The End of an Era

I still remember the year my family got a VCR for Christmas. I don't remember the date exactly but I remember when it happened. It was a huge box, a big deal for our family. Big Christmas presents weren't the norm. There were no cars or diamond rings or anything you'd see in TV commercials. So this was exciting. A movie machine.

I grew up in a small town outside of Detroit and we had one movie theater, that played one movie usually twice a night. Occasionally we'd get to go see a movie - sometimes a cartoon, sometimes a family film, or if Grandpa Jim was taking us something like Speed. Oh god, I felt so grown up eating this giant bag of popcorn (and I'm not talking extra large bucket - I'm talking BAG. Like a garbage bag size. He'd somehow convinced the concession stand workers to give us the old popcorn they were going to throw away and we got to eat popcorn all night and he still had three-quarters of the bag to take home with him), watching that guy get stabbed in the neck at the beginning of that movie. What a great day. And sometimes we'd venture out to Brighton or Lansing and catch something at the multiplexes there, though that was usually with Grandma MacDonald or family friends.

I still remember seeing Harry and the Hendersons with my Dad, Angela, Mike, Ben and Liz Roxberry. Or going to see Alladin with my Mom or Down Periscope with Grandma MacDonald, Angela, John and Nicole (Grandpa worked on a submarine while in the Navy and she thought it was perfect that this submarine movie was showing so she took all the grandkids to see it - I love that memory of that afternoon in Lansing).

But back to that VCR. What a present. We were all so excited. But guess what? We didn't have any tapes to play. So the day after Christmas I remember going to Kroger with my Dad and buying our first home video, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. That was an exciting day. Over that next week our neighbor, Roger, who had HBO and all the movie channels, made us stacks of copies of movies. He picked out cartoons for Angela and I. He snuck in some horror and R-rated stuff for Dad that eventually, in middle and high school, Angela and I would both watch. And he included a little film called Iron Eagles III. Back then I had no idea what a trilogy was or what made a good movie for that matter. And since then, I've not seen IE3 again. But I remember, watching it in the afternoon, on our couch, with my Dad, was pretty cool. We got to watch movies at home! An awesome revaluation for a kid who had only seen a handful of movies up to that point.

I've had a number of VCRs over the year since. I've upgraded to a DVD player and I've even started buying movies and television shows on iTunes and storing them in the cloud. But I've never been able to part with my VHS tapes even though I haven't watched them years. Yet they each hold special memories. I remember my mom buying Jerry MaGuire for me when I got honor roll one quarter in school. I got to pick any gift I wanted and I chose that movie that made me so happy the first time I saw it. I remember watching Ever After time and time again in college, laughing with my roommates ("Go catch a chicken!" became a favorite insult of ours.) and sharing that old broken down couch at Brewer House. My copy of The Story of Us became worn out I showed it so many times to my classes of Interpersonal Communication. I used that movie to teach the entire textbook. God bless Rob Reiner and company.

But as it always happens, VHS tapes became outdated and DVDs took over. I replaced my copy of The Story of Us with a DVD yet kept the old copy because, well, I'm sentimental. And maybe I'd need it! (Never did.) As we started collecting DVDs, I knew it was only a matter of time. And then this year, when we got an Apple TV that allows us to watch every movie ever shown on HBO, Netflix, et cetera, I knew it was time. Time to get rid of the VCR.

And yes, it still worked. The DVD player in the same machine, the combo thingy, didn't work anymore. So we had to buy a new one. And it's small and sleek and hides behind the TV. The VCR never did that. So we boxed up the VHS tapes and the machine and took it to Goodwill. I often wonder if anyone ever scooped it up or if it will sit there on the shelf until the space is needed and they throw it in the dumpster.

But I'll never forget how I felt when we first got to watch a movie at our house. What a concept! Long before I could watch one on my phone wherever I wanted, we gathered together, as a family usually, to spend a few hours together, in our house, enjoying each other and the movie. I loved that. I still do. (It's just easier now and the tape never comes spitting out of the machine and you have to spend twenty minutes feeding it back into the tape. Ah, the joys of technology!)