It was a productive Monday, even if it cost me another piece of my childhood. As I've become resigned to the fact that I will live as a TV news nomad, moving to another job in another state every two or three years, I've decided that I need to pack lighter. Things I've carted around with me from state to state over the years without ever taking out of their boxes have to go. That includes clothes that don't fit my body any more, books that don't fit my mind and my old LP records, which don't fit into small enough boxes.

A shirt one inch too small around the neck will choke you and give you a headache. No sentiment lost in dropping that one off at Goodwill.

Reading only became a passion after college (which could explain my college GPA) when I realized all my stories for television sounded the same and got the idea that if I read more I'd write better. I have no idea why I believed such bunk but thank goodness I did because it worked. Since I still read my favorites again and again, I can justify keeping them and it's not difficult letting the others go. It's not like I grew up with them.

Like I did with my records.

At age ten I bought Ted Nugent's "Cat Scratch Fever," choosing it over Peter Frampton's "I'm In You." By the time I finished college, my collection numbered 300, plus about the same number of 45 RPM singles. I also owned a CD player by that time and bought most new recordings on CD. In a few years I had also bought copies of my good albums on CD.

Still, the plan was to settle down someplace, buy a house and turn one room into the music room. Even if I didn't play the records, they'd become part of the decor. But at the rate I'm going, I'm never going to settle down, never going to buy a house, never going to have a music room.

So I turn to Plan B.

Recently I plugged a turntable into my computer through a mixer and recorded songs from my other LPs and my 45s onto the computer's hard drive from which I can burn CDs of those, once I go through the tedious process of using a program I have to go through each song, pick out the clicks and pops in the recording and edit them out. Sounds simple but it takes an average of 30-45 minutes to edit each song and some take hours! That's why this little project has taken months to finish.

But with the songs I want sitting as digital files inside the same machine on which I'm typing this, it's time to get rid of the records. In case I can't sell them I only take one box (holding about 100) out with me. I've also got a milk crate full of books I also hope to sell along with two pairs of pants I can only squeeze into with the aid of a jar of Vaseline and a shoe horn, a Perry Ellis choke hazard and some old football trading cards destined for the Goodwill store.

A used book store gives me $7.13 for some of the books and the rest join the clothes and the cards on a Goodwill store shelf near you if you live in Lexington, Kentucky. I'm hoping to do a little better with the records when I walk into Pops' Resale and ask the owner if he'll look at a box of records I have. He goes through them and offers me $40 for the lot. On one hand it sounds like a fair offer. They're just a bunch of records, no rarities or other valuables as far as I know. On the other hand these records were part of my life. I grew up with them. I took care of them, keeping them in plastic sleeves and always storing them vertically just like you're supposed to for years and I'm only going to get 40 bucks for them?

Yep. I walk out with two twenty dollar bills, leaving part of my history, including "Cat Scratch Fever," inside Pops' Resale.

John

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