The story of our first VCR, TRON, and rewinding; for Jedi and skr8pn.
Sometime in ’83, it must have been, the family loaded into our Chevette, put “Thriller” into the cassette deck, and headed into town with the intent of purchasing the latest bit of 7+ year old technology; our first VCR. We pulled in front of the fairly new video rental store located in the Delchamps parking lot, just across from the K&B. While mom and dad listened to the advantages and disadvantages of both VHS and Betamax, my sister and I browsed the shelves full of blockbuster titles we couldn’t wait to see. There must have been at least 25-50 movies on the shelves! Finally, mom and dad settled on the top-loading VHS model (good call). With purchase, we got 2 free rentals, so it was decided to let me pick one and my sister pick one. I don’t remember what kind of pre-teen girly crap she chose, but being the nerd-geek I was (was…), I went for TRON, which I had wanted to see at the theater.
Once back home, I used my leverage as the only person in the house who could successfully hook the VCR up to the TV and work the remote to get dibs on first viewing. So mom and dad sat on the couch and me and my sister sat in the floor and watched Jeff Bridges fight the MCP. Once the movie was over, it was time to rewind. Back in those days, the rental store had a machine specifically made to rewind tapes brought in by customers who didn’t rewind, and who consequently hated puppies, ice cream, and baby seals. The stores, however, charged the customers’ accounts for this service. Being the thrifty family we were, there was no way we were paying for that! So…I stood in front of the console TV with my finger on the REWIND button, and re-watched all 96 minutes of TRON, in reverse, at something like 1.5X speed. I think I have carpal tunnel in that hand because of that.
It was during whatever pre-teen-girly-crap movie that my sister had rented that I took the time to finish reading through the owner’s manual and learned that the tape could be rewound after hitting the STOP button…and without holding the REWIND button down for 40 minutes.
2 comments:
LOL
I remember our first VCR. It was a top loader too, and had a wired remote control. I don't remember the year, had to be sometime in the early 80s. There was a store, I think it was called Curtis Mathis or something. We bought the VCR there and would rent the tapes there. After a few months, my step dad also bought a VHS Camcorder, the thing was massive and expensive and not practical at all, but he would use it to dub the rentals by playing it on the camcorder and recording it onto a blank in the VCR. Over the next few years, our collection of awesomely bad 80s movies grew and grew. I watched most of them dozens of times. There would be 3-4 movies on one 6 or 8 hour tape, so I would just watch the whole tape. I wish I could remember some of the combinations, because they were pretty random, like Red Dawn and Revenge of the Nerds on one tape.
Too funny! We had a top loader as well - I think the thing still works too. I know I used it all the way until '96 for sure.
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