Radio

I'm remembering radio.

When I was growing up in North Idaho, the only radio stations we could pick up were from Spokane, WA and for some reason a station in Vancouver BC. By pick up, I mean if you were in exactly the right location to pick up the faint single being bounced off the tower on Black Mountain. On the North Bench you could pick up the Vancouver BC station with minimal static, and I remember hearing Foreigner's Hot Blooded for the first time while driving with my brother through the darkness on our way to somewhere. We had an ancient old radio from somewhere out in the barn, and for the most part it only squawked, but on one clear spring day it let us hear Glen Campbell singing Rhinestone Cowboy.

Then KBFI happened. Bonners Ferry finally had a tiny weak little AM station, and music blasted into my life. KBFI played a mix of everything the program director thought anyone in Bonners Ferry might want to hear, regardless of age or interest. A three song set could easily include Kenny Rogers, Andy Gibb and Frank Sinatra. Why not? Someone was bound to like something. The A&W also had a jukebox, and to this day I can't hear Kansas's Blowing in the Wind without smelling a a Papa Bear and onion rings.

Music was an avenue into the world that I had not ever experienced. Suddenly, for the first time, I had some small thing in common with other people. Knowing the same songs was almost like being related. One Christmas we got Realistic tape decks from Radio Shack, and after that browsing the music racks at Tafts became a ritual. We listened to Fleetwood Mac, and The Eagles, and The Moody Blues, and Al Stewart, and Anne Murray, and Air Supply, and Supertramp, and Steely Dan, and Loggins and Messina with almost religious fervor, playing the songs over and over until we knew every word.

A few years ago, when I was working on a project that seemed to need a blast of sense memory, I created a playlist on my Ipod which is an almost exact duplicate of a week's worth of music on KBFI. I threw everything on there, everything which would take me to a place where I could realistically create the world of Bonners Ferry in the late 1970s and early 1980s. And today, for the first time in I don't know when, I punched it up.

I had already milked the cow, and I had already collected the eggs. The pig was fed, and the chickens watered. I needed to make bread because the students are coming back tomorrow, so I figured as long as I had to do that, I might as well get a jump on tomorrow. So I took my ipod down to the school, and got to work.

The first thing that happened is I didn't work, because I had to clap my hands and shake my ass and Mick dance like a maniac all over the kitchen to Start Me Up.

Then I got the sponge started for the bread, and while that was working I mixed up the ingredients for Parmesan Chicken. While Carly Simon sang about Jesse, I mixed the wet and dry ingredients for Porridge Rolls, and then Gordon Lightfoot was doing Old Dan's Records while I went to the root cellar for potatoes.

The bread was ready to be kneeded, and Michael Jackson's Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough, Steve Miller doing Fly Like an Eagle, and Trouble by Cat Stevens helped get me through that. I set the bread to rise and started making brownies while ELO blasted through Living Things, and Linda Rondstadt wandered through Blue Bayou, and Supertramp Took the Long Way Home, and Mac Davis warned Don't Get Hooked on Me.

I got the stuff out for expedition check-in and lined it up on the porch, and put the students' names on the check-in lists as Rickie Lee Jones sang about Chuck E's in Love and The Eagle's bemoaned Your Lyin' Eyes, and the Beatles sang The Ballad of John and Yoko. Christ you know it ain't easy...you know how hard it can be...the way things are going...they're gonna crucify me.

The timer went off and I gave the bread a second knead and then formed the loaves. Jackson Brown sang Before the Deluge and John Denver sang Matthew, and Nazareth sang Love Hurts. The brownies came out of the oven, and I went downstairs to start the woodburning furnace. Through the grate I could hear Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty wailing Stop Dragging My Heart Around.

Back upstairs the bread went in, and I went back to the root cellar for a jar of green beans. As I came back through the door 38 Special was telling me to Hold on Loosely which gave way to Boz Scaggs doing the Lido Shuffle.

Then the Beatles again. The Long and Winding Road. As I waited for the bread to finish baking, I thought about The Long and Winding Road. That leads me to your door.

To come full circle I would have to be back in Idaho, but if I were, I could not be doing anything that so exactly duplicates the experiences of my parents when they were my age. When I listened to these songs, I was 11, 12, 13, 14 years old. The rythmn of life in that place was the only rythmn I knew. And I hated it.

I wanted to faster staccato rythmn of my cousins, I wanted to be in the middle of everything. I didn't want to be in a quiet place.

But today, as I salted the butter I had just churned, from cream from the cow I had just milked, smelling the baking bread I had just made, I became still in my gratitude for the experience I am having. I think nothing could be more appropriate, for all the roads I have traveled to have lead me to this place, where for this time, I do the simplest things with the greatest satisfaction. Yesterday I struggled mightily with passages from my book, untangling things I had written before and seeking a new way to say something important. That is my love and my soul and my breathing, but today...today was simpler.

And it was the music. It was the recollection of a time and a place and the people who inhabited it. It was a memory of Mom and Dad and Susan Hepler and yeah, you Steve, and Scott Simpson and Dean McFalls and Mac Schneider, and Dave Ottavi and Dan and Pachy Larson and Barb and Charlie McCrum and all these people who did for their time, what I am doing now. Living a simple life, albeit among sometimes complicated people, and I became so aware of the legacy and the importance and the great gift I have been blessed to experience, and the sense of having shared with those people I named above, something truly special.

So with my music and my milking and my baking and my fire building I come to the end of the day, and I am grateful for KBFI and the jukebox at A&W and even that scratchy distant radio station in Vancouver. The music I heard then is the music I heard today. And the music ultimately allowed me to be in two places in two different times doing the exact same thing. And in that, I realized, not for the first time, but at an important time, the amazing beautiful gift I have been given.

So here's to radio!