What is the Ultra-Glide in "The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963"?
In The Watsons Go to Birmingham--1963, the Ultra-Glide is the expensive record player that Dad buys for the family car, called the Brown Bomber, in Chapter 8. Dad installs the Ultra-Glide, which plays 45s, in the dashboard so that the family can listen to records while driving, as the needle won't scratch the record when the car goes over bumps. Momma is very worried about the expense of the record player, but she relents when she sees how much fun the Watsons are having as they play their favorite songs with on the Ultra-Glide. Kenny listens to "Yakety Yak" several times and enjoys the deep sound of the car's speakers. The Ultra-Glide is a symbol of how the Watsons are a creative and loving family and how Dad and Momma really care about their family.
After Dad installs the Utltra-Glide, he and Momma tell the family that they are headed...
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to Grandma Sands' house in Alabama. They will leave Byron there for the summer or longer if his behavior doesn't improve. They have threatened to leave Byron at Grandma Sands' house several times, but this time, they are serious, as they have been unsuccessful at getting Byron to improve his behavior on their own.
The Watsons plan to set out on a 1,000 mile car trip from Flint, Michigan to Birmingham, Alabama. Mr. Watson buys a TrueTone AB-700 Ultra-Glide for the car. This is a record player that you mount on the dashboard of a car and that is specially designed not to skip from the movement of the car while driving. The Ultra-Glide plays 45 rpm records, which were about twice the diameter of a CD and played one song per side. Ultra-Glides really did exist, and were sold for about 10 years beginning in the late 1950s.
In Christopher Paul Curtis's The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963, what was the Ultra Glide's purpose?
In Christopher Paul Curtis' novel The Watsons go to Birmingham -- 1963, Dad is a kind, sentimental but slightly irreverent father to his three children. As the Watson family is preparing its trip from its Flint, Michigan, home to Birmingham, Alabama in the Deep South, Dad, as described by ten-year-old Kenny, has upset his fiscally-minded mother by having a state-of-the-art record player installed in the family car. As Dad explains to the kids the new contraption:
"Well, well, well, Dad said, leaning down into the car, "I see you three have the ultimate in taste. I see you've chosen the top of the line, the cream of the crop, the True Tone AB-700 model, the Ultra Glide!"
The "Ultra Glide," of course is a record player that the music-loving father has purchased special for the road trip to Alabama. It's rugged design and engineering will enable Dad to play records without the usual skips that occur whenever the car hits a bump or pothole.
Few of today's students have ever owned a record player or listened to vinyl records, the format having been replaced by compact discs and, more recently, digital "down loads" of music. Record players have a tone arm that supports a stylus cartridge that, in turn, supports a needle that sits on the revolving record. Very little turbulence is necessary to cause that tone arm to jump around on the record, causing skips and other malfunctions. In short, record players were very fragile, and not well-suited for use in automobiles, which prompted the development of magnetic tapes as a means of storing and playing music. In Curtis' story, Dad is a lover of music, and wants to be able to listen to his records on the long drive. The "Ultra Glide" will, he hopes, make that possible.