1938 Antique Cabinet Style Radios Other Relics

There you are just as beautiful as ever. You've hardly aged from your 1938 inception. Your glossy photofinish over that impressive woodwork covering of yours still makes smile. Even your push buttons and radiobuttons are perfect. You used to be taller than me in your gorgeous wooden standup cabinet, but not anymore. I've finally grown taller than you. I can even reach your buttons to tune in a station of my choosing--albeit AM choices. How'd you do it? How'd you stay so perfect and never age a bit?

I loved the story of how you came to be my grandma's. What a peace offering you must have been after the "disagreement" between wife and husband! How he carried you home to Grandma on his back to tell her he was sorry and that he loved her. Was my grandma touched by this gesture?

Oh how I loved to listen to you with my grandma as you would spout out some amazing tune or bellow out some preacher's message on a Sunday. I loved listening to you even though I was privileged to have a color T.V. in my house. I think I loved listening to you because I knew how much my grandmother loved you. She and I would gather around as your stations were aglow and you would enchant us for hours on end. How important you must have felt.  Did you get to hear Orson Welles The War of the Worlds? I can't imagine what that would be like to hear this firsthand! 

Tonight, I looked at you for a long while after cleaning the room that used to be occupied by the woman who loved you so much and is now occupied by her great-grandson. I hated you for a moment. How could you still be in the same room in almost the same location with the same beautiful exterior, but everything else seems to have changed? How could you be here when Grandma is not? How could you still look as beautiful as you did when I first saw you as a child? How could you have been here before me, before my children or my grandchildren? How is it that you will most likely be here when I am gone? You will make some other grandmother happy (for now the grandmother is me) and some other child? At least I hope you will be cherished by someone for the years you have conquered if for no other reason.

Though she's been gone almost 7 years now, I can remember Grandma polishing you with such care. As I stared at you awhile longer, I swear I could see you and her 1917 Treadle Singer Sewing Machine exchange smiles. How could I not be thankful for you...thankful that she left you two to me. The memories of her with you both are forever etched in my heart. These were memories of her as some of her finest most happy moments. I miss her so--even now. I suppose I will for always. I guess I should say thank you for reminding me of her again tonight as you frequently do and of the deep love she had for each of us. So...it is with a sincere heart, that I am thankful for a beautiful token of beautiful memories. Thank you my old relic friend, and do share your beauty secrets with the rest of us relics!

"Relics are treasured as something close to the divine."

Sarah Vowell