From the Workshop: Building boxes for childhood memories

However big I make a box for childhood memories it won’t be big enough.

For example, when I awoke at 5:45 this morning my first thoughts went to a column I am writing. That led to an ever-lasting memory of my mother bending over her typewriter, ticking and tacking another of her own stories onto a white sheet of paper as I asked her (I was about ten years old) what was for lunch.

I have hundreds of memories of my parents. No box is deep enough to hold them.

But the one I put together in my shop two days ago has enough room for three small transistor radios and will soon hang on a wall at my local coffee shop.


["Notice the leather case? Sweet. My first radio cost $44 in 1963. That's $4 million in today's dollars": photos by GAH]

So will the one after that. And the one after that.


["I'll add a shelf and include one of my harmonicas"]

Yes, I have too many radios and it’s time to downsize.

If someone buys one of my radio boxes, perhaps it will be because - like me - they seldom went anywhere as a kid without a radio and were usually the first person among their group of pals to hear the latest hit by The Beach Boys.

“Round round get around, I get around!”

Those were the days.

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Please click here to visit the workshop again.

Did you bike around town with a radio in your pocket or bicycle carrier?

I might have one just like it somewhere.

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