I am Simon Jester

FM Radio

Posted by Ted Bronson | Filed under Nostalgia, Patriot's Journey

My kids are in the Boychild’s room right now exploring the FM band of commercial radio. And. Loving. It.

I remember when I was twelve years old, all I wanted in the world for my thirteenth birthday was a little radio with an earplug that I could call my own, that I could take with me where ever I went, and my brothers couldn’t complain about the noise.

What I got was a pair of glasses. Seems that all my squinting in class had finally given one of teachers the idea that I had trouble seeing. Boy were they right. I knew that trees had individual leaves until I walked out of the ophthalmologist’s office. Since we weren’t exactly swimming, I figured that ‘sight’ was going to be my big “Happy finally being a teenager day” present. But I was wrong.

I also got the perfect radio. It was so unremarkable in appearance or sound quality that it defies researching to find a photo of it on the whole of teh interwebs. But it rocked. Keep in mind, at my house, in 1979, we were as apt to hear Ronnie Milsap or Tom T. Hall as Elvis or Dolly. That, and the folk’s collection of comedy records (yes records, 33-1/3) or country and western 8-Tracks. This little pocket sized jewel introduced me to the rest of the radio world. I could get a classical station from Montgomery, an all-god-all-the-time station from over yonder in Ozark, and a real live, honest to goodness rock and roll station from Enterprise. As well as a radio dial (a real dial) full of stuff i had never heard before. I had everything from ABBA, Alice Cooper, America, Chicken Man and Disco Duck, the Eagles, Manfred Mann, Pink Floyd, Skynyrd, etc. all the way to Queen and Zepplin. I ate it up.

I went through batteries like crazy because I would fall asleep to the music. I would wake up with a sore ear from the ear plug pressing into my head all night, switch ears, change batteries, and keep on listening.

I could hear the strange beeping of ghost stations way at the far end of the AM dial and would stop everything when American Top 40 came on the air. (I remember being confused when I could hear it on two different stations at the same time and the countdown was in a different place.) I could pick up Mexican stations and Cuban stations on AM at night as well as a California station that still played the Wolfman. Sometimes the earplug would be so loud at night that my brothers would yell at me to turn it down. Which I would reluctantly do, hoping not to lose too much of the signal in all the noise.

Oh, looking back, it was a piece of crap little pocket radio. But it was the only thing working when Hurricane Frederick ate all the electricity. It broadened my musical tastes as well as set some of them in stone.

So, this is the soundtrack of my Patriot’s Journey. Hazel loves her internet music and XM, but I’m still that thirteen year old kid with a brand new pair of glasses and a new radio, trying to pull signal out of the static and content to listen to what the radio gods program or to keep changing the channel.

This is a Patriot’s Journey post. Remember to check out the other Patriotic Journeyers: Drumwaster, The Bastage, Inessential Musings, and The Edge of Reason