Charles Salzberg

When I was 12, all I wanted was a reel-to-reel tape recorder, which for some reason was suddenly all the rage with the New York Upper East Side kids I hung out with. My parents, wisely, held out against my dream purchase, no matter how much I bugged and pleaded with them. After all, there was absolutely no practical reason for me to own one. But I was 12-years old and like most 12-year olds, I was not to be denied. Eventually, I was able to save the money to buy it myself—I have no idea how much it cost, but it didn’t matter. I went out and bought what was, at the time, a top-of-the-line machine: a Wollensack recorder.

But there was a problem. What would I use it for? And so it sat in my closet, gathering dust. Until the day I learned that I could open up the back of our TV (tubes back then), and attach a toggle clip onto the metal casing of the speaker, and suddenly voila! I had a reason to use it.

Now, I could tape anything on TV. And tape I did. Mostly comedians who appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show and the Steve Allen Show, top-flight funny men like Jack Carter, Buddy Hackett, Alan King, Jan Murray, Myron Cohen, and Sam Levinson. Playing them back any time I wanted to was thrilling. Kind of like owning my own comedy club (which didn’t exist back then.)

I’d play them over and over again, until I could practically recite verbatim my favorite routines.

And then the blush was off the rose.

But one thing I never played was the tape given to us after my bar mitzvah. The reason was simple: why would I ever want to hear my 13-year-old self struggle with my haftorah? I hated Hebrew school. I hated learning Hebrew so much so that when it came time to learn the material I had to resort to a record which I played over and over again until I had it memorized. For the record, within days after the event, I had forgotten every word.

I’d long forgotten about that tape until my mom passed away eight years ago and, sifting through her belongings, I found that tape (the ones I really would have liked to find were those comic performances but, alas, they seem to have disappeared into the ether. I vaguely recall loaning them to Richard Lieberman and never getting them back).

I also found, buried deep in the back of one of her closets—she passed away in the same Madison Avenue apartment I grew up in—my beloved Wollensack. Evidently, the cord was lost years ago, but I’m sure if I ever rouse myself I can find a replacement on the web. And maybe someday I will. But one thing is certain. If I do, there’s no way I’m going to play that bar mitzvah tape.