HIS SCATTERBRAIN THEORIES
The Door Opens
by Flash Young
1-B
His christened name was Demosthenes Sealth. If any
still living can testify to his breeding they haven’t come forward. He was born
and raised out west on a small reservation set aside by executive order of
Ulysses S Grant in 1873. Set aside as a reserve for six small local tribes.
Demo left home at a young age and before he was thirty
had washed up a marriage, become bloated on alcohol, lost track of an income,
and both of his children. He had taken up residence in a dingy first floor
bachelor’s apartment in the north end of the city. It consisted of two small
rooms and a bath.
The main living/bedroom area looked out on the parking
lot adjacent to Brooklyn Avenue. Everything about the room was decorated in
drab, from the off-white paint on the walls, to the plain grey carpet, and the
thin brown curtains which covered the yellowed Venetian blinds. The manager had
assured him the place had been thoroughly cleaned between tenants, all the
while insisting that the stains on the carpet were not really there and anyway
were hardly worth noticing and besides would never come out.
Not that it mattered that much to Demo who had become
accustomed to the habit of sleeping until late in the day and then drinking
until midnight. But now the nightmares while drunk were proving too much to
endure. As such he was becoming accustomed to sobering up before going to bed.
That left him with three or four empty hours with nothing to do and no where to
go.
A trip to St. Vincent DePaul on the east side of the
lake late one afternoon found him poking around a tent covered shed with all
sorts of record players and radios scattered about. He stopped to play with the
crank driven RCA Victor Victrola, a perfect replication of the one his teacher
Miss Caldwell had, back in the first grade. She wound it up every morning in a
ritual of starting the day. The children would all line up to greet her, one at
a time, by shaking her hand and saying, “Good morning Mrs. Caldwell.” So much
for his etiquette training.
Some of the
cabinet sets were almost the size of a chest of drawers. Most were made from
mahogany, walnut or oak. They had ornate
legs and an opening in the top to access the record player. Others were chunky
mission pieces, without legs that sat flat on the floor, looking as if they had
been carved from a single block of wood.
These old combination radio-record playing sets were
not expensive. Pennies on the dollar compared to their original prices. They
had become outdated. Their bulky size, old fashioned mechanisms, the tired
remnants of the earlier age of the depression and the war years, showed little
of the spark and verve of the new world emerging. Norman Rockwell type images
flitted through his mind as Demo gazed down at the sets. Pictures of American
families huddled around these purveyors of magic as they listened to live
accounts of the Hindenburg Disastor, Orson Wells’ War of the Worlds, or a
Fireside Chat delivered by President Roosevelt.
Smaller more portable models were taking the place of
these colossal old dinosaurs. The
unwieldy array of light bulb sized vacuum tubes were being replaced by transistor components. Even the large sets
were more sleek, more debonair, and all stereophonic. These were the
technological precursors of the world yet to come where sound would become a
pervading form of sensory stimulation, bombarding the public from every
direction and from which there would be no escape.
Demo liked the great big old pieces. If his apartment
had the room he would have preferred one of these to any one of their modern
replacements. In spite of the fact he had no records to play. For him this was
a radio.
Toward the end of the aisle where these old
monstrosities blended into a selection of large vanities with huge oval mirrors
he found an old Philco. A desk model, AM & FM radio set, rounded like a
tombstone, about the size of a Kitchen Aide Mix Master.
The oak grille was cut like a template and backed with
cloth to hide the contents inside while letting the music play out. The sides,
started out parallel and then rounded over the top where covered with a thin
oak veneer. All the surfaces were well finished, firmly attached to the solid
base and the frame. The back of the set was open, intended to be facing the
wall, but also to allow the free flow of air to cool the large radio tubes.
Three large brown plastic knobs, about an inch in diameter were spaced evenly
across the lower part of the set. One, turned it on and controlled the volume.
One, switched bands from AM to FM. One, changed frequencies. An inch above the
center knob was a forth knob, for fine tune adjustments.
Demo looked around for a socket. None were to be found
in the outside shed where his search had ended. He carried the smaller unit
into the interior of the building where he took it to a man standing behind a
display counter with a glass front. It held all sizes and types of used
watches, many of them running, but at all different hours.
“Which one of those is right?” Demo asked as he set
the radio down on the counter.
“Ain’t none of em’ right” returned the man who pulled
up his sleeve to look at his Bullova. “It’s 3:45” he said and looked down at
the set.
“Now, that there is an old timer.”
“Yeah, I reckon so.” Demo slurred back.
“These here, were very popular back during the Depression. We had one at home."
“During the Depression huh. Hmmm. Does it
work?”
“Work? Are you kidding me. These things never wore
out. Cept for the tubes. Lasted for decades.”
“Well, the tubes might not be so easy to find.”
“Got boxes of em over back in the corner. Besides, its
been tested. You know this place is run by a church, don’t ya? Churches ain’t
about cheating people are they? But there”, he pointed down an aisle where a
socket hung on the side of a pillar, the steel coated wire running up through
the ceiling. “You can plug it in over
there.”
“Never mind,
how much do you want for it?” Demo said, without turning to look.
The man looked down at the set, paused for a few
seconds. “It’s a good deal at five bucks.”
“I’d like to pay three.”
“I’ll let it go for four.”
Demo reached into his back pocket and pulled out a
thin stack of bills. He took four off the top, look at what he had left and
returned them to his pocket.
He paused to pick out a free pair of shoes from the
racks in front of the store as he left. He put the older more worn pair he was
replacing, up on the rack. Mel started right up as always. He, the Dodge
Lancer, the radio and shoes all headed for home. Only one more stop was needed
to make it a day.