I recall our first VCR arrived the Christmas of 1985. It wasn’t anything fancy. Heck, it wasn’t even a name brand. It was the Sears brand SR-3000. I didn’t care. The machine held great power. And with great power came great responsibility. It allowed me to record television and replay it back whenever I wanted. I wasn’t a social outcast at school any longer. I could tell my friends that I now had a membership card to the Plains Park Video Store.
The technology wasn’t anything new. I can recall several friends having VCRs dating back to early 1982 or 1983. CB had one. It was a top loader—most likely from Panasonic or RCA. Sony was still pissed that their Betamax didn’t take off. He would record Friday Night Videos from NBC and we’d watch them after school the following week. We wanted our MTV but our little conservative town that MTV was a product of the devil and would rot our souls. Friday Night Videos was the next best thing. Blondie. Cars. Dire Straits. (For the record: Roswell would finally get MTV the summer of 1988.)
The SR-3000 was wickedly cool. It was a side loader thus I could push the tapes in and whoosh they would disappear inside. No need to push down a tape like those old ’82 models. Ours even had Right and Left equalizer lights. It was fucking kewl! And did I break in that membership card at the video store in 1986. Weird Science. My Science Project. Empire Strikes Back for the first time since 1981!
1985 wasn’t the first year I recorded TV. I had been doing it for several years. The problem was: it was on audio tape not video tape. I wanted to remember my favorite shows so much in 1983 and 1984, that I used my little black tape recorder to record shows like G.I. Joe A Real American Hero, Transformers the mini-series, Go-Bots, He-man and Tranzor Z. I would listen to them over and over again. The experience was very much like listening to my old Star Wars Adventure records and radio dramas. It used the most advanced visual technology- that of the imagination! I would beg my mother to take me to Kmart so I could buy more blank Memorex tapes (more like I got the cheap Kmart brand tapes). Before I knew it I had a shoe box full of TV episodes for my listening pleasure. Yet, I quickly traded it all away for the chance to record TV on video tape!
I even remember buying my first licensed video (VHS) tape too. It was G.I. Joe: The Revenge of Cobra mini-series. A video store in Alamogordo sold it to me used for $24 in 1986. My grandmother thought I was being robbed— $24 was outrageous! What was Vi. De. O. Tape? But damn, I could now watch GI Joe when I wanted! A few months later, Pepsi would introduce the mass marketed retail video tape of Top Gun. That was VHS tape number two! I wanted to buy the Star Wars Trilogy but remember it being like hundreds of dollars. In 1989, I think I got them free with a CBS Video club membership. Not sure if I ever finished my obligation to that membership. Dumb bastards should have known I was only 16 and had no job.
Oh, and I also learned my lesson on trying to rent softy porn that year, 1986. If you’re going to do it, make sure you rent it after lunch. Especially if your mother goes to the video store on her lunch hour to rent you Goonies and Real Genius for some afternoon movie watching. See, in small towns, the business owners usually know their customers. They informed my mother that I just left an hour or so earlier with a copy of The Lonely Lady starring Pia Zadora. Now, they didn’t stop me from renting the softy porn but they sure were willing to share that piece of information to my mother. Assholes! I had just got home and was about to pop it into the VCR and watch it when I heard my mothers car pull up. Eject. Back in the case. Under the bed. My mother enters says, “I rented you some movies,” to which I reply with “cool.” She then asked if I wanted to share anything. (Damn mind games!) I said, “no” to which she quickly replied, “I know you rented the movie.” She wanted to know where it was as she was going to take it back to the store before going back to work. I slowly admitted guilt and gave her the tape. I then, had to sit, for twenty minutes, while my mother asked if I rented the movie because I had questions about sex and love. I said no. I wanted to say, CB has HBO. I already know all this stuff. The simple truth was: I just wanted to see titties, mom!
Thus, never did I rent the softy porn again. But it didn’t stop me from recording it when we got free Cinemax for the weekend! (wink wink!) That’s a story for another day….
