RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,327
(part-time believer : in everything)
I haven't always known how things
have happened to me, but they sure
have. I'm a ghost of my former self,
a sort of closeted geek, these days,
living amidst memory and fear, as
they learn to co-mingle.
-
Long about 1960, as I recall, my
father bought for me a 'crystal set.'
I had no idea what in the world a
crystal set was, but this one came
on a box, and had to be assembled;
actually, it had to be 'built'. If you've
not 'built' a radio before, you'll know
about my awe and wonder at having
to do so. I felt like Thomas Edison,
fiddling with wires and knobs, finding
connections, and even having to use
this little solder-wand they supplied.
Upon completion - complete with
an antenna of some sort and a wire
that went out my upstairs room and
out to the open roof - the thing
actually worked. At age 11 I'd
actually made a short-wave radio,
with dials and a little wave-screen
that indicated by its patterns how
close one was to pulling in a real
and good signal. Mind you, this
wasn't a trucker's CB thing, this was
a true short-wave radio. None of
that truck-driver and traffic lingo
for me ('Hello Highway Flyer 29,
this is Jimbo; watch for Smokey
at mile marker 117')...
-
In a short-enough amount of time,
and to my amazement, from my
little perch at the rear of my attic
closet, by the high window, I was
pulling in things from around the
world - drawing gasps of awe
and amazement to myself. Radio
Bucharest - the Ceausescu years,
in Rumania - folk-songs of the
brave Rumanian folk, songs
and tales of history; Radio
Havana, with its tales and
stories about the evils of
America to the north, and
many more shows, countries,
lectures, stories - everywhere
I spun the dial, it seemed there
was always something. And all
was interesting. I was, and
remained, fascinated, and
fixated - to the extent of never
seeming to need to leave that
little spot ever again.
-
I look up the date now - it
was, I'm told, May 1, 1960 -
Francis Gary Powers took off
in his U2 spy plane. Having
enlisted in the CIA, for these
reconnaissance flights, he would
fly high (elevation) over the
then Soviet Union, and with
a high-resolution set of cameras
and take detailed spy photos of
the lands and installations below.
His elevation was supposed to
have been high enough to keep
him out of range for any Soviet
detection or shooting (70,000
feet) - so the CIA game plan
went. He was shot down by a
Soviet missile, and during the
intercept one or two other Soviets
were killed by errant fire or by
crashing. It became a big-deal
international crisis, with all the
heat of furious USA-Soviet Union
confrontation. President Eisenhower
and Nikita Khrushchev glaring.
Words and accusations, cover
stories, headlines, and the rest
went on for weeks - and I had
a ringside listen! My 'crystal
set' brought me every blow-by-
blow episode of what went on.
It was very cool. I really didn't
know who else cared about this,
but I did.
-
It's funny how, as a kid, one month
you're all caught up in one thing,
gung-ho and ready to shoot, and
then a month or two later, it's all
forgotten. That's how this went. I
have, now, no idea of where this
short-wave thing ended up, what
happened to it, etc. I guess I just,
one day, gave it all up. And then, in
about another year, with Kennedy
as President, having replaced
Eisenhower, the Cuban Missile
Crisis kept the whole world
enthralled in an even bigger way,
a real crisis week, on the edge of
nuclear disaster and with an
untested, new President too!
I remember seeing all that stuff
on TV, after playing October
football games out in the street.
Back in, at dusk, everyone was
glued to the TV - and I never
gave a thought to listen in on
my crystal set - if I even then
knew where it was or what had
happened to it. Strangely weird.
-
My father, as well, never told me
about it - the why and the reasoning
behind getting that for me. I kind
of wish he had, now - thinking back,
I'd like to have gotten into his head
a little bit, seeking out his improvised
promptings about what brought him
to buy that for his 11-year old kid.
Maybe there'd be a goldmine of info
there that would bring me closer to
the closeness I never really had with
him. It's sad that all that communication,
never having happened, is also never
now retrievable - short-wave or not.
Everyone has reasons for what they do,
and the paucity of information that I
kept about my own Dad now, in
retrospect, hurts; a glaring omission
to my stupid timeline.
-
I don't even know how I put that thing
together - it's pretty unlike me, doing
any electronics successfully; let alone
a receiver set, with dials, antenna,
directional wave-finders, etc. Maybe
that was his idea - to throw something
complicated and precise at me, to see
what I'd do with it; to change my
approach and tactics. Perhaps there
was some glaring deficiency he saw
developing in me, and maybe he
thought a task like this, set before me,
would ring me some enlightenment.
I'll never know, so why dwell in it?
-
I hate living blindly; in the sort of
darkness that comes from not having
the knowledge about things that (only
later) you wish you had. All I can
remember is, pretty precisely, my
complete fascination - especially
with old Rumania. Not the Commie
Rumania under the heavy hand of
Nicolai Ceausescu and his equally
bizarre wife (he and she were, much
later, executed together in a final
uprising by their own, beleaguered
and fed up, countrymen. Good
riddance to bad rubbish?) - but
fascination stemming from the
country-folk and their songs and
tunes and stories and tales of that
old and ancient Romany and
'Rumanian' atmosphere.
Gone now, forever too.
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