Everything in Its Right Place

Courtney Coffman, School of Architecture

Honorable Mention

2020-2021 Staff Essay Contest

S-a-t-u-r-d-a-y Night! S-a-t-u-r-d-a-y Night! The familiar rhythm of the kick-drum pounded through the floor as my father tuned in and turned up the local pop music station, 97.9 WNCI’s “Saturday Night 70s”—a weekly show for Columbus, Ohio, listeners. From the Bay City Rollers to Donna Summer to the Village People, “Saturday Night 70s” was our household ritual, and we listened to the live-broadcast set in its entirety, two full hours every Saturday night beginning at seven o’clock. The disco afterlife sure sounded heavenly when ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” played on the airwaves in 1996, though it never occurred to me what someone “only seventeen” did with their weekends. Mine were filled with four-on-the-floor beats and “Funkytown” coming through a Marantz Model 2270 Stereophonic Receiver.

The most valuable part of our living room-dance hall, this precious piece of engineered equipment was the one thing my father kept—along with his ever-expanding vinyl collection—while enlisted in the Air Force, station-to-station. Its utilitarian aesthetics grounded my dad on days when he longed to sit in the cockpit. The receiver donned clean lines and a brushed metal faceplate. The sleek features were offset by a thick and curvy, lower-case serif font hovering over the radio dial: marantz. Glowing an electrified turquoise blue, our Marantz boasted a “Gyro-Touch” tuner that glided an orange-tipped radio indicator across elongated numbers, delicately augmented by the dark, back-lit display. The receiver’s haptic qualities—the weight of the metal wheel, the turned texture of the stainless knobs, and the click-clack of the power button—were unforgettable. The Marantz moved with my dad as he retired to a warmer climate, a layover before finally settling down on the other side of the world. It’s been 20 years since, but those Saturday nights at home remain vivid, brimming with music from the Marantz, dancing in my pilled socks on low-pile beige carpet.

As stay-at-home orders went into full effect last spring, placing an indefinite pause on all social activities, I relished the slow-space of my domestic confines—a nostalgic reminder of my Saturday nights, before the obligatory anticipation of weekend plans, which eventually dissolved into the doldrums of having to actually go out as an adult. I welcomed ennui. Yet somewhere between the dwindling Zoom happy hours, the fervent acceleration of the Black Lives Matter movement, and the daily routine of doom scrolling, I found myself no longer in the space of reprieve but on Craigslist and eBay and Etsy and other second-hand retail websites, searching for a used Marantz receiver—an electric security blanket. If the world was going to hell, I’d rather it have a familiar soundtrack. Several weeks’ worth of open tabs read “Bidding has ended on this item,” reminding me that despite this isolation, I was not alone in my search. It turns out that these 1970s Marantz receivers had become a hot commodity during quarantine. The renewed interest in these units reflected a recent uptick in hobbyists overhauling their home systems and novices looking for analog comfort away from digital streaming platforms. Most units were geographically inaccessible for pickup (would I drive to Tennessee this weekend?) or required some expert knowledge in equipment restoration (“tuning string needs adjustment”).

In early December, my wallowing despair turned into a sliver of tangible hope. My partner stumbled upon a local Craigslist post for a Model 2240 Marantz receiver “In the Princeton area.” As he read the description aloud from the other room, my stomach dropped, hollowed with anxiety. Though I only recently started online shopping for receivers, I was unknowingly searching for this replacement most of my adult life. And I knew, with the holiday season looming, it would sell quickly if we didn’t act impulsively immediately. Deciphering a Craigslist post is a highly sophisticated act of translation as one simultaneously exhumes the barter system; but it’s mostly just voyeuristic dabbling. Clicking through the carousel of mediocre snapshots, I held back, trying not to get too attached for fear that this unit might disappear, like everything else in 2020. Risking nothing, my partner reached out to the seller that night and received a reply at 10:47 the next morning: Hello I am seller for Marantz receiver.

Hi! Is it in working order? Would you be able to hook up some speakers to it?

Yes, it is in good working order. If you want, I can demo it. When do you check it out? Does 12:45 or so work for you?

Ok

At 12:30, we grabbed our cash and our masks and headed out the door. After putting the address into the GPS, an unfamiliar location despite its 15-minute proximity to our home, we reversed down the driveway, and I nervously pointed out that this transaction would be the first time we’d seen a stranger in nine months. As we headed on a seemingly familiar route, it occurred to me that the weather conditions were all wrong. It had been raining misty droplets all morning—the kind that make your hair more fuzzy than wet—and I panicked about how we could test speakers outside, since these days, going inside was no longer an option. Directed to “Turn Left,” we found ourselves on a no-outlet road, access provided to only three businesses: (coincidentally) our local plumber, Princeton Self Storage, and the Princeton Airport. The odds of buying a Marantz next to an airport were not lost on me. As we slowly coasted through the Princeton Self Storage gate, the drizzle hit pause.

We spotted our seller: an older Japanese man in a maroon overcoat, buzzing about, methodically rearranging various unidentifiable items between the open hatch of his Subaru, the cardboard boxes placed thoughtfully on the ground for staging, and the fully packed one-car garage storage unit of vintage A/V equipment. After few words, the man gestured to a humbling cardboard podium, where he displayed the Marantz. He dashed quickly over to his car, bringing over a small set of speakers and connecting them to the receiver. We asked to test it, and he approvingly gestured to the power button, which I knew all too well and had been waiting years to push once again. The recognizable click-clack, the incandescent blue lights, the Gyro-Touch—it was all there, and when I breathed in, and then out again, I felt the lightness of relief. Years of memories washed over me on the damp blacktop lined by deep-green garage doors. He hit play on his iPhone, and a soft jazz track with a sonorous trumpet bounced crisply off the metal doors, the nuances of which were distinctly clear thanks to the fine piece of machinery we now knew we were taking home. I shared with the man that I grew up with one just like it, and how it felt like I had now found a long-lost sibling. He shared his passion for vintage audio equipment, which he lovingly restores and keeps neatly tucked away in the eight-by-ten-foot space. While I understood this was a point-of-sale interaction, I entertained the categorization of this moment as a Craigslist Missed Connection—a personal ad seeking my missing piece—found in a storage unit. We brought the Marantz home, ever-so-gently carrying it into the house, then momentously christened its arrival with Radiohead’s LP, Kid A. Thoughtfully placed in its dedicated location of a built-in bookshelf, the receiver feels comfortably and permanently at home, and now, so do I.