Radio

I love how the radio can immediately transform a quiet, empty room. With the snap of a button, you’re immediately connected to a voice, to something welcoming, to something intimate. To music. I’m not talking about shock jocks and those inane morning dee-jays with their ridiculous banter; I’m talking good radio—found mostly left of the dial, mostly in am frequency. On the loneliest of days, all I need is my radio. Elvis Costello tells us that “radio is the sound salvation,” and so it really is.

I got radio in my blood. My father built his reputation in radio. Years as a dee- jay, and as program director. He was a fucked up guy, skipping out on us when I was 7--which must have been easy because he never looked back. So I didn’t know the man, don’t know what he looks like, have no idea what made him tick. But I know he loved the radio—and he gave me that gift.

My first radio? A black transistor with a sharp metallic smell. It was purchased in the winter of no heat and the government cheese, and so I know my mother went without something crucial in order to buy it. Food in those days was scarce; housing a luxury--so I can't imagine what she gave up. But when I got my radio, and it crackled to life, it made everything okay. And there was a lot that wasn’t okay back then in that isolated, small town--a place where it snowed and snowed and snowed and snowed. Until you’ve lived in a place like that, you don’t understand the deafening silence of snow. Storms that lasted for days; snow that fell with a vengeance, and white-outs so thick you couldn’t see your own boots—assuming, of course, that you had money to buy them. And everything muffled; dead; buried under enormous mountains of snow that drifted up to our second story window. Nothing moved, nothing breathed under the weight of all that snow. At least not until I snapped on my radio.

Even as a little girl, I could hear the sounds of the "city" in the voice of my favorite dee-jay. Could hear in that deep, warm voice the highways and exit ramps and shopping centers that existed around him. I felt connected to him, and I’d press my ear to the speaker to forget about the snow covered, silent streets outside my window.

It was the first thing I packed when I moved to that “city,” an hour's drive south of our town. Not that I had much at 18, all alone. Some clothes, and my radio. I rented a furnished efficiency just off the boulevard at the top of a hill, eating loneliness for breakfast, lunch and for dinner. But there was nothing to return to, and so I stayed put up there on the hill. Beyond my window, down on the boulevard, I could see the yellow neon lights of Arthur Treacher’s; off in the distance, the on-ramp to the highway. When I turned on my radio and looked out that window, it was like a vision to me.

And it was there one night, sitting alone by the window, that I heard my father on the radio. Funny I would recognize his voice--but I did--holding my breath until it was confirmed. And I sat there, still as stone, and listened. Listened to the voice of my lost father--on the radio.

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