Man, I miss Radio Shack

I watched in disbelief as a store I grew up with completely walked away from the PC market of the late 90's and then doubled down until death!

I was like WTH when they came up with their Optimus line to save themselves! I was just a dumb kid and LOL'd and shook my head.

Then I actually enter the I.T. field late 1999 early 2000. I was in it heavy until 5 years ago and I am still at it on the side. Not once...not one time....in all of my years of being a field service technician....did I have a single reason to enter their stores! How in the hell did that happen!?

 

Useless information. I bought a Optimus home theater subwoofer "12 nearly 25 years ago. That dang thing still going for about $80. Sure it's part of the basement stereo now not much use, but still working haha. Thanks for the reminder brother

 

Fry's is a better store for that kind of need, although too big to fit in any smaller community. Still have some RS stuff, including a little wallet-size DVM that runs on watch batteries. They had some good stuff sometimes.

 

Born in 1981, I caught the tale end of needing radio shack gidgets. when my friends got hired to sell phones,Never returned to radio shack after my subwoofer purchase.

-Thanks tony for the store discount hahaha.


Radio Shack and Sears really was idiots. All on Amazon now, thank goodness.

 

Radio Shack never had brand appeal. Sexiness, after Sony and others showed up, THAT was necessary.

For starters, “Shack“ has the wrong connotations for most. Outdated. Obsolete. My Dad (b. 1927) got it, but didn’t use it. My Grandfather (b.1896) found it natural. “Shack “ was something you threw up yourself. No need to be fancy. Etc.

But it’s a term of derision by my time (b.1958).

Then so much in the way of electronics not only went overseas, it was badly encased in plastic. Shoddy. Don’t ever drop it.

The same dictionary-sized AM-FM General Electric portable transistor radio that you’d seen for years on the shelf at the department store one day disappeared.

And here’s the key: it was never to be replaced.

Zenith TransOceanic, anyone?

Not replaced in style, user function/friendliness or dependability.

That where RS could have made its mark. The place everyone thought of for quality goods. Maybe not so sexy, but so what? It had all the rest. Even if it was identical on the inside to another brand.

“Utilitarian as a Jeep”. Form follows function.

“Sailors aboard the USS Kearsarge gather around a powerful (X-brand; new RS name) radio while far out in the Pacific to hear the latest World Series results”.

Would you have wanted that radio? I would have. And whether it’s 1972 or 1992 or 2012 it’s the same basic model with some improvements. “A legend for portable AM DXng!”

Instead, RS was pretty much KMart quality. Once tubes went bye-bye, so did the reason most went to their stores.

I picked up a catalog for reference every now & then, but I had several dozen catalogs replaced on an annual basis. RS didn’t stand out even then.

I believe they thought they were offering value for the dollar. My experience was that the value didn’t match the price.

And there weren’t a few sexy items to get me back in there.

“The tabletop Model 12 Radio!”

AC , or with optional DC Adaptor. Optional DC portable Battery Pack. Optional Travel Case (airline approved) with built-in hi-do speaker.

With all kinds of accessories (half a dozen antennas), it’s own mailing list, etc.

Scientists in the Antarctic. Missionaries in Mozambique.

“Hell with them Euro brands. Give me a Model 12. ‘Cause my sister is getting married, and my new brother-in-law will sure as hell will need it”.

(I think you all see what I’m driving at. A few items along the way and I’d have had to go in just to see what changes if any had come along.

And

So what’s this here device (I ain’t see before now)?

.

 

In the early 1970s Charles Tandy and his then wife built one of the most hideous architectural travesties a rich man has ever had built. And called it a home. Went on to marry one of the Deep State daughters of big Texas money, so

Who was minding the store?

 

That was a great read, Thanks

 

Just a sort of a shaggy dog story (Ha!)

In 1971 it was to Kozelski Electronics that we took the floor-standing 9-tube SuperHet Zenith Grandad had bought new in 1930 to be repaired. One tube and the transformer. The second ever tube replacement and the last repair thru 2002 (when I gave it to a relative willing to do the cosmetic repairs). Not to say performance mightn't have been improved. Some masterful tweaks.

More Saturday’s than I can count turned on at low volume to WRR-AM 1310 (since 1921) to warm up a couple of hours before Chuck Cecil and his syndicated show, “The Swinging Years”, opened with Harry James trumpet in, “The Mole”. (Link above; the Ron McMaster 1999 Capitol Vault Series HQ re-master). Can’t hear it without Chucks voice.

That 12” speaker with its giant magnet (the radio in a bass-reinforcing room corner) would carry the sounds throughout the house. Out onto the patio. And I don’t mean loudly, more a melodious breeze. Cabinet resonance. Not unlike the cello I was learning. Or the deeper voices of the men in the church choir and the organ pedal work.

Harry James carries the torch for forty years. Control the breath. Hit the notes dead center. It’s alive, alright. Chuck broadcast his show from 1956 to 2016. A show where a guy could learn something just hanging around. Details of how the magic occurred.

So, like the local gasoline service station where you’d hang out as a kid on his bicycle (and by osmosis become a car expert), the local repair men usually had someone or another passing the time of day. Talk. More magic: the final steps in dead-smooth tuning a ‘63 Lincoln V8-462 to 550-rpm. Never misses a beat (like the James Orchestra. Or Basie).

Life had teachers. Not videos. When in, “The Mole”, the full orchestra kicks in at 45”, as a kid from a family of pilots THAT was the moment the late model P-47 Thunderbolts started their attack run. Straight out of the sun. Strapped literally to a giant motor of 2,000-HP from 18-cylinders you prayed never misfired — this from a friends Dad — commencing what would be a 400-mph dive before leveling off at a rail junction. To open up (8) 50-cal machine guns. And with the improved propellor, it was finally the match of any opponent.

Music proposes a problem. And then solves it. Machines and electricity are here to solve problems. The better men servicing them have tricks the factory never learned. Solutions.

Thus whether Kozelski, or the war refugee shoe repairman further down Park Forest Shopping Center, a store with it’s inimitable scents, or maybe rancher Kenneth Moore & his Shell station crew next to Ken-Ray Ford out at the wild edges of Dallas in the early 1960s, a guy could learn a few things. Collect a few pop bottles in the side baskets to pay his way. Just hanging around.

What good is a day without some learning? Bible verse, or the torque value of a fastener. Charlie Barnet playing, “Skyliner” (Orchard Ent; 2007 Jazz Anthology). It all has its place. What is it to be a man? Walk? Talk? Chew gum? What binds it? And what animates the whole? (Try the inimitable June Christy from the 1958 album “June’s Got Rhythm”, in the Dukes’, “It Dont Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing”).

Radio Shack never really had that ambiance. Soul missing. The only thing “happening” was the sound of the central A/C cutting in overhead. Sure, some good fellas working there. But they didn’t own it (Tandy forced some to profit-share so they’d work 100-hour weeks). 40,000-SKU down to 5,000 according to Wikipedia. Etc. Slaves beholden to someone else’s luxuries. (Thus, it don’t mean a thing . . . .)

Profit as pennies. Never the larger picture. The connection from sky to earth. The gamble. The trust that other men had attached every safety wire on every fastener on every one of those engine cylinders.

It’s the beginnings of shared knowledge. The larger world writ small. As men experienced it. In every lonely place a job needs doing. And done well.

The wave & smile as you bicycled past was the other part. That always brought you back. Mysteries yet to be uncovered.

.

 

i miss "the shack", and the long gone, HeathKit...

buying online, rather than inside a real store, stinks sometimes..

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