I thought that everything, once finished, would be kind-of like it was. The stores still had an air of uncertainty about them as the pieces of the explosion slowly settled. In the stores where Sprint was to occupy about a third of the floor space it often took months (again) for them to arrive and set up shop. The store personnel who remained in the new company always looked shell-shocked and didn’t always have the most current information about what they had in stock or what would be available in the future. Their web site took literally months to bring back online. When the news finally came that their stores would still be around but in fewer numbers and under different ownership I was relieved.īut, as you’d expect, there were some ‘gotchas.’ Their prices weren’t the greatest but if they had something no one else had, we were stuck paying retail. Let’s face it-many of us may have liked their stuff but knew it was foolish to buy until there was a sale. The local store closings brought the ability to get some great deals but I didn’t want to see the company disappear. I watched anxiously when news broke of a possible bankruptcy in late 2014, and I held my breath during the months to follow. I kept up with them when I moved on and still shopped there, but over time that decreased. (That introduced me to the ugly side of working retail, but that’s a story for another time.) When high school graduation time arrived, I landed a job with them and stayed for over five years. My paper route soon enabled me to start building one of those systems. I even had, at one point, a constantly-updated list of three stereo systems in different price ranges that I would buy from them if I had the money. The annual catalogs were my “wish books” and I spent hours poring over them. They were a place of wonder, where you could seemingly get a device or parts that would allow you to do damn near anything.

My love of Radio Shack (now RadioShack) started in the 1970’s, when I discovered them in junior high. Radio Shack AM “Battery” Radio, circa mid-1970’s.

Radio shack scanner pro 197