I want to tell you about the great album theft of 1972. Most of my LPs were at my grandmother’s house (except for the few I had at college in New Paltz). I came back that summer to discover that someone had stolen all of the albums alphabetically A-somewhere in the Cs and somewhere in the Ss to the end. All my Supremes albums (Supremes Sing Country, Western & Pop; S Sing Holland-Dozier-Holland, A Little Bit of Liverpool (original source of their HDN version), and Temptations, and Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, and Beatles! Fortunately I had all of the Beatles Apple LPs (from the White album forward) at school. It apears that something must have startled the thieves, for there were a couple items that did survive, notably, the Beatles’ Something New.
I never did replace that stuff in its original form, except (no surprise) the Beatles. So, when I went to buy a used Whipped Cream and other Delights, which I owned along with the first three TJB, I was disappointed that it contained Going Places. It WASN’T just for the cover I purchased it, after all.
I also lost my baseball cards, which I collected rather religiously from about 1963 to 1969.
Naturally, it annoyed me no end for a time. Then I got rather philosophical about it; I mean, there’s nothing to do about it.
Still, when I go to a record show, I sometimes say: “Best of ’66 – I used to own that!” Or when I’m at the Baseball Hall of Fame, I’ll see cards that I once collected. I don’t go out and BUY them, I just feel a little…wistful.