Music has probably been with me since birth, but in Poland in the 1980s it was not easy to get. Real hits were not lying on store shelves. They were fleeting and almost impossible to catch.
I remember evenings when my father, with the care of an archivist, stood next to the radio with a tape recorder. He waited, listened carefully, and when the desired song finally played, he pressed the red button with almost religious focus. That was how our home-made compilations were created – unique tapes, often with the happy voice of the radio host talking over the intro, with tape hiss and the familiar clicking sound at the beginning and end of each recording. These were our soundtracks for car trips and family gatherings. I grew up on music from the 1970s and 1980s, filtered through my father’s taste and the programming of Polish Radio.
This habit of catching music from the air stayed with me for a long time. When the 1990s came and Poland opened up to the West, original cassette tapes were still extremely expensive. For a teenager, they were simply out of reach. There was no other way. I inherited the tradition from my father. Now it was me spending Sunday evenings by the radio, finger hovering over the tape recorder, waiting for the next hit from the charts. It was an art of patience, precision, and small frustrations when the presenter started talking just before the chorus. But the satisfaction of a perfectly compiled tape, made with your own hands, was impossible to describe.
To take this treasure out into the world, I needed a portable cassette player. It was not the legendary Sony Walkman, which remained a dream because of its price. Mine was as simple as a brick. The lid sometimes fell off, and the labels quickly wore away. It had no extras: no auto-reverse, no Dolby noise reduction, no fast rewind. But it had the most important things: a headphone jack and reliability. It worked. And this small, unremarkable piece of plastic became my most valuable object — a gate to a private, portable world of sound.
My gray plastic player was not just a passive listener to my musical passion. In primary school, together with my friend Michał, we discovered its second — or maybe even first — soul: the soul of a technical object. We were the type of kids who loved to know how things worked. Old computer hardware, radios, transmitters, tape recorders — nothing was a mystery to us. Our rooms turned into workshops. Screwdrivers, colorful wires, soldering irons and treasures from electronics markets covered our desks.
My cassette player became our testing ground. We took it apart, admiring the simple mechanism and the printed circuit board. Once, we soldered in a small LED to show that it was working. Another time, we replaced a resistor with one that looked more “professional” to two fifteen-year-olds. Our greatest shared triumph was designing and installing a fast-forward system. After pressing a secret, self-installed button, the tape would rewind much faster, with a satisfying whirring sound. This was no longer just listening to music — it was co-creating the tool that played it.
After all these technical initiations, my modified, hand-upgraded player entered its golden age. It became my inseparable companion on the daily commute to high school. Every day I crossed half of Kraków by bus — about 40 minutes — and then walked another 10 minutes. Almost an hour each way. That time was mine. Time for music, thoughts, and escape. Headphones were the weak point. Over the years, many pairs fell victim to pulling, winter frost, and simple wear. Cables broke, membranes cracked. But the player itself was indestructible.
The sound was warm and analog, and the batteries lasted with dignity. It went with me on every school trip, hung from my belt on bike rides outside the city, and more than once — to my horror — fell from a great height. Each time, I picked it up, brushed it off, pressed PLAY, and it always worked. This brick-simple object, after years of use and youthful experiments, became more than a gadget. It became an extension of my imagination, the most reliable part of my daily equipment, and a silent witness to growing up.
This indestructible companion served me faithfully for a long time. But everything that has a beginning also has an end. One day, near the end of the decade or the beginning of the new millennium, my player simply stopped working. There were no typical signs of old hardware failure. No slowing motor, no tape being eaten, no sudden shutdowns. After years of absolute reliability, it just went silent. Pressing the buttons caused no reaction. The headphones filled with complete silence. It ended its life with dignity, like an old soldier.
And me? By that time, my technical interests had already evolved. Instead of simple tape mechanisms, I was taking apart and modifying early PC computers. The magic was no longer mechanical, but digital. The old gray player, which had survived so many falls and adventures, quietly disappeared from my life. Not with a sentimental goodbye, but simply by being replaced with new technology.
Later, I bought one of the first portable MP3 players. Suddenly, all my music fit into a device the size of a matchbox. No tape hiss, no rewinding. It was a revolution. I completely skipped the era of portable CD players. My personal path of technological progress jumped straight from analog tape to digital files. And my faithful cassette player remains, forever, a symbol of that special era of listening to music — an era full of patience, effort, and physical connection.
Post inspired by Daily Writing Prompt 1813