What It Was Was Radio

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It had been a long day.  But my twelve-year-old body had been scrubbed clean in the number two wash tub in the back yard. The summer sun had heated the water while Daddy and I worked in the fields. And now the sun had set. I was tired but supper of fresh baked cornbread with butter milk had soothed the hunger pains in my stomach. Now I found myself relaxing on the front porch looking out on the fresh swept hard red clay. Things almost glistened in the moon light.  A toad hopped slowly over next to the gardenia bush. In the distant hollows I could hear Doc Miller's coon hounds on the trail of ole ring tail. Doc could tell each dog by its bark. Somewhere, not to far away, someone was making moonshine likker. You could smell the mash fermenting in the summer air. There was that lonesome whistle of the freight train hauling coal from Kentucky to Savannah and the eighteen wheelers straining to make it up Myers Hill. There was the sound of the screech owl but the whip-poor-wills had stopped their song. I could hear the faint sounds of the radio coming from the inside of the house. Daddy would be listening to the radio. It would be another ten years before

we would get a television.  Three years after our first telephone. Daddy would be listening to WCKY, Cincinnati, Ohio. I know how to spell Cincinnati because the man on the Wayne Raney show sold baby chicks by mail and would tell exactly how to spell out the address. B-A-B-Y C-H-I-C-K-S, C-I-N-C-I-N-N-A-T-I, O-H-I-O. And you could order a "How to play the Harmonica" course too. Later Daddy would fall asleep beside the radio and I would sneak in and commandeer it. I would take it to my bedroom being careful not to touch the back of it which was very hot. Then I would plug it into the extension cord I had plugged into the light socket hanging down in the middle of the room. I placed it beside my bed and the electron tubes inside the radio bathed my room in a warm yellow light. The radio had a wooden case with a cloth covering over the speaker between the volume and tuning knobs.  An upright pointer pointed a various numbers on the dail as you tuned in the stations. From out of the night came the sounds from New York, Chicago, New Orleans, El Paso and Nashville. When I was younger  I listened to "The Lone Ranger", "Gang Busters" and "Big John and Sparkie". But now music was my interest. I liked to listen to this rhythm and blues music and this new thing called rock and roll. It had this beat to it that was great.  I couldn't explain it, but it made me feel good. And sometimes later as the Platters sang," Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" or "Red Sails In The Sunset" I'd drift off to sleep.
I would wake up to static on the radio but the songs of the night before would be trapped in my head all day...

• Gang Busters
• Big John and Sparkie
• The Lone Ranger
• Wayne Raney