LISTENING TO THE RADIO

 I was a small boy growing up on poor farm in central New York, the one item we could afford was an old radio.  It sat on a small shelf in our little kitchen.  The was a talk show on in the early mornings that many farmers listened to, it was called "Swap Shop".  My grand father always had it playing as we ate our breakfast after we had been to the barn and did all our chores.  A farmer would call in to the show and offer to swap something for something else.  It worked very well.  Granddad would use it to trade horses or to find a piece of farm equipment he needed, but didn't have the money to by it with.  So when we would cut down small trees to use as fence posts, we always had more than enough.  Farmers would trade others things just for some of our fence posts.

Later on when I moved to Moravia New York,  I had a radio in my bedroom; I would tune into basketball games at night and followed the Syracuse Nationals...I knew them all by their names and would actually keep score as I heard those games on the radio.  One time and friend of mine, Left James had his father drive up to Syracuse to see them play.  It was such a trill for me to be able to actually put a face to the names I had only heard on my radio.

After I had decided to study for the ministry, I took a job in a TB hospital in Rochester NY.  I was placed in a barbed wire area, where there was a small building for men who had TB but were alcoholics and since they were deemed to be dangerous out in the public, they would be sent into that building...and they selected me to be in charge of the group of men.  I always took a radio to work with me...and at seven thirty each week day evening a preacher came on to teach from the Bible.  It was called, "Back to the Bible" by Theoadora Epps.

Of course all my cars had radios in them and soon there was a place to slide in CDs so I could listen to many different radio stations, or put in a CD and listen to someone who had made one.

I've always been a early to bed person, and many times when I wake up in the middle of the night, I will take my two radios which have ear phones I can plug into and play any one of the two, depending on what is on the radio stations which interest me.  That is were I learned about NPR (National Public Radio).  I soon discovered that NPR offered commentaries and discussed in depth areas which the other stations did not...the modern media like the giants of FOX news, CBS, CNN...etc. would not give the in-depth coverage that NPR does.

Of course there is a wide variety of music and talk shows on the radio,  Many have their dials set to one station that they really like...such as western music...classical...pop songs, etc.

With the influx of modern cell phones and yearly upgrades in almost all electronic devices, the radio business in suffering.  Maybe some day there will only be stories about people who used to tune in to their radio stations and listen to their radios.  I hope not...to me, the radio has been a constant companion, and what is the best feature about ?  I can turn it off any time I want to...

There was some communication between troops as they moved from one location to another; they used battery-fed walky-talkies and could call each other up and see where they should move and the position of the enemy.  The radio man was found by the person in command.  Cranking the pack on one man's back while the other tried to tune into the frequency of another radio was always crucial, and when contact was made, positions could be established and our soldiers knew where to move in order to direct the weapons on the assaulting enemy.

Now we have the great GPS systems which can locate any object with a few feet.  The satellites over head continue to beam almost exact locations for anyone who wants to use them.  I have one myself, but when driving through the night to upstate NY, I was directed by a lady's voice to turn this way and that way, and I found myself driving up a dirt road about 0300 in the middle of no where.  I turned my GPS system off, and finally asking a real person at a gas station where I wanted to go, he laughed and told me I was about 50 miles off course.

But no worry, all these instruments will improve over time, and someday  perhaps my car will drive itself to my desired location while I take a nice nap in the back seat of my car.

Radios...a great invention at the time...by changes do happen, and those who refuse to accept those changes may find themselves out in the middle of no where, looking for a real person to steer them in the right direction.  Take heart my fellow human beings, crows know how to make a straight line from one tree top to another...maybe we should learn to how they do that...