picking up on the thread of monday's post at the monkey heart discourses, "not fade away", the monkey heart mentioned my growing up south of lubbock, tx-- the hometown of buddy holly. buddy holly and the crickets were nowhere on my radar screen at the passing of my 10th birthday. i'm not sure we even had a radio in those days. probably we did, but if so it would have been tuned in to a country station of my daddy's choosing.
somewhere into the 60's i got my first pocket transistor radio. i remember trying to listen to it while i was riding tractor but the noise of that old poppin' johnny was too loud to make that very practical.
as i recall there was a single ear bud in those days. alkaline batteries were still 25 or 30 years away. the fact that batteries in those days lost their charge quickly and money to buy them was scarce meant that the hours in the hot sun dragged on forever as the fireball crawled lazily across the sky.
such was the life of a dry land cotton farmer's kid. as the days crept into august, this boy couldn't help but start wishing for the school year to begin. there was always plenty of heat left as the days slipped into september. windows in the classroom would be wide open in case some errant breeze decided to favor us with it's passing. those classrooms were anything but cool, still the kids who'd spent their summer out in the fields were glad to be indoors. as hot as it was inside, at least it was out of the blazing sun.
ah, yes the good old days; or were they, really? maybe not so much, take it from me. aio
So, I think for your next post you should talk about how old you were when you got indoor plumbing. Oh, and a television. If you didn't have a radio until the 60s, did you miss out getting to watch the moon landing?
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