Desktop Surgery

I sometimes listen to audio books during my commute. And, since the Jeep's stereo plays cassettes and CDs, when I browse the library selection, I can choose from either format.

Recently, twelve tapes deep into an audio book, a garbled sound revealed an issue with the cassette spooling. Indeed, when I ejected the cassette, there was stretched and twisted tape. So, I put it on my operating table desk and opened it up for a little corrective tinkering. I did that more than once in the '80s to rescue an oblivion-bound cassette.

I think it was my familiarity with the process that encouraged me to jump right in and take care of the problem.

There was some odd time-travel-ish aspect to the tape surgery...like a souvenir from a bygone era.

I suppose these whippersnappers today may eventually find themselves reminiscing about rebooting their iPods.