Radio Song

I still listen to a lot of radio, especially while I am working.  My work often carries over to late night when I can get some quiet time and the ability to focus is much easier.  I still love picking up AM stations.  A good station will not distract me from work, for good or bad reasons. 

Late at night the AM band turns mysterious.  The far away signals you pick up can vary from night to night based on the weather.  A strong signal one night may be a static mess the next.  Of course there are the odd signals that faintly come in unexpectedly.  One night it's Huntington, one night it's Nashville. 

I used to regularly stay up listening to the radio into the night when I was a teenager.  I had to stay as quiet as possible, a plastic earphone stuck in whatever ear I could hear with better. In the summer I would regularly pick up stations in Texas and from time to time a Mexican station would come in.

There is a station out of Cleveland I listen to regularly.  They play Coast To Coast AM at night and I enjoy listening to their local news before the sun rises.  Something still enchants me about hearing the local news from a place so far away.  Yes, I could easily look on the internet to see what's going on in Cleveland, but hearing local folks tell the story, from the place it is happening, has charm you can't get from a web page.  It's a person.  A voice. Contact.

Some folks are into radio DX'ing, where they try to pick up radio signals from as far as possible and keep records of their finds.  If they pick up something unique they'll write the station a letter and tell them the technical details.  Engineers at the stations used to send the DX'ers a postcard that thanked them for the information since it was valuable for engineers to know how their transmitters were working.  DX'ers collected those postcards.  I think this form of communication is now done through email.  I think getting a postcard was a much better deal.

On good days or nights I'll have a vague impression of what's playing while I am busy with work.  I might get pulled into a song or some DJ banter, but only briefly.  When a station is doing it right I'll wonder where the time went.  I'll want to pull out a record I haven't played in years.  I'll feel good and positive.  There will be a rhythm to what I am doing while I work. 

If every day could just be like that...