Essentially, it was just a thin piece of plastic-coated wire, skinnier and much shorter than a strand of stretched-out spaghetti.
A nothing.
A trifle.
Something you might find in a junk drawer, a long-forgotten and abandoned artifact; in fact, if you happened upon it, decades later, you might not ever recognize what it even was.
And that makes you normal.
But not me.
No sir, no maam.
Im so far from normal, II can recite every single vice-president in our nations history.
Backward.
Thats a trick I use, sometimes to try and fall asleep since, as faithful readers probably recall, Im an incurable insomniac, a night person, a rock n roll vampire whose inner clock has malfunctioned in a rather serious way since he was 15 years old.
Back then, Id think to myself, Agnew, Humphrey, Johnson, Nixon, Barkley, Truman, Wallace ... and by the time Id reached Clinton, Burr, Jefferson and Adams, it was almost dawn and Id have to face another day of junior high school having not slept at all.
Yes.
Welcome to my world.
I felt kind of sorry for my father who, having probably discussed the problem with Mom -- who knew a losing proposition when she saw one -- drew the short straw and, with it, the hideous responsibility for rousing me from my broken slumber.
Trust me when I tell you: I was the Muhammad Ali of sleeping in, the greatest, even when I was faking it, not really making it.
Readers with a keen ear for forgotten lyrics might well remember Simon and Garfunkels Faking It, from their 1968 LP titled, Bookends, without doubt the duos best work.
My God, in addition to Fakin It, that record also included At the Zoo, A Hazy Shade of Winter, America and, best of all, Mrs. Robinson.
Jeez.
There are artists out there now, some who have performed at Super Bowls, who will NEVER eclipse in a lifetime what Simon and Garfunkel gave us in that single 12-by-12 shrink-wrapped present.
But I digress.
THE REASON I SO habitually was unable to sleep is a simple matter of tracing the cause to the source.
Which brings us to a long-neglected and sorely underrated invention called the transistor radio. For those of you too young or disconnected to remember, Id like to help you ... but I cant.
Your lives are so wrapped up in social media and invasive computers and smart phones that do everything but actually allow you to talk to another living person that you wouldnt appreciate a single thing Im about to share.
And thats probably for the best.
You have no trouble sleeping, Im sure.
Just another version of the Generation Gap Blues.
Been there.
Done that.
Sang the songs.
Wear the scars.
Back then, I was so sure I was right about everything, but I wasnt.
Getting old has a habit of pointing that out. Youll learn. Trust me. Whats cool and happening now will be hapless history soon and youll defend -- with untoward vigor and extreme prejudice -- your youth, brandishing torches and pitchforks, if necessary, to make it matter.
Nowadays, mere hours from another birthday -- one Ive begged my wife, two siblings and the few friends I have left not to observe -- I dont mind being wrong.
Its the way of the world.
But I wont give up.
Which drags us back to that thin piece of plastic wire, one that connects me to a past thats doubtless best left in yesterdays dusty back alleys.
But if youve made it this far, you deserve to hear the rest.
My transistor radio was about the height and width of a pack of baseball cards, with a depth of perhaps three inches; in short, it would fit quite nicely into a jean jacket pocket.
And now that I think about it, most of my favorite things from that era were not very big: a Super Ball, a Beatles 45, a plastic egg filled with Silly Putty, a rabbits foot, a Hot Wheels car, a key-chain flashlight, a Tijuana Small, a McGovern for President pin, a birthday note from a girlfriend whod soon leave me ... they were all small.
Yep, Despite the size of my hopes and dreams, they ... were ... all ... small.
MY TRANSISTOR RADIO was black with gold highlights. It had a rotary channel changer. It had an internal antenna. Its speaker was the size of a baseball and, best of all, it came with a thin piece of white plastic that included a finely fashioned plug-in prong and ... an earpiece.
That was the whole thing.
The earpiece.
It offered such freedom, such wonderful possibilities.
With it, you could go anywhere.
It kind of resembled, now that I think about it, a perfectly steamed shrimp, about the size of a dime, nothing much to look at, really.
But, once youd found AM stations in Cleveland and Windsor, New York and Chicago, Memphis and New Orleans, St. Louis and Boston, well... that little thin piece of white plastic became a lifeline to music that fed your mind, your soul, your spirit.
Sometimes, the reception was terrible and other nights, it seemed as that nothing in the world could be better than hearing the newest tune from the Cowsills or Archie Bell and the Drells, Vanilla Fudge or Dusty Springfield, the Turtles or the Zombies, the Outsiders or Lesley Gore, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown or the Intruders.
I dont know much.
You know that as well as I do.
But there were moments when I -- huddled under my blanket, a flashlight illuminating the dial, songs soaring in from everywhere -- that I had this feeling that everything I was experiencing might someday matter.
That little shrimp-shaped earpiece, attached to that spaghetti-thin wire, kept me rooted in the real even as something surreal was swirling all around me.
No one could hear something like Shes My Girl or Fire or The Rain, the Park and Other Things or Cowboys to Girls and not be changed significantly, especially when no one else could hear a thing.
It was as if the after-midnight world was all that existed and I wouldnt willingly fall asleep.
Dreams came, after hours, sure.
I remember one vividly.
The mailman had just made his afternoon delivery -- back then, we got two a day -- and I was climbing the front stoop to see if the Sea Monkeys -- another small toy -- Id ordered after collecting and sending off a bunch of cereal box tops to Kalamazoo had arrived. But as I opened the mailbox, I got shot in the back with a dozen poison-tipped arrows and was dead before I hit the pavement.
Then I woke up, vice-presidents receding into the mist.
Hobart, Stevenson, Hendricks, Morton ....
And my father couldnt make me get up on time for grade school, no matter how hard he tried.
What was the point?
Mike Dewey can be emailed at CarolinamikeD@aol.com or snail-mailed at CarolinamikeD@aol.com. Hes on Facebook, too. You might like his page.
For more Life Lines, visit Mike online at www.WoosterWeeklyNews.com.
