By JEFFERSON WEAVER
Staff writer

It was a foregone conclusion when I pulled up at the dumpsters one day recently that I would leave with more than I brought. My beloved wife, Miss Rhonda, would say it’s an unusual day when I don’t bring home more from the dump than I took, but she just doesn’t understand.

I am sure someday someone will actually need a cased vacuum tube tester, not to mention the antique Coats and Clark thread display rack, another old typewriter, and a half-dozen five gallon buckets.

On this particular day, I found something close to the scavenger’s equivalent of the Ark of the Covenant – a stereo.

Not one of these cheaper-to-throw-it-away-than-fix-it-and-get-another jobs, but a real, live, functioning, AM/FM/AFC/eight-track tuner, with the cereal box speakers, “alumichrome” trim and gen-u-wine simulated woodgrain plastic covering. Sadly, the turntable was beyond recovery.

Having presented a fellow anachronist with all my eight track tapes for a Christmas present years ago, I am still searching for something to play in that relic of the disco era.

I take pride in being a “plugger,” one of those technophobic people who doesn’t embrace modern technology.

If one loves music, one should, theoretically, keep up to date with technology. My entire collection of classical, big band, classic rock and country records can now be recorded in high definition onto a little bitty card thing, or so I’m told. There would even be room left for the more modern cassette tapes, and probably most of those fancy CDs, too.

All that in a pocket. Just think. The dining room sideboard could be used for other, more appropriate things, like filling the drawers with family photos. Digitize them now, and we could put dishes there.

Still, I cannot find a reason to devote the necessary funds to buy an MP3 player. In the first case, I don’t yet know how eight track tapes work. Yet you expect me to trust my music to a tiny computerized stereo thing? I reckon not.

Someone suggested I could download music to my cellular phone. The demon in my pocket is bad enough, without adding a musical score to boot. It’s a phone, dangit, a tool, a communications device – not an entertainment center.

I subject you to this rambling discourse because I ran across a CD the other day that is a true example of preservation.

It’s a recording of early, mostly acoustic blues, from back when the lines between blues, “hillybilly” and “black gospel” music were often as indistinct as the modern interpretation of right and wrong. When I finally figured out how to make the CD player work, I was at first concerned there was something wrong with either the player or the CD – there were all these scratchy noises.

Then I read the cover, and realized the noises were part of the original recording process, back when recording meant a round black disc and carefully scribed lines which were in turn read by a stylus. When the company re-recorded the music, they kept the scratches, screeches and skips of the old album. It was wonderful.

It made me more than a bit sentimental for Mother’s big cabinet stereo; funny how we never noticed imperfections in a record until a scratch became a skip, yet now we expect everything to be digital Dolby synthesized something or other.

It’s like the movies Ted Turner bought and had colorized and “restored”. Yes, I love seeing “Gone With the Wind” in clean, crisp Technicolor, but too often, improving things takes away some of what was originally there.

Humans are, by no means, perfect, and we never will be. Imperfections, good and bad, make up who and what and why we are. They are a vital part of the process.

So why must we “improve” on what were already masterpieces? Somebody always feels like they have a right to tinker with something that is already as good as it could be. Is it because we can? Because we can’t stand to leave well enough alone?

A good friend of mine talks about the quality of the sound from her MP3 player, not to mention the sheer volume of songs she can carry around in a shirt pocket. Truly, I’m happy that she’s happy.

But for me, I’d just as soon listen to Blind Lemon Walker moan about loving an unfaithful woman while the scratches of a diamond point stylus underscore life’s tragedies and triumphs on a worn-out old turntable.

There is an honesty in imperfection, reminding us that only one man was ever perfect. While I truly feel we should always try our best, sometimes too much improvement overshadows the thought and heartache that went into the effort.

Weaver is a staff writer with The News Reporter. He may be reached via e-mail at jeffweaver@newsreporter.biz.

Weaver is a contributing columnist. He lives in Kelly.