When Did Your System Disappear?

The day my stereo finally disappeared? Oh I remember it just like yesterday. It was the morning of July 5th, 1978. Very late the night before, I’d steered Lurch, my cancer-pocked yellow Impala with the monkey brown potato-chip vinyl top to a crunching stop outside my crappy rental in Montrose; straight ahead you could see the long row of shotgun shacks start right where Houston’s fourth ward began, on the next block. Ok, it was kind of a wild night partying with my new girlfriend Faith, slightly my senior, at her fancy condo in the nicer Memorial neighborhood, but it was time to get home. I do remember tossing the keys onto the dining room table, as I made my way to flop face down on the bed, lights out.

Morning: "tunes" was my first thought; I got upright and stumbled toward the stereo, squinting just enough not to trip, and reached to flip the switch on that  receiver. Just stood there, wagging my index finger in the air, up and down, not finding it. I had to open my eyes, even if it hurt. Damn, where was my stereo? Gone it was, along with the Cerwin Vega garage sale speakers and the Dual 1219 turntable and even the Allman Brothers At Fillmore East, which I’d left on it. Linda the neighbor showed up, and gave me the deadpan look. "Well you didn’t even lock the door. I just walked right in." Yeah, I could see that now. "That’s a shame, Chuck. Let’s go get some eggs, you’ll feel better." "Okay, I’ll drive".

Dressed now, but where are those keys. I know I threw them right about here! Well, maybe I left them in the car. Halfway down the front walk - "Hey, he took the car too!" She, laughing: "I guess he had to have something to haul away your stereo! You didn’t even wake up for this?" It seems we were in agreement, it must have been a guy who did this. We took her car.

Weeks later, an official sounding voice on the phone: "Mr. Lisser? I think we have your car - a 1970 yellow Chevy Impala?" "All right, where?" "You’ll need to tow it, the front tires are blown." Sure enough, at a city yard off the North Freeway, there was my poor, violated Lurch. The office man was talkative. "Oh, that guy, whoever he was, he took your car on a nice ride! Knocked over a Seven Eleven, then a Big Bear market, had a whole lot of city cops and DPS cars chase him up the North Freeway, dogs and all. Well he jumped the ditch and landed in a field. He got out and ran into the woods. That’s where they lost him."