Moving stuff out of my head and committing it to paper is an awesome task for me. My handwriting is legible only to my love ones. My grammar is atrocious and without my trusty word processor this effort would not be possible. Lately, I felt an urgency to commit my thoughts to paper before all the information stored in my head leaked out due to the aging process. Whether I have procrastinated too long will be judged by the reader.
For the past twenty years, I have been involved, along with my wife and son, in the business of restoring and selling old jukeboxes and selling used parts. The selling of parts came later. We needed to buy junk boxes for a parts backup to our restoration business. Our purchasing of these old boxes bordered on overkill and we wound up with more than we needed for our own use. My book is an attempt to convey my feelings and observations of the jukebox scene with which I have been involved since 1942.
This
will be a subjective
narration
as only it can be, the many facets of this inductry never being exposed to
any one individual. This
is strictly my personal view and may be subjected to opposing opinions. However,
I make no apologies. If a highly opinionated work is objectionable to the
reader, I suggest that other pleasure be found.
My
first exposure to jukeboxes was when I worked for a person who had a radio
repair shop and had a few jukeboxes on the side. I think this was about 1942
because I remember helping to uncrate a Wurlitzer 950 that he bought in New
Orleans. I distinctly remember it would not work. It took about two weeks
to get it working well enough to place on the route. This might have been
because we did not know what we were doing.
I remember uncrating new Wurlitzer 1015 boxes to put on the route. We would
place them in location where another 1015 was not working. We would attempt
to repair the broken ones at our leisure.
Please do not consider me as an authority in this business, there is no true
authority, because no one person has been involved in all the facets of the
business.