Concerning the word “vinyl” in this week’s title, that word has become a “campy” name for “records,” be they 45s or 33 1/3s; 78s were made of much less flexible, more breakable vinyl.

Back when I was growing up, “vinyl” meant “siding.”

Just the other week, our attention was absorbed by a speck in the sky so distant, that to the unaided eye it is unseen — the planet Pluto. Please excuse me, I forgot that it’s no longer a planet, but instead, a “dwarf planet,” ‘mini-planet,” “quasi-planet,” “planet wanna-be” or “something-or-other.”

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft was sending pictures back which finally gave that speck a face. This made me think back to 1980s Voyager I, and further back my father’s old floor-model hi-fi, Beethoven, and Saturn. (Come to think of it, all of these are happenstance listed in reverse chronological order.)

I thought back to evenings when records would be playing on my father’s mahogany console phonograph. The light of a single living room lamp would be struggling to spread light through the  shadows.

There was a small red bulb in front, when lit, signifying the phonograph’s “on-ness.” (“one-ness” minus an “e”).

Walking over to the set, I would look down and see another tiny bulb in the back, this one yellow, providing just enough light for the proper placing of the stylus to then be “pulled” into the groove. That concentric groove, making big “squiggles” for “The Ride of the Valkyries.” became smooth like an old river for “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.”

That spot, barely illuminated by the little yellow light, seemed like its own micro-world, at the threshold of being lost in darkness.

There was even a particular smell, too! All the periods of great music had that plasticky vinyl aroma, including “The Ballad of Davey Crockett,” and of course, Elvis.

No matter how often a record had been played, that scent freshly issued forth at the latest playing. And just now, I can hazard a guess as to why. With each spin, the record was “scratched” anew by the needle, sapphire for long-playing and 45s, diamond for 78s. I could imagine molecules of vinyl rising into the air around where the stylus was doing its melodic “drilling.”

One high-school Christmas, my mother gave me a portable phonograph made by Magnavox (a name from those “good ole days” of  Circuit City).

She also bought me a collection of Beethoven’s Nine Symphonies, which I would play late at night in my room while trying  my hand at “conducting.” (I use quotation marks, as it was only conducting “of a sort.”) The portable player didn’t have a built-in light, as did my father’s console, so I placed a low- power table lamp close by (too much light would have taken away from the “aura” of my conducting in half-shadow).

I “directed” so often, that even to this day if I hear one of Beethoven’s nine symphonies on the radio in mid-play, I can hum the rest till the end (Al Fine).

It might be said that I have considerable experience (again, “of a sort”) in conducting Beethoven’s nine symphonies, but instead of all over the world, my expertise is limited to that one spot just off the Old Concord Road.

Getting back to that link in my mind from NASA’s New Horizons to Voyager I; earth’s greatest telescopes had never been able to fully resolve the rings of Saturn, but when the first Voyager flew by them, it did.

There again, and on television, was my remembered view of my father’s “vinyl,” Saturn’s rings finally revealed in all of their “record-groove” glory!

In my mind’s eye (and ear) both then and now, the scene was surrounded by deepest night, except for being illuminated by a distant “yellow bulb,” all to the accompaniment of  music which its composer never heard.