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Did my La Scalas cross the ocean twice?


Dave MacKay

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Several months ago I purchased a pair of La Scalas from an estate sale. The person selling them didn't have much information, but thought that they might have been purchased in Germany.

 

The La Scalas are serial numbers 8657579 and 8657580, which would indicate that they were built in the 5th week if 1986 (i.e., around Jan 27-31 or Feb 3-7, depending on how the weeks are counted).

 

Because I purchased the speakers in southern Ontario, Canada (just across the river from Detroit), it seemed improbable that such bulky and heavy speakers would have made their way from Germany to Canada (unless, perhaps, they were purchased by a member of the Canadian armed forces and shipped back when the tour of duty in Germany ended).

 

I'd be interested in any information you might have about these speakers. 

 

Thanks in advance.

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Could they have been bought new by a US serviceman?  I’ve read that the PX stores on US bases, including in Germany, carried items that Canadian soldiers never saw, like La Scalas.  There must have been some way to ship them home, so could they have crossed the border from Detroit, or somewhere else near the Canadian border?

 

It seems a bit unlikely that a Canadian soldier could have bought a pair of such expensive speakers in Germany, where they would have cost quite a bit more than they would have on Turtle Island, and he would not have got the discount price that US soldiers got at their PX stores.  This is speculation on my part, so I could be wrong.

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Paper logbooks only go back to the early 80's, so no definitive conclusions can be made.  However, K&A had a thriving business with the military base PX's in Europe.  And my understanding is that the pricing was favorable to the servicemen.  I suspect the military's margins were low.  Attached is a pic of PWK in Europe from the 80's.

image.jpeg

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Thanks for responding @Islander and @JRH

 

I suppose it's possible that my La Scalas came from a PX in Germany, which woud likely require that:

  • Canadian servicemen were allowed to shop at American PXs, or that
  • Canadian PXs carried La Scalas, or that
  • a Canadian soldier arranged for a US soldier to buy them on his behalf at the US PX

In any event, if the serviceman had them in Germany, they'd have been shipped back to Canada for him by the army when his tour ended,

 

Of course, it's perhaps more likely that the Germany story is a canard, and that the owner bought them in Canada. 

 

Although it seems an answer won't be known, the mystery adds a little aura to the speakers, which is sort of nice.

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Was your seller with Germany anecdote the original owner?

 

If not, that part of US/Canada is so close could be U.S. serviceman bought for CDN friend knowing he was coming back and shipping on Uncle Sam. Or US serviceman/woman bought and used during time abroad shipped back for their own use and sold to CDN buyer in classified, garage sale, etc. 

 

I grew up in that area of Detroit. Was not uncommon in the 70s-90s to go back and forth several times a year. Super easy in and out. If I were Canadian I'd easily travel across the bridge or under the tunnel for some fine Klipsch speakers. 

 

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What you've suggested is certainly plausible.

 

I have very little information about the previous owner. Apparently, he had been a veterinarian. After he passed away, his widow's cousin helped her clean out the house for sale. That cousin told me that the owner had bought the speakers in Germany.

 

Although Canada certainly had servicemen in Germany, I was speculating about the owner having been in the miltary and stationed there. If he had been, shipping the La Scalas back to Canada (along with the rest of his personal effects) would have been done at the army's cost.

 

Having grown up in Windsor (just across the river from Detroit) I certainly remember that no one hesitated to cross the border for any reason at all --- shopping, eating out, going to bars and clubs, concerts, or sporting events. Good times.

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2 hours ago, Dave MacKay said:

 

Having grown up in Windsor (just across the river from Detroit) I certainly remember that no one hesitated to cross the border for any reason at all --- shopping, eating out, going to bars and clubs, concerts, or sporting events. Good times.

 

Sounds like Ottawa and Hull/Gatineau:  more fun on the other side of the river!

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2 hours ago, Islander said:

Sounds like Ottawa and Hull/Gatineau:  more fun on the other side of the river!

 

Depends on your point of view and age. Back when I was in High School the drinking age was, I believe, 18 or 19 in Canada. Pretty easy in HS to look 18/19 and they were very lax at checking IDs close to the border. Bars not Customs/Border crossing agents, that is. Way too many bad choices on Fridays and Saturdays. Drive, drive, drive....BAR,....Drive, drive, drive. Can't believe jail/death was not part of somebody's fate in my entire universe of friends, classmates, etc. Different times for sure. Seemed like a good idea at 17 I suppose.

 

Canadian lingo introduced me to the term "peeler bar". Too funny. I hear over there the dancers only wore a smile.

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5 hours ago, rplace said:

 

Depends on your point of view and age. Back when I was in High School the drinking age was, I believe, 18 or 19 in Canada. Pretty easy in HS to look 18/19 and they were very lax at checking IDs close to the border. Bars not Customs/Border crossing agents, that is. Way too many bad choices on Fridays and Saturdays. Drive, drive, drive....BAR,....Drive, drive, drive. Can't believe jail/death was not part of somebody's fate in my entire universe of friends, classmates, etc. Different times for sure. Seemed like a good idea at 17 I suppose.

 

Canadian lingo introduced me to the term "peeler bar". Too funny. I hear over there the dancers only wore a smile.

 

Boy, this sure got off-track!  Anyway, this is likely its illogical conclusion.

 

Yeah, the pub crawl is best done on foot.  You’re not going so fast when you hit something that way.  It’s funny, going either direction can yield the same results in terms of fun, apart from age limits, of course.  Going over to the other country, or the other province, where things are different, including the people, is nearly always entertaining.  One crossing that always amused me was going from Niagara Falls, Canada to Niagara Falls, USA, or from Ontario to New York, speaking informally.

 

 What got me was the upstate New York accent.  Even Americans find it funny.  Just go across the bridge, just a few hundred metres, and it’s really different from the Ontario accent.  Of course, Ontarians sound funny to upstate New Yorkers.  By the way, nobody in Canada says “oot and aboot”, lol.

 

Yes, the peelers.  Didn’t you check out any peeler bars while you were there?  I’m sure the ones in Windsor were good, but Montreal’s on a different level, of course.  There was a racetrack southeast of Montreal called Sanair, and there would be a gang of us from all over southern Ontario there each race weekend.  Sometimes, the after-race chat in the pits would turn to Club Super-Sexe, a notorious strip club in Montreal.  The name was probably the funniest part of going there.  I’ve never been, since it was a 6-hour drive back to Toronto, and I travelled with my girlfriend.  A few of the single guys had been there, and to everyone’s amusement, so had a couple of girl racers from Toronto.  They used to call themselves Twisted Sisters Racing, which was their very casual team.  Everybody had a good laugh at those two going in there, and they'd had a good laugh, too.  I can only imagine what kind of shows were put on in that club.  It eventually closed down, and the the building was badly damaged in a suspicious fire last October.  Oddly enough, it only got a score of 3.3 on Yelp.

 

It was an iconic landmark in Montreal, and after its sign was removed Montrealers felt an important part of the city was gone.  The club even advertised on American TV, in Plattsburgh, New York.  That struck me as funny, because for decades Montrealers had been going to Plattsbugh for their drive-in (or just across the Ontario border, to The Border Drive-in, of course), since drive-in movies were banned in Quebec, because the Catholic Church thought they could be an occasion of sin for horny teens.  There was even a song in French called Plattsburgh Drive-In Blues.

 

Here's a short video clip showing the sign.  Turn your volume way down, because there's really a lot of street noise.  For that matter, just looking at the thumbnail seen below conveys the visual aspect, and saves you from the shaky camera work.

 

 

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