In August 1986, Cade and I took a boys trip to Idaho Falls, Idaho one day. I had worked all summer at Clark's Ready Mix after graduating from high school. My work schedule was three days on and four days off.
It was about a week before I was leaving for BYU. Cade had already started two-a-day football practices in preparation for the upcoming school year. We decided to drive to Idaho Falls and back specifically because I wanted to buy a boom box stereo to take with me to college.
We drove the blue two-tone 1980 Dodge Omni with a manual transmission. Even though it was the family car, I had driven it enough during my last year or so of high school that it felt like mine. While I was gone on my mission, it would become Cade's car and then Cory's.
We drove to the Grand Teton Mall in Idaho Falls. While we visited many stores in the mall, I think we ended up at JCPenney to make the stereo purchase.
I bought a boom box stereo that had removable speakers, dual cassette tape drives, and AM/FM radio. One cassette deck could automatically start playing after the other tape finished, which seemed incredibly high-tech and cool at the time. It was also possible to record directly from the radio and dub a tape from the A drive to the B drive. The stereo had a power cord for plugging into the wall, but it also took D-cell batteries so it could run on battery power.
This was one of the first major things I had ever bought with money I had earned myself. I was glad that Cade was there to help me pick it out and to provide moral support for such a big purchase.
After we picked out the stereo, we took it to the cashier to check out. We decided we should also buy batteries so we could listen to the stereo on the two-hour drive home. We were also planning to buy a few cassette albums.
At the cashier counter, there was a Duracell battery display. We started grabbing batteries off that rack, but the cashier stopped us and said, “You do not want to buy batteries from that rack.”
Then he walked us about five feet to another Duracell battery display on the other side of the checkout counter. He explained that those batteries were cheaper because that rack was stocked by a competing battery distributor. So naturally, we bought batteries from that rack instead. (I have often wondered if what he told us was actually true or if he was just messing with us.)
I do not remember exactly what music we bought. It may have been Queen Greatest Hits to replace the album Dad had thrown away a few years earlier because he did not approve of it (see my Queen Greatest Hits blog post).
We put the stereo in the backseat and strapped it in with the seatbelt. Then we unhooked the speakers and put one in each rear corner of the Omni for better stereo sound and because we could.
We loaded two cassette tapes into the stereo so the second tape would automatically start playing after the first one finished. Cade changed tapes while I drove.
We listened to music the entire two-hour drive home.
A week later, that boom box went with me to BYU.
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