A history in cassette tapes

Before I left for college, I spent hours recording my father's folk music LPs onto cassette. I sprawled on the couch and read science fiction, pausing to flip the tape or the records as needed. I carefully wrote the names of the songs on the paper inserts. I grouped the records by country: Romania, Bulgaria, Israel, Italy. I also had some commercial classical tapes. I listened to them all the time on my boom box.

( Time passes )

I have said for years that the music was home to me more than my parents' house ever was. The tapes were the concrete manifestation of that. I have treasured them for over 35 years. They have probably degraded over time, even if they hadn't been played many times already. I still have much of that music in digitized form. And yet, it is the end of an era and teen me feels nausea and regret at discarding them.