Spring ... 1976 ... a couple weeks before my high school graduation. I moved out of my family's house and into an apartment with my (future) husband. His best friend was some electronic wiz/geek. I came home from school one afternoon (my future hubby had graduated a year ahead of me from the rival school) and found him home early from work. He met me at the building door and led me to our apartment. Covered my eyes and needled me inside. When he dropped his hands I stared across the furniture-less living room at this FUGLY-ASS "thing" that took up the entire long wall of the room. His buddy was tinkering and tweeking with all the exposed glowing tubes (yup, tubes) and whatnots and saw the look on my face. Here's me hoping for a cheap 13 inch color TV and maybe a damn third-hand couch ... but no, a FUGLY-ASS "thing" taking up an entire white wall across the fugly avocado carpet.

The buddy who was pushing like 7 ft. tall stood up straight and shook his head in panic at my frown of disgust. Held up his hand and gently moved the arm of the turntable to a black vinyl LP spinning there. As the stylus caught up with those tiny grooves etched into the surface those fukkinfantastic first intro acoustic guitar cords of my very favorite song at the time "Crazy On You" by Heart flowed out of those four speakers five foot tall and I was in looooooove. It was the beginning of many wall-pounds by adjoining neighbors, visits from the landlord, and warning slips in the apartment mailbox. For the next two years.

I can't tell you a thing about what was in the FUGLY mammoth, but he/she/it was extremely beautiful on the inside. At the end of the two years, now married, we found new digs, but really couldn't take the FUGLY beast with us. I didn't have the heart to sell it off whole or piece by piece (and over the two years the buddy had added to it). So I called said buddy and told him to bring the truck and come get his Frankenstein monster. I have no idea where it, or the buddy, is to this day. I like to think they are someplace happy ... spinning Heart, Bad Company, Foreigner, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, and Peter Frampton LPs ...

But odds are it probably saw more Black Sabbath and Jethro Tull.

WOW! Nice flashback ...