You can’t recall the quiet unless you shut off the noise.
And so, I did tonight, leaving the room open to the patter of the rain outside, pelting the shingles above with a rhythm that was persistent and gentle.
I’d heard that patter earlier from under the comfort of my cozy attic bedroom, with its warm amber colored beams pitched to a peak high above. While the hour was late, fatigue had not set into my space. This was a good time to experiment with the old radio as my grandfather had suggested the other day. He told me that late at night, many stations turn their broadcast signals down which essentially clears the air for you to pull in signals from transmitters much further away. He also said that under the right conditions these other signals could bounce off of the atmosphere and be available if you listened very carefully while thumbing the dial.
I didn’t question his expertise on this. He was Grandpa. He knew things and – more importantly – he admired things enough to notice what most other people never did, even when it was in plain sight. He knew how to repair old television sets in his basement with a soldering iron and a pile of dusty vacuum tubes. He knew how to catch bass right out front while my uncles went off to all corners of the lake only to come back frustrated and empty handed. He taught me how to play not one, but two forms of solitaire. So, from my point of view, he had the credentials of the highest kind.
It was worth a try. So, I scrunch my pillow under the back of my head, prop my transistor radio on my chest, plug my earphone into the jack and thumb the unit to life and explore the static. I roll by a couple of local AM stations. Not surpisingly, I can hear a few French-speaking DJs broadcasting from Montreal just an hour and a half's drive away. I remember to notch the volume down before I roll across WIKE's spot on the dial at 1490, since that's just over in Newport.
The persistence of the raindrops hitting the roof sharpens the fidelity of what I hear through the tiny copper wire. Music, news, now a ball game. I can’t tell who’s playing. Expos. Montreal Expos. Further up the dial across a few layers of static and then, someone talking.
“This is Charles Osgood; the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 12.21 points…this is ABC News.”
Boring.
Back down past some more music – a Frank Sinatra hour - to the other end of the dial where the ball game was underway. It is the Expos, but the game broadcast is coming from Shea Stadium in New York. I do my best to fine tune the signal, separate the game call from every other particle of noise. The static in the background transitions into the stadium crowd chatter. There’s some excitement in what I’m hearing through the line.
“Cleon Jones has been called out on his steal attempt at second and it’s absolute pandemonium. Hodges is on his way out to join the argument…”
As much as my attention is drawn to the sounds coming from my earphone, I still have enough available to envision the night sky dome high above the peak of my roof and beyond the hilltops rimming the lake. I visualize the cramped radio booths in each of these little studios with their dim amber lights and wobbly electric fans. I trace dark translucent lines from my radio out to the towers and microphones that are all linked to this fascinating nighttime network I never knew was possible. Hundreds of miles packed into a small handheld radio with its little 9-volt battery powering the show.
The rain’s tapered off outside a bit, and the baseboard heaters are clicking on now as the cool night draws its dark covers over the lake for the next several hours. It's supposed to stay like this for the next few days - cold and damp and such. It'll be too cold to do much of anything outside just yet and the water will be too high to put all of the dock pieces out. But there'll be enough time for that. There's plenty to do inside that just never seems to get done. Old magazines that need to be read or given away. Ancient collections of twist-ties my father collected are piling up in the junk drawer. There's a box of old electrical fuses in the cabinet that were compatible with the circuit box we upgraded 30 years ago. Old batteries in - wait, a 9-volt from an open double-pack bought at Ames so many years ago.
Now if only I could find that little radio. It's a good night. Quiet. You know?