Probably the entirety of Generation X, and maybe more than a few of the latter-day Boomers, will escape the Sword of Damocles-esque doom hanging over their collective heads come September.
I include the Boomers because I actually fall into that category, but not necessarily the threat of doom.
On Sept. 15, Columbia House will stop taking orders.
For the uninitiated, Columbia House would entice the masses — through direct mail pieces and magazine and newspaper advertisements — to buy anywhere from 8 to 15 or so albums from current artists for a penny, or a dollar or some such.
There was a catch: you had to buy a fixed amount of albums at regular price over the next two to three years. (These are albums in the generic sense. For me, it started with 8-track tapes and vinyl. It later progressed to cassette tapes, then CDs and then finally DVDs and VHS tapes.)
Spend a buck, get all the good stuff, and then buy two more. No sweat, right?
Except myself, much like many of Columbia’s customers, always found other reasons to spend our money (and I will admit to nothing under oath), and that agreement was forgotten. And then the hammer of Columbia House will descend, wanting those purchases.
(My other guilty pleasure was the Science Fiction Book Club, which had the same business model. Filled up a library that way.)
Frankly, I had thought this relic of a business went completely away with the advent of AOL CD mailings and Netflix’s movie rental DVD exchange program. Yet, it managed to hang on, God bless it.
The news of its impending doom was a massive dose of nostalgia, and perhaps a pang of guilt, wondering if I still owed some money to those folks. I still remember that it was based in Terre Haute, Ind., and I couldn’t tell you why.
So now what do we do?
It’s not surprising that it’s twilight for them, what with the decline of the U.S. Postal Service and hard-type media; CDs and DVDs are being replaced with MP3s and MP4s, cars and homes are equipped with the latest technology, all of which can be controlled from a phone in your hand. I guess what I’m saying is that time marches on, inexorably, and the unsustainable ideas must fade. (Except for vinyl. There is no good replacement for vinyl records, and I’ll die on that hill.)
Yeah, I’m a little verklempt. It’s like that friend you haven’t heard from in 20 years showing up in an obituary.
I really didn’t have that much of a point for this, other than it was a huge surprise when it showed up in my news feed. This, along with things like “American Bandstand” and “Soul Train,” KTel records, “Burt Sugarman’s Midnight Special” and “Don Kirchner’s Rock Concert,” all of which provided the soundtrack to my tween and teen years, has gone away, and with it, my ability to deny the march of time. Soon, I’ll be right there next to Columbia House, clackers, Oily Jigglers and Ron Popeil.
So if possible, grab the replacement for the feather duster Swiffer and occasionally knock the mess off my shoulders.
Tony Farkas is editor of the Trinity County News-Standard and the San Jacinto News-Times. He can be reached at tony@polkcountypublishing.com.
