Gone but not forgotten.
Death came quickly and without warning. She still had energy but just quit moving. I guess she was just worn out.
My Realistic Model CTR-68 cassette tape recorder died last week. She was at work at the time, recording a lengthy hearing in Bettendorf when her motor just stopped turning.
I immediately gave her some tape recorder life support — new batteries. But she was gone.
Since she recorded audio on cassettes, an old-fashioned way of doing things by today’s standards, the Realistic recorder was a bit of a dinosaur. Though she was pricey when new — $80 or so as I recall — that’s a far cry from the $500 state-of-the-art digital recorder I was issued when I worked at WOC Radio News. Rather than cassettes, it recorded its audio on a card like those used in digital cameras.
We’d been through a lot together, my CTR-68 and me. We did scores of one-on-one interviews and covered countless news conferences and public meetings. I never gave her a nickname, but we were like old friends.
This isn’t the first recorder over the years that I’ve worn out and laid to rest. But, like the time I stopped using my trusty typewriter in favor of a computer keyboard, it’s tough to say good-bye.
Copyright 2010 by Phil Roberts, Creative Enterprises. This article was submitted as a column to The North Scott Press, Eldridge, Iowa.
Cliff
June 9, 2014 at 8:12 pm
My wife threw out my cassette collection a few years ago, but I still have my record collection.
My first cassette recorder was a Sony, a gift for my college graduation. It was state of the art for that time and great quality for doing news interviews. Even the sales dept wanted to borrow it for production work. It finally died a few years ago, so I started using a DAT at the Stanley Foudation…worked like a cassette recorder but with even better quality.