Heartbreak Warfare is comforting for this curmudgeon

If I write that I miss something from the old days, will that necessarily make me one of those stereotypical curmudgeons who find some of the changes not all that great?

When I was in graduate school, the university was just about beginning to transition from the card catalogs to a computerized searchable database system. My typical approach was to jot down the call number and then head to the stacks.

I would reach the stacks and locate the book.  But, would not leave the area right away. Given that books were shelved based on the subject and content, well, it meant that the other books were also on related subjects. I would then scan the shelves for books that caught my attention. Sometimes it would be a half hour or more of me standing there on a serial date with books.  More than once, I have walked out of the library with a couple of books other than the original one that I might have gone searching for.

I miss those kinds of real world, tactile, experiences.

The googlized world of today delivers enough and more when we search for whatever, yes. Perhaps I would enjoy the current structure if I had not known the old ways?

It is a similar feeling with renting movies. The going to the rental place and scanning the shelves seem to have been a lot more fascinating than searching through the Netflix database while fending off its suggestions.

There is at least one place that offers me a refuge from all these modern madness.  The vinyl collections at my neighborhood thrift store, Goodwill.

I went there to scan. To hold them in hand while my eyes and brain processed the information on them.

A young woman was scanning one side of the bins. A young woman who knows what those round thingy is?

I didn't want to intrude on her space--I went to the other side.  She was apparently done with her side and she came to mine. "Oh, if you are done with that, I will give you this space" I smiled and left her in peace.

Music I have no idea about. Music I have no interest in. And, if anything seems interesting, well, either I have that same vinyl at home already, or I have that music in a CD. Maybe I have exhausted the possibilities at this store?

But, here is where that surprise element kicks in. Like those books on the university library shelves.  I saw this:

So, I stand there and read the description of the group and their music--I had never ever heard of them before. It was a radical group of lesbians. During a time period when most of the English speaking population would not have even known the word "lesbian."  How fascinating!  I decided to buy that.

I picked up three other LPs--Cole Porter songs, Tchaikovsky, and Neil Diamond. I wonder what a Netflix equivalent would decide about such a music collection!

A total of four vinyls. I felt satisfied with this tactile experience.

I reached the counter. The young man counted the vinyls. "You have four?"

"Yes."

He looked at a paper that was hanging by the register. My eyes also went there.

"You get four or five, it will be the same price of  99 cents."

"99 cents for five LPs?" I couldn't believe.

"Yes, for all five."

"Ok, ring me up for five and I will go get another one" I told him as I handed a dollar bill.

Imagine that!  I get five LPs and I didn't even pay a whole dollar for them.

I reached home. Perhaps by now you are thinking that I rushed to play the Berkeley Women's Music Collective LP. I too would have thought so.

But, when I came home, I saw an LP that I hadn't played for a while. It is by a contemporary artist, John Mayer. A friend in Southern California had ordered the CD version of the album, or so she thought, and it was a surprise to her that it was two LPs in the package. She didn't have a turntable either. When she knew I had one, and liked vinyls, that became mine.

And so it was that I spent the evening listening to sides A through D. It was like I scanning at my own library bookshelf and ending up picking something other than what I had planned to.

I miss those old days, perhaps more than merely sometimes.