I got touched by the long arm of the lawless again. I awoke the morning of my move from a rental house to a new home to find I had been the victim of a smash and grab. The driver side window of my truck was shattered and my recently-purchased aftermarket stereo was ripped from the dashboard.
There is nothing that feels quite so violating, maddening and frustrating as when somebody takes your stuff. The whole principle of it irks me. I work hard for my money. Occasionally I spend some of it on things I like. This stereo was one of those nice things I decided to crack open my wallet for.
What stinks is that the previous aftermarket stereo that I had for probably a dozen years and three vehicles was only retired in January. It was woefully out of date. No Bluetooth. No USB. No web access. No touch screen. Every few months it had gotten to where it would randomly reset to the factory settings, undoing all my meticulous work to dial in the audio just right. I’d have to reprogram all my station presets. It had become enough of an agitation that I finally replaced it.
So three months after I got my new stereo with all the bells and whistles, some jerk decided he or she needed it worse than I did. What also ticks me off is knowing that I paid a few hundred for the thing and they only got fifty bucks or so from whoever bought it from them.
Beyond the loss of the property is the damage to the truck. And the inconvenience. I spent hours on the phone with police and insurance and an auto glass company. The first need was a new window. Make that second need. The first need was vacuuming the thousands of tiny shards of tempered glass that littered the driver’s seat, floorboard and inside of the door itself. I could not even think about driving the thing until the seat was completely free of glass.
I’ve always been an audio nut. I always have had to have a nice home stereo and a nice car stereo. I’ve always prided myself on installing the gear myself. So it ticked me off that all the work I did to put the stereo in just right was ripped apart in seconds, my dash board center console left dangling by wires.
Back in college, my freshman year, some lowlife snatched my Pioneer high-power cassette AM/FM stereo from my 1981 Chevy Monte Carlo. Thirty-plus years later I still felt that same disappointment and anger and feeling of violation and hurt when I walked out to my vehicle and discovered the crime.
Luckily I saved that old Kenwood AM/FM CD player that I took out just a few months ago. It still has the wiring harness and chassis mount. So old faithful is going back in. It’s not the fanciest thing in the world, but at least I know it’s old and outdated and not something any thief is going to want to take. There’s at least a little solace in that.
That’s what I’m thinking.
Rick Hadley
24/7 News