R is for Radio

My earliest recollection of radio or music is in the rent house Mama & Daddy had on Cooks Road.  The beige GE AM radio.  Very similar to this one.  I can recall mama having it playing while she did house work.  I know I heard Petulia Clark singing "Downtown" standing on the linoleum floor by the chrome legged yellow kitchen table.  The only images in my head at the time of downtown at night had no multi-story buildings.  Very few neon lights even.  But still I heard it on the radio and so it must of been true that you "could forget all your worries, forget all your cares" if you went downtown.  It was all brought to me by KJAS thirteen hundred in Silsbee.

Fast forward ten years and the same radio is plugged into an extension chord and sitting on the tin roof of a shed at our house on 1122 so me and two of my friends, Sherry and Kathy, could listen to tunes while we sunbathed on our beach towels slathered in baby oil on top of the tin.  There was Terry Jacks singing "Seasons in the Sun" and Edward Bear singing "Last Song".

Another ten years speeds by.  Mama and Daddy and Sarah are gone.  I'm married to Pete and Polk has moved out.  But that same radio is still in the garage on 1122 playing things like George Straight  with "Amarillo by Morning" and Alabama crooning "she's close enough to perfect for me."

Shift into overdrive.  Another twenty-three years gone down life's road.  Bubba born, grown and now with a family of his own.  Living in that same house.  The garage is falling down upon itself in the back.  Time and the inattention of renters has took its toll.  But the beige AM radio still sits perched on a shelf in the garage, chord plugged into the outlet.....I wonder...could it....still....play?