Some Assembly Required

 

Until gramophones and 78s became common around the turn of the century (1900), then electrical versions in the mid '20s, if you wanted music, you had to make it yourself.   A music store could sell you a musical instrument, of course, and the sheet music to play the music yourself.  If you wanted to hear someone else play it, you’d have to attend a live concert.   Perhaps, back then, there were bootleggers, sitting in the audience at concerts, rapidly transcribing them into sheet music for sale or distribution among kindred souls.  Who knows.

 Throwing sheet music at someone and telling them, “play it yourself”, strikes me as an example of “some assembly required”.  Years ago, when I was taking guitar lessons with my teacher, Joel, in Paris, I asked him about reading sheet music.  He advised me that he could teach me, but for guitarists, reading sheet music was somewhat of a waste of time.  By that time (mid-‘80s), something called tablature existed, showing 6 lines (representing the six strings of a guitar) and noting which frets and strings the activity occurred on.  Traditional sheet music is considerably less direct and more complicated, especially since it was never originally designed for guitarists in particular.

 Sears Modern Homes.  From 1908-1940, you could buy an entire HOUSE from Sears.  Sears Modern Homes had various different styles available, though the “bungalow” strikes me as most noticeably from that time period.  Mind you, the house would be sent to you in two box cars, then delivered by truck to the building site.  You could pay someone to put it together for your or, if you were handy enough, assemble it yourself.  It did NOT come fully assembled.   Back in the nineteenth century, many communities would gather together to build their homes, balloon frame houses.  Of course, back then there was no electricity or indoor plumbing, a house was simply a wooden structure, with glass windows, as shelter from the elements. 

 Obviously I’m too young to remember when electricity first made its debut in homes in offices, some time around the turn of the century.  Somehow I doubt codes and standards existed back then, nor electric utility companies with monopolies.  Pictures of cities show bewildering arrays of electric lines strung up all over the place, possibly from competing firms.  And without stringent standards, fires were common.  My father used to joke, whenever balking at taking us somewhere like the toy store, “didn’t you hear?  There was a huge fire, the place burned down.”  Not sure if Brooklyn had its act together by 1928 when he was born, but I suspect that expression had its roots in his parents’ time and experience when substandard building codes made electrical fires far more common than they are these days.  Hell, some of the Vanderbilt homes in Newport, Rhode Island, burned down – these were huge mansions built for the richest Americans.   Even they couldn’t count on competent installation of electricity in their homes. 

 Anyhow.

 Sadly, Sears itself had a corporate paperwork housecleaning which destroyed almost all of their prior records, including their records on Sears Modern Homes.  Since they were copying existing designs, and apparently there aren’t design patents on home designs, they could do so at will.  These homes did have electricity and plumbing but not air conditioning or internet.   Anyone wondering if their early twentienth century home originally came from Sears would need paperwork from the prior owners. 

 I am seeing some newer homes built in the older style, presumably with modern amenities and less prone to fires.  And I would also imagine they are being built by contractors – not by the owners themselves.   My own home is an efficiency on the twentieth floor of a twenty-six story high rise apartment building.  I can bet that the first owners in the 1970s did not build Skyline themselves….