yesterday once more, or blogging those days

In the small towns where I was raised, radio was the only source for song and story from the larger world.

I’d strain and listen for Radio Netherlands but crackle was all I’d get. On Wednesdays, I’d finally succeed to tune in to His-n-Hers where they read birthday greetings and played the hits. The music I’d recognize through the crackle, but what they spoke arrived unintelligible over low-fidelity AM waves. I wanted to be happy with him and her so I laughed when they laughed even if I didn’t hear the funny thing. Also unintelligible were the hour-long Play of the Week Sundays on BBC and story-reading also on that station; yet the radio-voices of distant foreigners charged the air in my room, as did Willis Conover with his Jazz-Hour on Voice of America which program came at dusk and always started with Take the A Train. I wrote to Radio Australia once. Some weeks later I received mail with pretty stamps on it—from an Australian who’d heard my letter on radio. I read her letter over and over but I couldn’t compose a reply: to write thoughts, to punctuate, to make paragraphs, present everything neatly on paper—I had much desire to do them all but the effort was beyond me.

(If struck by nostalgia for an old radio, go to: Elwin's Radio Pages)

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