what, you say

No, it's not a iPod.

What is this? What is that photo of? This old radio/cartridge player sits in my closet taking up floor space. I'm very good at cleaning out my closets, going through everything and getting rid of stuff that I haven't used in a year. But not this radio. When there was a Gemco in town, and when my mother was alive and when my sister was alive, we all put these portable radio/cassette players on layaway at Gemco. They would provide our music when we all went camping. We all got the same player; we all took them camping. All my family, my brother, my sisters and parents, our children - we would head out to Lahonten, a reservoir that is a big ole camping lake, and we would - camp. For a weekend or a week, we would ski and swim and float and cook and eat and play games and stare at campfires and sometimes fireworks and sometimes the strange lights on the far mountain range. Our dogs and even my mom's cat would be there. We'd build sand animals and castles, bury each other, bathe in the lake and be a big ole family. And we would listen to cassettes, some I had recorded and others that we bought, and just sit together under the broad, star studded sky. That radio that ran on batteries is more than that - it's history, and it's something my mom and my sister and me shared. I have that left of them.