My 1205 story...
In about 1980, when I was about 17, my dad grabbed a 1205 that the neighbors had put out by the curb. It never had a power nozzle and the woven, non-electric hose leaked like a sieve, but for whatever reason, I always liked that thing. It stayed around the house and got a modest amount of use for many years, but it disappeared when my parents moved in 1997. I'd always assumed it was one of the many things they had donated or tossed and I thought little more of it over the years until the summer of 2016 when my parents decided to move to a retirement community and I found it while cleaning out the attic.
It was filthy and the handle was broken but I figured it was worth having for parts, if nothing else. When I got it home and plugged it in, I found it ran great; in fact, when I tested it against my other 1205 (simple side-by-side hand test with no hose attached) I found they worked equally well, so I decided to clean it up, replace the broken handle and officially add it to the collection. In the process, it got an electrified hose and power nozzle hooked up to it for the first time in its almost 50-year existence.
