The next time you're a totally with-it man in Nineteen Seventy, and you want to invite your laydeh over to your Holiday Inn Balcony Suite for a quick sixteen-hour layover (heh), you're going to need the Quatron Automatic 8-Track Stereo Tape Changer. It is the only way.
Think of it. You and your woman - what was it? Brenda? Yeah, Brenda - plus five hundred square feet of yellow sculpted pile that's kinda like the carpet in your van, and sixteen hours to kill until the guy from the convention center comes to pick you up. What
shall you do with all that time? Oh yeah. You could do Brenda. She lives near the hotel, doesn't she? Her roomate might be home, but that's okay. You've got your own hotel room. Ooooh, yeah. It is so on.
The Quatron's got you covered, with twelve of your best 8-Tracks. You've got other rotary magazines with different selections back at home, but good thing you brought the one that's best for gettin' down. It'll go like this:
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| You and Brenda begin with The Best of Bread, and then some Rare Earth and Blood, Sweat & Tears, and you're both starting to groove. |
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| You might be getting up to change the record, if you were using your old turntable, but no way, man. The Quatron's just getting started. Mountain, The Ideas of March and the 5th Dimension are just kicking into high gear as you two take a breather and enjoy the five bucks worth of weed you bought from the kid outside the liquor store. Aaalll right. |
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| But that's a shot breather, because you're really into Brenda, and she's really into you being into her. Peter, Paul and Mary, Gary Puckett and the Union Gap and The Troggs are inclined to agree. |
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| Finally, you and Brenda share a cigarette on the balcony overlooking the Zayre parking lot, wrapped in the flannel blanket together. You talk about your dreams while Sergio Mendes, Classical Gas and Vanilla Fudge bring your love-plane in to land. Maybe you offer her a beer, and just to prove how much you care, you take a hit off of it first, just to make sure it doesn't have a cigarette butt in it. That's how Brenda knows you care, baby. |
Man, you two were in the saddle for sixteen hours, and it only felt like the first side of that album by Zager & Evans. Far out. You didn't even take a nap, but that's okay. You're pretty sure the limo guy will have some coke. You'll just sneak out while Brenda's in the shower. She'll be cool with it. Just don't forget to grab your Quatron on your way out the door.
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4 comments:
How exactly is one meant to pronounce "Qatron"?
Good quastion! I look forward to hearing the results of your research! I've just been saying "kwhat-tron".
[-Mgmt.]
I tried, but I ended up in an endless loop of Champion, Bill Lear, Mad Man Muntz, Ford, Motorola, Champion, Bill Lear . . . did you know Bill Lear (Mr. Learjet) was involved in the development of the 8-track? And Mr. Qatron turns out to be Mr. Honig - - this snipped from his obituary: DANIEL A. HONIG Daniel A. Honig, JD, BME, of Palm Beach Gardens, FL and Chevy Chase MD, retired hotelier and attorney died of lymphoma July 26, 2010. Mr. Honig developed and operated four hotels in the central business district of Washington, DC. Mr. Honig also practiced law in Washington, DC. He was an accomplished lecturer. He published "The National Property Law Digest", "The Executive's Contract Law Desk Book" and "You Can Wake Up Rich". He was the founder and CEO of Qatron Corp. Tek Rep, Inc., Time Sharing Terminals and Interstate Housing Corp. Mr. Honig served in the US Air Force during the Korean War.
Then there was that Panasonic TNT player where you pushed the plunger to change the program . . . the early 70's were weird.
The proper pronunciation is KAY-tron. And the inventor of the device was Rowland Kent White, my father. Dan Honig, his boss and good friend, ran Qatron. You can see the patent for it at https://patents.google.com/patent/US3816851
I am quite sure he would have gotten a good laugh out of this post, if only because it hits so dangerously close to the truth :) He also was the only person on planet earth to have one of these devices installed in a car, a long green 1971 Pontiac Bonneville with the changer in the trunk, and the head control unit mounted in the dash. I spent many hours on the road with him as a kid listening to endless music from that carousel changer. Few machines were as closely attuned to their era!
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