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Well, Saturday the oppurtunity came. Kim had to be away for a few hours so I made arrangements to meet the family member who is clearing out the estate. Typical suburban home on a quiet street. The house was pretty cluttered since they have been busy cleaning it out and conducting yard sales. They were not lying about the volume of tapes. Some were downstairs, in cabinets and cardboard boxes, but most were in a spare bedroom upstairs. I toted boxes of tapes until my knees started to give out. (they have trouble with stairs after a while) I filled most of my pickup; this was probably about half or a little more than half of the total number they had. There is no way I could keep even what I took, so I spent a few days going through sorting them. Most are labeled but maybe 5% are in the wrong sleeves. (most have labels on both the tape and sleeve) Wide variety of shows: Seinfeld, Mad About You, Just Shoot Me, Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, Hollywood Squares, tons of History Channel stuff, tons of Biography, lots of PBS shows, 60 minutes, 20/20, lots of political stuff including years of both GOP & Dem conventions.
I didn't count how many tapes there were, or how many I kept. The keepers fill about 5 of those boxes that paper comes in. Mostly I pulled the older stuff, from the late 80s. There are some things which I've really been looking for, specifically The Pat Sajak Show and the ABC News series Our World. Indeed, among the stash I found the Our World covering the winter of '68, my favorite episode of the series. I had watched my copy probably a dozen times before the tape got destroyed some 15 years ago. Tuesday night I was able to sit down and watch it again...and that made the whole effort worthwhile! Also among the pile is the NBC News live coverage of the JFK assassination. I'd seen a chunk of it on YouTube but now I have it readily accesible, and easy to watch on any of the old sets.
There was zero interest here or on ARF. I did post it to freecycle and a gentleman is supposed to stop by sometime tomorrow to take what I didn't want. I am very tempted to grab the rest of the pile from the estate as there are bound to be more real treasures. It appears that what doesn't get grabbed may be turned in to some sort of art project.
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Bryan
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