Breakthroughs

Based on my early frustrations, I never thought I would reach a point when working with reel to reel would be easy. Just when I thought I had a handle on it, I would find something else that could go wrong. However, today I did not need any help, which I feel is a huge accomplishment. Any problems that I encountered, I fixed on my own.

Despite this feeling of accomplishment, I also had an experience which an only be described as one of the moments where you go “Duh!” I wanted to smack myself on the forehead for being so stupid, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

I was digitizing an episode of “Fibber McGee & Molly,” from the 1940’s. The McGees’ are having a fish dinner. All of their neighbors and friends are there, and they are waiting for the fish to arrive. I’m sitting there listening to this show thinking, why are they waiting for the fish to arrive? It finally dawned on me that the episode was from the 1940’s, which meant that refrigerators were still uncommon, and that fish would have to be bought or delivered fresh. I couldn’t believe how long it took me to put two and two together. The answer was so obvious, I wanted to laugh at how long it took me to figure it out. It’s funny how much of what my generation takes for granted is so new, relatively speaking. Doing this project has really given me an interesting insight into previous decades.