I made it with two and a half minutes to spare, just in time for one of the library volunteers to ask me if I had a record player. And she used those actual words. Record. Player. Which, to me, indicated that we were definitely of the same generation.
I told her I did. Two, actually.
"Do you want this box of record albums?" she asked, showing me a banker's box full of LPs.
"Free," she added before I could say anything. "But you have to take all of them. And you have to leave now. We're locking the door."
Oh. Free records -- but I couldn't browse any of the tables of very cheap books. (Clearly, she'd been a volunteer long enough to understand that rabid book lovers have to be "handled.")
Well, okay.
So the very heavy box of mystery tunes came home with me, and what a deal. There was a collection of American music -- church, folk, classical, etc. -- complete with a booklet showing how to do the Virginia Reel and square dance and an album of fairy tales.
And Bach. And Beethoven. And the music from Godspell. And the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, vintage 1960s Loretta Lynn and her contemporaries, Eddy Arnold, Hank Locklin, etc. -- you know, before country singers started looking and sounding alike. (I love Kellie Pickler -- she's a fellow Carolina Girl -- but I'm not sure I could pick her out of a Country Female Vocalist Lineup.)
There was a Brother Dave Gardner, and The Mooseheart Children's Choir (no, that's not a typo), and many Christmas albums, not the least of which was Handel's Messiah. And then there was The Mikado, something I always wanted to experience but never got around to beyond reading it in senior English Literature -- which I always suspected just wasn't the same. The whole set was there -- likewise with a booklet, one with notes in the margins.
Sweet.
So. I've been listening to Gilbert and Sullivan this evening -- with the dh rolling his eyes, of course -- his musical tastes run more toward ZZ Top. I've been trying to decide if I can persuade the grandsons to listen to it, too.
Maybe if I tell them it's Victorian Rap. And let them play with the record player.
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