Phonograph Collector-Restorer Turns Back Clock, and That’s for the Record
Neil Maken, 46, lives a yesteryear life in Fountain Valley, a switch from the hustle-bustle grind as a New York City sales manager, a job he abandoned just four years ago.
In fact, he has named his new business Yesterday Once Again.
“I was making more money,” he said of his previous work. “But I wasn’t enjoying it. I missed seeing my daughter grow up, and I didn’t see my home or my wife very much.”
Maken’s earlier six-day-a-week labor started by boarding a train at 6:55 a.m. and ended at 8:07 p.m.
Actually, his work day hasn’t improved much. “Now I start at 6:30 a.m. and generally don’t finish until about 11:30 p.m.,” he said. “But I’m enjoying it. Besides, I’m my own boss.”
For Maken, who now restores old hand-cranked phonographs and collects old 78s and cylinder records, it was just a matter of turning a hobby into a full-time business that has only three other competitors in the country, he believes.
But much of his work comes from other countries such as Japan, England and even Vatican officials, who once bought a machine from him to play old records they had in storage. “They still owe me some money,” he added.
He is reluctant to sell and ship American-made old phonographs to other countries, though, in hopes of keeping the rare collectible machines in the U.S. market.
His home is a warehouse of phonographs and includes a replica of one that was patented by Thomas A. Edison in 1878. That’s the one he shows when giving talks to community groups with his daughter, Tracey, a 15-year-old Fountain Valley High School student who collects dolls with phonographs built inside them--a sort of prototype for today’s high-tech talking dolls.
Maken notes that Alexander Graham Bell entered the phonograph market about 1880. The Victor Co. later revolutionized the market by removing the horn speaker and concealing it within a cabinet. It was called a Victrola.
“People love this bit of Americana,” said Maken, who clearly enjoys dispensing knowledge of his collection of old phonographs and records. “None of them are run by electricity, only human power and a crank,” he noted.
His record collection includes speeches by famous people in history such as Edison, the late Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and old-time politicians.
“This business has got me hooked,” he said. “I wear jeans and a T-shirt and live an entirely new life. My pin-stripe suit has hardly been used, and now I have time to look at the sky and see how beautiful and blue it is.”
And he added: “I stopped rushing and started enjoying every little thing.”
Read this and you will discover why Bob Cole, 49, who started teaching at 21, is such a popular teacher at La Habra High School and why his humanities course is so well received.
Cole said the complete person “is one who is versed in all fields and doesn’t recognize limitations.”
Cole recently received the Golden Bell Award from the state Assn. of California School Boards. Teachers from 200 school districts were competing for the award.
The award recognizes a teacher whose course is innovative, has long-term success and an unusual approach to curriculum.
As an innovation, Cole has no set text for the course.
“The bottom line is that I love this class,” he said. “I don’t go around exchanging high fives, and I’m not a back-slapper, but I think like a kid,” which he shows by collecting comic strips and hats.
But he notes that “you can’t fool them (students) because they can sense you out quick. They sniff you out. I love my teaching now as much as the first day I taught,” he said. “It’s in my blood.”
And he has picked up something from his students. “I love their slang and use it.”
You had to be at Franklin Elementary School in Santa Ana to see the fun during its Teddy Bear Day.
Students brought their teddy bears and those that didn’t substituted a stuffed animal that the organizers called an “un-bear.”
Supt. Edward S. Krass showed up with what he called an “executive bear.”
