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Rodriguez: LPs were entertainment of choice

I'm getting to be a little more "I’m not so old" than what I thought I was. Lately, I’ve been thinking back to the good ol’ days, and then a newsflash blinks across my brain. These good ol’ days were not yesteryear.

They were in a whole other decade, a whole other millennium. Yes, about one generation ago.

So much has happened in a generation. I was remembering recently the Saturday mornings that I would walk across the street from our home on North Avenue B in Portales, and down the alley to my friend Johanna (Muñoz) Villegas’ house, then kind of skipping home excitedly as her small borrowed turntable in a box jolted around with each of my eager steps.

My dad always had a stereo setup in his band room, but once in a while, the “needle to the vinyl” would wear out, and when I had to bump with the attitude of Billy Joel’s “My Life” and Chic’s “La Freak,” it was Johanna to the rescue.

As I was remembering these days, I went even further back to when my sisters and I were little girls and would nag our mom to pull out the big LPs from the top of the band room closet. We read a few books while growing up, but I never remember my parents reading to me. I read on my own, Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. But on Saturday mornings, often when dad was at work or somewhere, mom would pull out our collection of children’s records. These LPs would entertain us for sometimes hours.

My favorite record was Shirley Temple. I remember in third grade at W.E. Lindsey Elementary, Mrs. Lee played “On the Good Ship Lollipop.” That was my favorite, and so at home, I’d play it over and over. For Christmas, mom gave me a red-and-white-polka-dot-dressed Shirley Temple doll, which I treasured for years. We also had a “Winnie the Pooh” record (“Can You Find the Honey Tree,” “The Wonderful Thing about Tiggers,” etc.), a “Villa Alegre” (a PBS TV show) and an annoying but occasionally eerie haunted house record which we played when we staged haunted houses for our friends in our bedroom.

With just the sounds, and no pictures flashing before us, I would say that those story and sing-along records left a lot to our imagination.

Helena Rodriguez is a Portales native and free-lance writer. Contact her at:

[email protected]

 
 
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