Every time I went to the malls many years ago, in the 1970s and ’80s, I headed straight for Radio Shack and spent a half hour there drooling over all the techno goodies on the shelves. Sony Trinitron TVs, Panasonic VCRs, wonderful stereos. I rarely bought anything, just did a lot of looking.
This week, a flyer came in my mailbox from Radio Shack, since renamed The Source in Canada, and I looked it over with extreme intensity. Two things jumped out at me. I do not know what the function is of at least one-third of the items in the flyer. Little gizmos that have no meaning for me at all. But the bigger realization was that probably 95 per cent of all the items in the flyer (and in the store itself) were not even invented when I was wandering around that shop 35 years ago.
Yes, I was using a computer at work back then but it was a primitive one that would have not appeared out of place in Fred Flinstone’s stone house. But absolutely everything else – flat screen this, smartphone that, and Google the other thing, has come along in the past few decades. But the changes came about slowly as to be hardly noticeable.
One thing still haunts me though. Where did all the stuff go that filled the Radio Shack stores back then? Quietly discontinued, not re-stocked, currently unavailable, no longer sold due to low customer demand.
But that’s okay. I was at a Ford dealership a while back and I noticed there was not even one new Model T on the lot.
Times change.
©2018 Jim Hagarty
