Media of Yesteryear

Part of my childhood went out with the trash today. This stack of old VHS tapes. Of course, it was my plan all along to dispose of these. About three years ago, I started a project to convert all of my old treasured recordings to DVD to save storage space and protect against the day when VCRs are no more. I filled a box full of converted tapes, ready to throw away, but instead I just put it on a shelf. Because I might still need them for something, I told myself. But the truth was that I wasn't ready to toss them just yet.



You see, me and these tapes have been through a lot. Some of them I've had since 1986. A lot of them have been recorded on again and again and again. Sports mostly, but also TV shows and movies. When you were a kid, recordable VHS tapes were scarce. I maybe had two or three that I scored from my dad. But once those were full, what did you do? Figure out what was expendable, and tape over it. If you were a kid with only a few dollars of spending money, you weren't necessarily inclined to use it to acquire new blank tapes. You just recycled and scavenged. And over time I did build up an impressive collection. (I have more that are not pictured here).

One tape features Pee Wee's Big Adventure and the made-for-TV classic Ollie Hopnoodle's Haven of Bliss. Another tape has the 1991 and 1992 Grammy Awards. I have a lot of old Broncos games. I have the 1990 World Series (in its entirety) spread out over three tapes. Now it is all preserved on DVD (Pee Wee excepted).

So I figured if I took a picture, it would make the parting a little less sorrowful. I suppose with modern technology, I really don't still need any of this on VHS or DVD. Because it's all probably on YouTube.