Myers reminisces through records

A sleek black record is gently placed onto the record player following the light touch of the needle. Soft music drifts through the room as English teacher Scott Myers waits for his students to arrive in his serene classroom. 

At the age of 10, Myers began collecting vinyl records. Being a big fan of music, Myers and his mother would drive to the record store where he would spend his own allowance buying records. 

“The first record I bought was Elton John’s Greatest Hits, and I still have a copy,” Myers said. “When my family went on road trips, it was the only rock and roll that my mom, my dad, my sister, and I liked. So we played it till it broke and some of the songs remind me of camping trips.”

Although he took great interest in the records Myers was still new to collecting them and he did not know the proper techniques to care for them. His small collection had begun building up scratches and minor damages to them, causing Myers to regrettably sell his whole collection in a garage sale. 

“I was so young,” Myers said. “I didn’t know how to care for the records, so I ended up selling them at a garage sale because they had a lot of scratches because I was just a kid. I regret not taking care of them because I used tap water to wash it instead of distilled water.”

At the time, selling the records did not seem like a bad idea due to the constant popping and crackling as a result of the impairments in the grooves of the records. However, with more experience handling records, he learned what the proper tools to clean and care for them were. As he continues to take careful care of his collection, Myers’s enthusiasm as a record collector also grows.  

“When you’re a collector, you’re like, ‘I don’t really like this one, but I’m still going to buy it if I see it because I want to have them all,’” Myers said. “There’s so much music in the world so there’s always something new.”