The 4th Pip: The Columbia House Record Club — Part II

It is 1973. Red's father joins the infamous record club, a pencil is described, the lad steals magazines from the barber shop, and all hell breaks loose in the household. The Pips have arrived.

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The Columbia House Record Club

In the mid-1950’s Columbia Records started a music subscription service called Columbia House. They offered a straightforward promotion: join their “club,” receive your first twelve records for free, and then pay for additional records twice a month until you’re dead. Easily half the nation fell for it. It was catching fish with dynamite.

In the year of 1973, Red was seven-years-old. He had entered the kitchen to get a glass of water with exactly three ice cubes. “You’re quite the stickler about that,” his mother commented while tidying the foyer. She wasn’t even watching him.

“I’m bored,” Red told his dad while straining at the ice tray lever.

“You are bored,” his father repeated. It was a parenting strategy he was proud of.

His father was completing a Columbia House records membership at the kitchen table, filling in tightly-spaced lines on a magazine form that only a razor-sharp pencil could complete legibly. There was an $0.08 stamp and…