection is heavy on the musicals, sometimes there’s a bunch of 80’s pop, and sometimes all that’s left is Duke Ellington.
I’ll buy musicals, my personal favorite is any old copy of My Fair Lady featuring Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison. I like 80’s pop too, or really anything I can find. I’ll take 33 rpm’s or 45’s, whatever I find to my liking.
I’ve never been to Sound Idea, I didn’t know it was closing, or even existing, until I met The BaconTowne’s a few months back. They spoke of the place with honor in their voices; it was a second home to them, a place for them to buy their vinyl.
But I’ve typically stuck with thrift stores, buying cheap records that I know only one track on the label. There’s something magical about buying someone’s used records, it’s like a spotlight into a moment in their life. And then there’s that smell. The sweet odor of pulling someone’s old record out of its sleeve, you’re hit with it instantly, I think it’s like a breath of fresh air. That musty scent, the smell of it being on someone else’s shelf for 20 years, and the yellow paper that the record is wrapped in.
Sometimes you wonder, how was the former owner feeling when they bought this record? Were they a huge fan? Did their parents like this music too or were they rebelling? Had they seen the artist in concert? Has this record ever been used as a weapon? And why did they get rid of it?
Why did they get rid of it? Why do people let things go? Why do we have a place where we can go buy someone else’s junk and make it our own treasure? And, after someone get’s rid of a record, do they ever regret it? Do they ever look back and wonder, thinking, I shouldn’t have let that go?
Yes, I think at times people experience loss after donating something on a moment’s notice, just to clean out the house, or just so they don’t have to move something. They feel remorse for letting something go.
I’ve often thought that Miss Kitters was looked on that way. She was our precious cat that recently passed. Kitters led a short wild life, and she will be greatly missed.
She was found on the side of I-75, she was about three weeks old. A guy driving a wrecker found her, he didn’t want her life to be lost to traffic, so he scooped her up and brought her home.
Kitters was passed on to a girl who collected cats, Miss S we’ll call her. Miss S nursed her to health, bottle feeding her everyday, giving her love and affection, so that she would grow up to be a loving cat. Miss S named her Bug because she had giant eyes.
Unfortunately, Miss S couldn’t keep her. She had so many cats all ready and was planning on moving into a new home, so she began finding homes for her precious felines.
Bug (Miss Kitters) went to live with a couple of guys. Although they claimed they could give her the attention and love she needed, they couldn’t. Bug was no longer her name, in fact, while she lived with the guys, she never really had a name, they kind of one day decided on calling her Kitters.
Kitters was ignored, living in a testosterone filled apartment with a bad case of worms, and in heat, she went nuts. She had what came to be known as the “tweaking hour” every night. She would race up and down stairs, the stairs where carpeted so she could scale up the bottoms side of the stairs as well. She would steal her owner’s pot, eat it, and spread the remainder across the apartment floor.
More so, no one could touch her, she didn’t like people to pet her, or get near her. She liked being left alone.
One evening before Christmas in 2005, I got a phone call from one of the guys, they wanted to come over, they had a question to ask me. I said all right, and soon, they were at my house.
“We have to get rid of the cat, we’re moving. Can you take her?”
My options where limited, I wanted to say no, I only needed one pet, but on the other hand had she gone to the pound she would have been euthanized. So I said yes, and Kitters came to live with my husband and me.
It took some time, but over the course of about six months, she began to come around. Her and my other cat started to get along, and Kitters began to get used to us.
She was really a loving cat. She liked to pet you, meaning she would hold your arm down while she licked you with her sandpaper tongue. She didn’t mew; she had more of a chirp. If you looked her in the eye you could see her brain going a mile a minute. She was an avid hunter, and was good at killing lizards that snuck into the house as well.
She loved to ride in the car; she would mew at the other cars driving by, or curl up in your lap and go to sleep. On one particular car ride, she crawled up on my brother’s shoulders and fell asleep on the drive to his house.
Yes, Miss Kitters was very loved after she came to live with us. And she is greatly missed now that she’s gone. She had been discarded a few times in her life but to us she was a family member, a great friend, and we will always hold her memory dear.
Kind of like Sound Idea, most of you won’t forget the good times you had there, the vinyl you bought, and the friends you made. Fortunately there are plenty of thrift shop records out there looking for homes, for someone to love them, and for someone to turn them from discarded trash to a valued treasure.
