On The Sly

The first thing I wanted to do was jazz it up at bit, and I knew just what to do. By the time the summer was over I had enough money to get an eight-track player and extra speakers installed. And for a finishing touch I bought one of the white stuffed cats that sat at my back window. When I put my brakes on, the cat's two red eyes lit up! When I put my directional signal on, one eye lit up, depending on which way I was turning. Was this cool or what?

And I proceeded to buy eight-track tapes whenever I had extra money. I remember blasting Ray Charles, the Drifters, the Righteous Brothers and Little Anthony and the Imperials eight-tracks while cruising down Margaret Street. I surely must have had a better selection, but, for some reason, those are the ones I remember most. No doubt, that black Ford Comet was my pride-and-joy. No doubt, the eight-track tape was way better than those vinyl records that you could only play on a record player. The eight-track was the first invention that gave us "Music on the Run." It was portable. You could play it at home and then bring a few and play them in your car. It was the first invention to override the car radio that most of us seldom use (see the blog "The Death of Radio").

My car looked and sounded so good that in early October I got a phone call from an ex-high school girlfriend that I hadn't seen in two years. She liked my car, my eight-track sound, and, yes, my white cat on the back window so much that she just had to call me and tell me. Her name was Patricia, but her story will be told on another day.

The point is those eight-tracks became an important part of our lives, enabling us to bring the music of the Sixties along with us wherever we went. That Ford Comet lasted about five years and ended up in the scrap metal graveyard. That white cat short-circuited somewhere along the way, got a mind of its own, and stopped flashing when told. And those eight-tracks were soon replaced by the cassette tape.

So, I suppose it's fitting to have a day of observance for the eight-track tape. Many of us have such great memories attached to those pieces of musical plastic. Does anyone out there even own an eight-track player today?