Juke Box Visits
Rare as Typewriter Repairmen
My husband has a gift that not a lot of people have. He can repair and/or restore jukeboxes. He prefers Wurlitzers and Rock-Olas and has been doing that since the early 70s. Jukeboxes were once the big thing and everybody had to have one. There were lots of repair people around to fix them. That has changed.
After we sold our house and moved into an apartment in another city, he decided he wanted to go back to his jukebox repairing ways. It didn’t take him long to understand that people still loved their jukeboxes and they wanted them fixed.
For the past month, we’ve been going on a juke box service call once a week and it has been interesting. I’m his driver and scheduler but my knowledge of juke boxes is zero. I thought it would be boring just sitting around watching him work but it has turned out to be anything but boring.
We made a call to a man who lived about 45 minutes south of us. The man lived in the middle of nowhere or that’s how it felt. Forest Gump said that “life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get.” It’s the same with these service calls.
One of the guys was in his 80s and was the sweetest person ever. One of his “babies” was out in a shed and the three of us huddled in there. The guy and I watched my husband take apart the most sensitive little mechanisms. I don’t think I had appreciated my husband’s gift until then.
While my husband worked I got to talk and for a while I wandered the customer’s farm and found a whole log cabin and screened shed filled with beautiful peacocks. There were three farm dogs and one of them seemed to be my escort. There was a donkey with a very loud mouth and a handsome horse. It took a while to repair the first jukebox and then we went into the house to the other unit. My husband fixed that in just minutes. It just needed another cartridge.
Another visit was with a lady who had very recently lost her husband. She was sweet and brave and I enjoyed talking with her. Her dog Tucker wanted to keep me company so Tucker and I braved the garage in a squeaky rocking chair while my husband worked away. It was very cold but we stuck it out.
This week our service call was to a town almost an hour away. There was heavy traffic and I really dreaded going that far. The guy turned out to be so interesting. He was a music collector and lover of music and with him, it wasn’t just one jukebox or two; there were many, many of them.
His house was so cozy and his beautiful cat Boosha visited us after her nap. She was truly beautiful and so sweet. I enjoy talking with people and it worked out really well because it gave my husband the alone time he needed to concentrate. There was a pesky problem that persisted. One that will require another visit.
I don’t think it’s too much about the money. For me it’s seeing how happy my husband is when he’s using his gift. I also am starting to understand what a gift it is to visit with people and talk with them. It would be easy to sit home in the comfort of our apartment and rarely see people. I don’t think that would be good for us.
So I’m thankful for the jukebox calls although I don’t think I’ll share that secret with my husband. If he had his way, we’d be on a jukebox call every day maybe even a couple. It seems to be my job to keep him from over extending or maybe I’m too protective. Not sure, don’t want to err either way.
So I am looking forward to revisiting some of the people for a follow-up and who knows where we’ll go and who we’ll meet in the future. It is an adventure!