Kicking It Old School

So far so good with the smoke detector not going nuts after I put the stepstool back in storage.

It will probably wait until the weekend, when staff is not around, to start messing with me again.

This is a fairly old building, built in 1984 I believe and, since that 2014 $4.5 million “complete renovation” made by the current management company when they bought the property, maintenance has had a devil of a time keeping new things working, replacing new things that ceased working, all because Corporate replaced what was old and worked just fine with cheap new stuff.

We’re not stupid ─ cheap labor and cheap materials translates into more money remaining from the $4.5 million for Corporate bigwig bonuses.

Oh well. This constant running around, sticking their fingers in the dam as it breaks, gives the maintenance guys something to do, but evidently not enough to do because, if my eyes are not deceiving me, Head Maintenance Guy’s wife is expecting again ─ less than two years after giving birth to their daughter.

That’s two boys and a little girl already.

And speaking of old stuff, new stuff, and things not working, my Walkman died earlier this week.

Why, you might ask, in this day, are you kicking it old school with a Walkman.

Well, before the advent of MP3’s, I amassed a collection of study cassette tapes ─ dozens and dozens and dozens of tapes, content mostly of a spiritual nature.

Though newer study material has been purchased in MP3 format, I often go back to the materials on cassette tape. Not to mention that, last year, I came into a dozen or so more cassette tapes that I need a player to listen to.

When Apache’s next-door neighbor was found deceased ... the resident who was discovered deceased in his unit under suspicious circumstances (he had bruises on his chest and his new caregiver was nowhere to be found), the deceased resident’s brother was allowed into the unit to make arrangements for his brother’s belongings.

Before brother could do all he had to do, management disallowed him from reentering and removing his brother’s belongings, saying the unit had been turned over to a new resident and that resident needed the belongings.

Seriously. They did that, said that, got away with it.

At any rate, when brother was first allowed to enter the unit, brother allowed Apache in and gave him permission to take anything he wanted.

I don’t know all of what Apache salvaged, but dozens of cassette tapes were among what he managed to get.

Apache had no idea what was on the tapes. He said, thinking someone around here had a cassette player, he just took them and put them in the Community Room on the counter where we place items offered up for free.

Thank goodness he salvaged those tapes, otherwise they’d have ended up in the trash; and thank goodness I happened to be walking through the Community Room the day he’d put them on the counter, because I immediately recognized, by the labels, the tapes related to the teaching I follow.

Excited, I took them all.

It was so sad to learn, after the fact, there was someone in the complex following the same Contemplative teaching as I.

Deceased guy lived here for 20 years, I’m told. Yet, I never met him, don't recall ever seeing him.

I really would have liked to have known him.

At any rate, I’ve got all these cassette tapes and now need a new Walkman, so I googled the exact same make/model. Easily found it, but .......

Are they kidding?!

As far as I can recollect, I paid something like $29 when I purchased the Walkman back in 2003.

I guess in this, the age of technology, Walkman are considered vintage.

Though the Walkman served me well, and nothing else I see labeled as “walkman” compares to what I had, there’s no point in paying that kind of money for a new one when I can buy a cassette tape converter for the same price I’d paid for the Walkman back in the day ... $29 and begin the process of turning the tapes into MP3.

Even though the Walkman no longer works, I’ll be hanging onto it for the novelty of it, maybe turn it into an art project.

I’ll bet there are young people who’ve never seen one ... or cassette tapes for that matter. LOL.

I wonder what else I’ve around here, taken for granted, that is now considered vintage.

I could be sitting on a gold mine.