Pink Milk Crate on the Orange Shag Carpet

Its a Friday afternoon in Brooklyn.

The streets are filling up fast as the week winds down. Annie Mae is done running her final blood tests and crossed off her last patient to call back. Her friend, Daisy, adjusts the plants in the window sill so the vines are nice and tidy, jokily saying that hers are growing faster than Annie's. The coat rack empties, bags sling over shoulders and the lightbulbs quit humming their songs. The sunlight pours into the room as they head out the side door.

Annie Mae lived only a couple of blocks away from the blood center, but always made a detour on payday. Before coming back to her grandmother and daughter at the apartment, she took her change to pick up a new vinyl record. The hottest music of the time, maybe cost her all of $1.25 at the time.

Motown’s Greatest's like Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, and The Supremes.

Jazz and blues legends like Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Ray Charles.

Records of groups before their names were in every house, like James Brown & The Famous Flames. This was in the late 60's and 70's.

Annie Mae is my grandmother. Nana, as I call her.

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I never noticed the pink crate collecting dust behind the couch when I would come to visit in the summer. Probably too worried about getting my sherbet and hiding in the one room with central AC. The visits would last over 25 years, and I never noticed the pink milk crate. 2021, we decided to move her from her Brooklyn apartment to live with us in Virginia. The apartment was nearly empty when I visited for the last time in August. On the orange shag carpet in front of me, the pink crate was impossible to miss. I walked through her two bedroom apartment that held 50 years of family memories, shed my tears, said goodbye, and took the crate home with me.

On my first dig through, I knew what I would play first: Stevie Wonder Innervisions. Tough choice over Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell "United", "The History of Otis Redding", and "Diana Ross Presents the Jackson 5." Not repressed, but the original editions with their own distinct wear and tear. The Pink Milk Crate is still getting new additions. Ray Charles on stage at the Palladium, A Date with Della Reese, and a second copy of Flip Wilson the Devil Made Me Buy This Dress. My love for the vintage, retro, and timeless keeps me looking for "what's new to me."

The Pink Milk Crate is no longer in Brooklyn, on the orange shag carpet. Nana's not stopping by the record store anymore. The technology has changed, but the love for the Pink Milk Crate Collection is the same.

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