Member-only story
A Most Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy
Star Wars — Cradle to grave, whether I like it or not
The late 1970s. There was a great disturbance in the force.
Kids were still free to roam the neighborhoods with little to no supervision. Technology hadn’t yet become invasive. People were either home or not home. Answering machines weren’t around yet. Children would walk down the street and actually knock on their neighbor’s door to see if the anyone could come out to play.
There was no on-demand anything. No cable, no internet. I was the remote control for the TV, as my dad would tell me to “go turn the knob to channel 4.”
A VCR (video cassette recorder for you kids under 30) was one of the first devices I remember our family buying, and then video rental stores became popular. My uncle also got himself a VCR, and he and my dad figured out that they could wire one to the other and copy video cassettes. Amazingly, they figured this out without Google.
The copies weren’t great quality. We’re talking very grainy, wobbly images on a 19" console TV.
While TVs left a a lot to be desired, sound systems in the 80s were nothing to scoff at. Massive speakers, amplifiers, receivers, and turntables were as big as modern TVs are now. They figured that giant sound could…
