I got a cassette tape recorder when I was around 9 years old. A wonderful JC Penny mono cassette recorder. I loved the thing and used it quite a bit. It took either wall power or batteries and it was rare I ever had batteries for it, so the recordings were at home tethered near a wall outlet. Here are the recordings I made with it. At some point I used my sisters JC Penny Boom Box which had the most awesome stereo microphone built in, I may have lost those recordings.