For this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt, Linda G. Hill has asked us use words that end with “ound.”
After our mother died a few years behind our father, my two sisters and I went up to the attic in their old house to look around and to see if the as anything of value stored up there. I was looking in a far corner of the large attic when I found a stash of old 78 RPM records sitting on top of a mound of what looked like dirty laundry.
I called my sisters over, pointed to the old 78s and said, “these vintage records are bound to have some value.” I started looking at each record, holding them up to see if they were perfectly round with no chips or scratches. I remembered that the was an old Victrola record player in the living room on the ground floor so I said, “Let’s grab a handful, put them on the record player, and see how they sound.”
It turned out that most of the old 78s were in great shape. One of my sisters worked at the Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, DC, and she was friends with the guy who was the radio station manager. She asked him about the records and what he thought they might be worth. Most of them were from the Swing and Big Band era and many included some of the biggest names in music at the time.
He estimated that, depending upon the condition of most of the records, they could be worth two to three grand. He mentioned that he had DJs who had shows featuring music from the Swing era and from the Big Ban era and would love it if we would loan his station some of the collection we’d found in our parents’ attic, but we decided instead to gift the entire collection to the radio station.
We thought that was a very sound decision, and the station manager was astounded and very grateful by our generosity.