Thanksgiving and the DA 501

After talking it over with my wife, we claim 1985 to be our best Thanksgiving. It snowed like a foot or so in Seattle and the annual family gathering was cancelled. We walked a few blocks to the Ballard Market and bought some food and listened to our new prized possession—the first consumer CD player on the market—the Hitachi DA 501, which I purchased through the mail from Wisconsin Discount Stereo. The Tower Records at the foot of Queen Anne in Seattle has something like five CDs, and we owned them all. Steely Dan was in heavy rotation on the new CD player.

Here’s an odd twist. For some reason I wrote in my newspaper column about the new CD player (and foolishly mentioned that I bought it mail order). Shortly thereafter, I received a bill from the Washington State Dept. of Revenue for the sales tax I circumvented by buying the old DA 501 out of state. I was actually thrilled—I didn’t think anyone read my column.