Massachusetts Bodged Transistor Authority

If you haven't seen the video for this project, consider watching it first! The rest of this post will make more sense after that.

It came to me in a dream. I was carrying a heavy metal box on the train through a long tunnel that looked like either Porter Square Station or perhaps the DC Metro. I recognized the box as something I'd seen at WardMapsWardMaps is a map and transit memorabilia store near Porter Square in Cambridge that is rather dangerous to the wallet of anyone like me. This indicator isn't even my largest or most unwieldy purchase from there; that dubious honor goes to the MBTA map plate I bought on my first visit. the previous day, despite its details shifting a bit every time I looked at it.

I did what any witch would do after receiving such a clear-cut dream: I bought it. I hoped for the rest of the week that it was still there on the shelf by the window at WardMaps until I finally had a chance to swing by again after the MIT Flea. When I made it there, it was gone from the shelf and I looked around and found it – in the arms of another customer. (If you're reading this, hi!) After a brief conversation with the store clerk, I learned that there were more of them in the basement and that they came out of red line trains.

I lugged it back to Porter to head back to Alewife and towards home, and it was just as heavy as I dreamed it'd be. I carried it in a shopping bag, scared that someone would recognize it as a train part and I’d get in trouble somehow, even though I knew in the back of my mind that people had carried weirder stuff on the T.

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