No bigger
than a deck of cards, my transistor radio was a wormhole encased in white plastic.
After “lights
out” when kids like me were supposed to be getting a “good nights sleep” to be ready
to jump on the school bus in the morning, I didn’t. Instead, I stuffed my portal
to the hustle of Broadway traffic and bright lights under my pillow, pressing one
ear up tight. In that pillowed dark, surrounded by quiet, a full orchestra of
life played surreptitiously, just for me.
My secret liaison.
Jean Shepherd
was my guy. A radio personality and humorist, broadcasting nightly on WOR out
of New York City. He told me stories, took me on adventures, showed me a party
that was going on out there, right now, beyond that closed bedroom door.
If Mom had walked
down the hallway, passing my bedroom at night, if she tiptoed on stocking feet
and listened at my door very carefully, she may have heard a hushed laughter coming from inside.
She would think I was lost in a happy dream, like the family dog had been an
hour before, chasing squirrels from the TV couch, running upside down, straining
to catch an elusive gray tail that flipped at her so maddingly in daylight
hours.
I was in pursuit
of bigger game, driven by a hunger for the world itself. Everything beyond those four walls waved at me
defiantly, like that squirrel’s tail, just out of reach.
Fourteen
years old, eager for all the tastes life had to offer, I had no time to waste
in sleep.
Gene
Shepherd and I had places to go.
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