33 years later, no longer a cart machine owner

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Milestone: For the first time since 1986, I cannot say the I own a working cart machine.

“Polishing the cart machine” was not a euphemism in my house.

A friend asked me to digitize some carts for him, which I was happy to do– until I tried all four of the cart machines I have in my attic, and they’ve all run out of gas.

On a beautiful summer day when I was 9 years old, my friend gave me the big rack mountable Spotmaster cart machine I’m so diligently cleaning in this photo (while wearing my dad’s dog tags in my bedroom, c. 1989.)

I balanced it on the seat of my bike for the few blocks back to my house, and I’ve had a “real radio station” at home ever since.

Owning a cart machine when I was 9 probably made me feel more like a true radio guy than I do showing up to write and read the news every morning…

Carts have been a part of my life for a long time– playing music and commercials, and taking hours to create audio production pieces that now take about 15 minutes of a computer.

I’ll miss not having a working cart machine, but I’ll hang on to the worn out ones I have– you never know when you’ll need a good boat anchor or three.

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Steve Cichon

Steve Cichon writes about Buffalo’s pop culture history. His stories of Buffalo's past have appeared more than 1600 times in The Buffalo News. He's a proud Buffalonian helping the world experience the city he loves. Since the earliest days of the internet, Cichon's been creating content celebrating the people, places, and ideas that make Buffalo unique and special. The 25-year veteran of Buffalo radio and television has written five books and curates The Buffalo Stories Archives-- hundreds of thousands of books, images, and audio/visual media which tell the stories of who we are in Western New York.