“The Fine Print”, by M.H. Schrader
WELCOME TO THE AM WASTELAND
(Originally
published September 3, 1997 in the Neighborhood Journal. Posted February 22, 2003.)
I
finally bought another car to replace the one that was totaled a month or so
ago. It’s an older car, it runs good,
and it has air conditioning.
In
fact, it is my father’s car. Not
literally my father’s car per se, because then he wouldn’t have one, but the
exact make and model that at one time my father owned.
Driving
this car has been like deja vu. You
see, I learned to drive on a Caprice almost identical to the one I bought--same
color vinyl interior, same cracking of the dashboard, same V8 workhorse
engine. The similarities do not end
there--like my father’s car, it has the same "in the windshield antenna" type
AM radio. That’s right, AM--no FM.
Unfortunately,
AM radio has changed a lot since I first learned how to drive. You see, back then, well, there used to be
real radio stations on AM. You know,
ones that actually played contemporary music that young folks would want to
listen to. Of course, my Dad always
preferred AM over FM because too many FM stations played that heathen rock
music. (Like the Steve Miller Band, for
example. You know, songs with lyrics
like "House the people, living in the street, shoe the children, with no shoes
on their feet.")
It
used to drive me nuts to go anywhere in my Dad’s car. Here I was, 16 years old, and I had to listen to "easy
music." (He didn’t like to adjust the
dial, and that was his favorite station.)
That probably explains why I never had too much luck picking up girls at
the local McDonald’s where we used to go hang out. "Hey, babe, you want to go for a ride and listen to some Lawrence
Welk?" generally is not a very good pick up line for teenagers.
The
scary thing is that I now find myself listening to "easy music." My gosh, I’m turning into my father! Well, okay, maybe not quite yet. After all, he listened to "easy music" by
choice; I’m listening to it by default.
What is really scary is that the "easy music" station is about the best
station of those in the vast wasteland known as AM radio.
It’s
a shame to see what AM radio has become.
When I bought my first car, it didn’t have FM. But it didn’t need it.
There were still lots of good stations on AM. Not anymore. The choices
are: preachers, old country, talk, and
"easy listening."
Now
I don’t have anything against religion, being a God-fearing Christian and all,
but personally it is rather hard to think about loving my neighbor when the
yahoo just cut me off on the freeway.
Most drivers are not filled with love, or even common courtesy for that
matter, so it seems to me that the preachers’ messages must be garbled or
something when received in a car, because obviously they are not getting
through. As for old country music, well
there’s only so many times that I can here about how someone lost their job,
their wife left them, or both, before depression sets in. And depression, when mixed with the general
anxiety that driving around the highways and byways of Arkansas causes, is not
good for one’s personal well being. Or
others’, for that matter. It’s just too
volatile of a mixture.
After
listening to talk radio for hours upon hours upon hours, I just want to call in
and tell them all to hush up for a while.
I was always told that I should keep my opinions to myself, and frankly
I feel the same rule should apply to radio talk show hosts. If I want someone’s opinion, I will ask for
it, thank you very much. I don’t think
that it’s fair that I should have to listen to an opinion that I don’t really
want to hear just because I have no choice because my car does not have an FM
radio in it. I have rights too, you
know.
Well,
I guess I have the right to just turn the radio off altogether, which I have
been doing a lot more of late. Until I
discovered the "easy listening" station.
After all, it is music. Not sermons. Not opinions that I don’t really care about
of people that I really do not care to know.
Not poetic little ditties of how bad life is. Just nice, easy music.
Maybe
Dad was onto something.