No Sound and Fury

 

Recently, my desktop sound deserted me. It happened once before—not too long ago as a matter of fact—but I resurrected it by following one of those “How to get your sound back on Windows 7” tutorials. This time, however, my sound played hard to get—really hard to get. Finally, I had to employ the nuclear option, System Restore, returning to an earlier date when both sight and sound were all around and—eureka—they were back in tandem! But then my browser wouldn’t open and I couldn't access the Internet. So, I fast forwarded to the quietude of the present and considered my options. Perhaps it was time for a new computer. After all, I had purchased a reconditioned one ten years ago from Overstock.com for $125. I suppose I got my money’s worth out of it. It’s difficult, though, to part with such an old and trusted friend that rarely—in all those years—gave me trouble.

Without computer sound for a couple of weeks, I realized how much I rely on it in my day-to-living. Not only do I watch a lot of YouTube videos, but every night an Amazon Prime or Netflix program. I also missed the Recycle Bin scrunching sound. What, pray tell, was I to do in the interim between the old and new? Fortunately, I had this obsolete laptop in the closet with a DVD player and some practically obsolete DVDs, too.

Several years ago on YouTube, I encountered episodes of two old TV westerns that I had never seen: Wagon Train and Rawhide. I binge-watched them before they were removed by the Copyright Police. When these two shows debuted—in 1957 and 1959 respectively—I didn’t exist, and when they rode off into the sunset, I was three years old. Neither show ever aired in reruns on local New York stations. Bonanza, on the other hand, was rerun ad nauseum. Anyway, I was impressed. They held up rather well, I thought, and eventually bought several seasons on DVD.

For two whole weeks—while contemplating my next move—I watched various episodes of Wagon Train. They didn’t quite hold up as well as I previously concluded. It’s the inevitable by-product of viewing contemporary period piece westerns like Godless, Deadwood, and Hell on Wheels. The happy endings—with everything tied up neatly in a bow—of every Wagon Train episode just didn’t do it for me anymore. Granted, there was still something relaxing about watching the show’s formulaic plots, but I couldn’t help but wonder about the sanitation and the body odors of every man, woman, and child on those long and often treacherous journeys through rain and wind and weather. Season after season, there were feverish, badly wounded, or otherwise seriously ill folks in bed in the wagons, but nobody, it seemed, oversaw the changing of soiled clothing and linens.

Yes, the return to normalcy has begun. Hopefully, my spanking new reconditioned desktop will last ten years like its steadfast predecessor. It certainly is faster. I had gotten so used to not especially fast that I assumed it was the norm. In other news on the normalcy front, I patronized a local diner for the first time in almost a year. Recently, the Emperor of New York State gave New York City eateries the greenlight to open at twenty-five percent capacity. They had, in fact, reopened at that capacity for a spell and got shuttered again during a virus spike in December. Next week, it’ll be thirty-five percent capacity. Do I hear fifty percent!

It was a somewhat unusual dining experience that commenced with a temperature check and the signing of their guest book—the tracer as it were. But it was the beginning of a long and winding road back to normality, I reckon. I was in that very diner on the eve of the original indoor dining ban last March 16th. Still fixated on Donald Trump a year later, my dining companion then and now wanted to rave about him some more. Enough of all that, I told him, the man’s gone and the diner is serving food indoors again. Let’s talk about the chicken parmigiana hero and fish cakes and spaghetti specials instead and, with some luck, the happier days ahead.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)