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.

Charles Salzberg

Charles Salzberg is a former magazine journalist turned crime novelist who's been twice nominated for the Shamus Award and winner of the Beverly Hills Book Award for Second Story Man. His latest novel, Man on the Run, debuted in mid-April.

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