We used to have an old hi-fi stereo in the living room. My pop made a big deal about the receiver, which hummed when it was powered up. He also owned an old record player and a box full of old 12-inch LPs. They smelled like dust and mold. I found a strange Iron Butterfly record in the box and listened to the B-side a few times before I cared about any music that wasn’t a theme song for a television show. I might have been lying on that old shag carpet that came with the house before they replaced it with wood flooring. The song was like a long road. I once fell asleep listening to “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” and didn’t wake up until the next morning.
My ma used to vacuum and clean the kitchen with the radio tuned to one of the Spanish stations that played los exitos. The announcers had deep, excitable voices. I’ve learned to imitate them for comedic effect.
That receiver and record player sat on top of two tall wood grain speakers, all of which was hidden from view when the living room door was opened so that the breeze could come in past the shiny black grate of the steel security door. We sometimes opened the windows and rolled open the glass window slats to allow the sunlight to flood in past the security bars on the windows.
These details are all incidental. The only real reason to be in the living room was to watch the CRT TV that sat on the shag and rotated slightly on its axis. When my pop found that television is was infested with cockroaches, which he managed to clear out after several hours with it in the garage. It was new enough to be digital and displayed the channels in big green numbers on the front, just above the number pad. There was a remote control with tape around the battery cover but it didn’t work too well. As the oldest, I never had to get up to change the channel.
We used to watch a lot of Ninja Turtles on that television. We collected the cards and watched it like it was the preacher.
If I wanted to chase after Shredder in that house, I ran in a circle. I probably began in the living room and stomped into the central hallway, alongside all the big drawers and closets on the left and my small (tiny) bedroom on the right. I was always Donatello because I was intelligent, even before I was really intelligent. I chased after Shredder wielding a long broom handle and we turned at the bathroom door to enter the kitchen, where I sometimes managed to hit Shredder on the shoulder, lightly enough to be safe but hard enough to get a squeaked child reaction. We continued through the breakfast nook and back into the living room where the chase might end on the old twill couch.
Once, I sat on the couch and wrote “YA NO TE AMO” on the inside of a snapple bottle cap, then sent Abe or Chris to deliver it to my ma, who was sitting on the side stoop with a cigarette and the mangy yard dogs who used to be fancy poodles. She never told me what she thought about it. You must understand that I really wanted to go to the pool with my best friend Ivan and his family. It was cruelty to not allow me to go.
Satisfied with my rejoinder, I sat on the couch and turned on the television to Saturday afternoon shows. The old Adam West Batman show was on, and although I wasn’t really a fan of something as old as Batman, it was enough to pass the time lying on the carpet, listening to commercials and traffic in between the fighting of crime.