Click-Click-Click. That’s the sound my 70’s clock radio made, with the numbers that ‘rolled’ down from above. Do you remember?
Starry summer nights, a Canadian farm girl fine-tuning her radio to bring in American radio stations late, late at night. Straining to hear “those crazy accents” from faraway-to-me places. KFAB in Omaha, Nebraska, coming in clearly with a voice I’d learned to recognize: Sally-Jesse Raphael, long before she was on TV, hosting an advice/talk show. Lonely farmers, wives with money problems, young lovers separated by difficult circumstances. Our house was quiet and I found myself leaning in for their stories – carried through the air and across international borders – and wondering at the faces of the folks calling in.
Driving today, a song came on the radio, and it took me back to that time in my life.
“Hello? How are you?” right at :27. Haunting.
Singing along I looked down at all my “new” technology, Smartphone, GPS and MP3 player, and laughed. Then I cranked up the tunes and sang all the way to my meetings, remembering the summers of my youth, and a time when adventures could be as simple as imagining just who was on the other end of the line.
Do you remember the click-click-click of a clock radio? Did the numbers roll down or stay lit? What faraway radio stations were you able to tune in?
