Jay Ferrari

I recently started buying records again after a 30-year hiatus, thanks to my youngest daughter. She was 9, and I was gutting it out through the implosion of my first marriage. I was invigorated by the challenge of outfitting a new apartment on the cheap. I'd walk the aisles of Value Village in search of serviceable kitchen gear, and she loved to come with me, sifting through used books and house dresses while I assessed the quality of a skillet or stovetop percolator. She'd leave wrapped in threadbare pastel, cradling an armful of books by Lemony Snicket and Geronimo Stilton.

One afternoon, as we passed a stack of George Foreman Grills, she saw the record player, a mottled beige-brown box familiar to any Gen-X kid who spent time in their elementary school library. It had the reinforced metal corners and industrial clasps of a steamer trunk and a thick green handle made of indestructible Cold War plastic. Written across the top in black marker: #0027. How this piece of surplus ended up in the wayward-housewares section of a suburban thrift shop was surely an interesting story but not my concern. There it was, shut tight and resolute, perhaps since the 1970s. The price: $8.