A week or so ago, I was watching TV one evening and something happened or some program came on that made me think about transistor radios. I can't remember what triggered the memory of transistor radios and I suppose it really isn't that important anyway. But I started thinking about how kids today would have no idea what a transistor radio even was. And they sure as hell wouldn't put up with one. But back in the day a transistor radio was one of your first signs of independence. It signified that you were growing up with your own taste in music and by God, you could listen to anything you wanted... with a strong enough AM signal.
I remember vividly the Christmas that me and my brothers got our transistor radios. It was a great day that apparently still effects my life. I say that because that first transistor radio was citrus orange. If you spend any time around me at all, you know that to this day that is my favorite color and it has always been. Now I call it my signature color in honor of Elle Woods whose signature color we all know was pink. But basically, since the day I got that treasured transistor radio, orange has always been a significant color to me.
For you kiddies that don't know what a transistor radio was, it was a compact device roughly the size of a box of 64 count crayons with a telescopic antennae, a single very small built in speaker, two dials - one for volume and the other to tune the radio to your favorite AM radio station, and a small wrist strap so that it could dangle from your wrist as you walked down the street. They came with a single ear piece that you stuck in one ear to listen. With the other ear you listened to whatever was going on around you because if you didn't respond when your mom spoke to you, you just might get smacked. Back then, we had no idea what earbuds were. It was just an ear piece, which incidentally looked almost like a single earbud. Apparently, we were way ahead of our time. The earpiece was the part that got lost roughly 10 minutes after the radio was taken out of the box never to be seen again. After all, it wasn't that important because we wanted to share our music with the other people around us.
Now I know if you are under the age of 20 you might be thinking to yourself, what the hell is AM radio??!!!?!?!?! It was our only form of entertainment besides the 2 or 3 network TV stations we got (if we were lucky) using the antennae that was on the roof of our houses. On AM radio you could listen to anything from country music, to rock and roll and baseball from St. Louis if you pointed your antennae in the right direction. It all came through that one speaker that sounded pretty awful if the truth be known. But the radio took us to worlds we had never seen and had only dreamed of.
The transistor radio was significant because it allowed us to listen to our own type of music for the first time in many of our lives. I grew up in a family that LOOOOVED it's country music. I, on the other hand, did not. I would go places with friends and they would ask their mom to change the radio station to a rock station and she would just do it. That was never an option in our car. For a long time I didn't know that there was any other station in Nacogdoches other than KSFA, which was all country from the time the national anthem played in the morning until it played again in the evening.... What? Are you so young that you don't understand what that means? Back in the day, radio and TV stations didn't air 24/7. When they came on the air in the morning, they played a recording of the national anthem and when they signed off in the evening they did it again. On TV afterwards, you'd get a test pattern for a few minutes then it would go to snow. I'm sorry, I can't explain snow. Ask your parents or grandparents.... But this is what a test pattern looked like.
I have no idea why it displayed on the TV before it went to snow, but it did. But I digress, this is about transistor radios and the freedom they offered.
Once I got that radio, I discovered the other radio station in Nacogdoches that my parents didn't talk about. I discovered KEEE and friends, that was rock and roll at it's finest. Okay, it was actually more of a pop station. But for me, that was wild! For a long time my favorite song was Locomotion. I first heard it at the skating rink where they played it a lot and then I would call KEEE everyday and request it. Most days they would actually play it for me. Then I fell in love with a song called Brandy. They played a lot of the Osmond's and you all know how I feel about Donny. My transistor radio was my first introduction to Donny. I guess in a way, the transistor radio brought me and my first love (Donny) together.
I vividly remember taking the transistor radio with me on long car trips with the earpiece. I would sit in the back seat and constantly work at tuning the radio station. You see AM radio stations didn't and still don't have a strong signal, I mean except for KMOX out of St. Louis which is reputed to have a signal that can be heard in 44 states and was certainly strong enough for me and my brothers to listen to at night in Nacogdoches. In the car, with each passing mile a radio signal would increase and another would decrease. So tuning your radio station was a constant. As soon as you found a good radio station playing a great song, it would start to fade and you'd have to go in search of another one. I don't think I ever listened to a full strong in the car on that radio from start to finish before the station began to fade. But it kept us on our toes.
There are kids today who don't know of a time when XM didn't exist. Kids today have never had to listen to the first two lines of their favorite song and then listen to it fade to static as the strength of the signal could no longer carry the song to them. You learned to deal with disappointment with an AM transistor radio. Maybe that's one of the things wrong with kids today. They've never had to deal with that disappointment. If they start listening to a song, they can listen to it until the very end unless they choose to end the song early. They also don't have to call the radio station after a song ends and ask what the name of the song was or who was singing it. It's displayed across the radio, iPhone, smart phone, iPod or computer screen throughout the song. Back in the day, radios didn't have screens.
We also had DJ's back then and they weren't guys who scratched records for a living. They played them. When you called the radio station, the Disk Jockey who was playing the records actually answered the phone. If there was a contest in which the 10th caller won, he would pick up the phone when each person called and say something like, "K-E-E-E... you're caller number 5" and then he'd hang up and go to the next call. If you called to request a song, sometimes he would talk to you for a minute. Other times, if he was tired of you calling 5 times a day to request the same song over and over again, he'd tell you that he wasn't going to play it again today and hang up. But he was real and all little girls had crushes on the DJ's even though most of them actually had a "face for radio", which meant they were too ugly to be on TV.
Yep the transistor radio was greatness. And while I realize that maybe you opened today's blog hoping to gain some wisdom about some travel topic or sage words of advice on traveling, you've hopefully at least had a nice little walk down memory lane. Or if you are too young to know what a transistor radio is, perhaps this was a history lesson. Either way, thanks for reading and have a great hump day!
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