Ah, you've brought back memories of my youth! My grandparents (in an apartment above whose house my mother and brother and I lived) had an old Edison gramophone. It stood up on four legs, and was about four and a half feet long, and two and a half feet high, with record bins on each end and the player in the middle third. It was a stiff crank to wind it up. It must have been a really ambitious luxury purchase for them when they bought it.

The records (quite a collection of them) were a quarter, maybe three-eighths inch thick, and heav-vy! Way Out West in Kansas (the first one given above) was one I remember well. There was also Ramona, Red Sails in the Sunset, the Prisoner's Song, Hard Hearted Hannah, and Oh, How I Wisht I Was In Peoria! Down in the Valley, I believe. A couple of comedy talk records by an act called The Two Black Crows. Very un-PC today, but seemed pretty funny then. And lots more that don't come to mind at the moment. Oh, yes, The Letter Edged in Black. I loved the old tear-jerkers. Still do, as a matter of fact.

Thanx for directing me down memory lane.


Dave Oesterreich