OTAPS
The Oregon Territory Antique Phonograph Society - OTAPS
April 2011 Introduction

Stacey and I have been both opera and phonograph friends since the year 2000. I introduced him to wind up phonographs and 78 records and we have had many adventures since. We have travelled several times to New York to see the Metropolitan Opera and see the sites. So this trip did not start out to be as special as it turned out to be. While we did see terrific operas at the Met and visited the fantastic museums New York has to offer, that is not the focus of this effort.

I had really been wanting to go to New York in the Spring of 2011 because there were a number of operas I was interested in seeing in April. It got me to thinking about adding a trip to visit my friends Tom and Sandi McCarthy. Tom and I had met the previous year at the Union phonograph show and had really hit it off. He and I liked and collected nearly the same things and had some very similar backgrounds in our music educations. I started talking this over with Stacey and we realized we could also visit the newly opened Edison Site. So, that is the trip that was planned and we arrived in Reading PA a few days before we needed to get to New York. The adventure had started.

We flew from Portland to Newark and rented a car that took us to Reading. We visited with Tom and Sandi and looked at some of his amazing stuff. The next morning we discovered Adamstown PA the "antique Mecca" of the United States. Neither of us were prepared for how fun that turned out to be! We bought some things in the antique stores and also from Tom. He had set some things out for us to look at and we both found great treasures and saw much more than we could possibly handle in one trip. As we left Reading we headed towards a day in Philadelphia. At the end of the afternoon we decided to visit the Victor Talking Machine factory building which had not been in the original plans.

We started the trip in Reading PA, visted Philadelphia PA and Camden NJ followed by a trip to West Orange NJ. From there we went into New York City and made a side trip to Wayne NJ. It would be quite an adventure and provide wonders we did not even know existed.

So, the rest of the story continues with the gallery links...

Dan Melvin

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