Surfing the Stratosphere

I remember staying up all night with my friend John listening to the radio. This would have been in the mid to late 1970s. We didn't just listen. We ran the tuner up and down the AM frequencies and counted how many distant stations we could find from far away.

In a smaller town like Scottsbluff, Nebraska, there weren't a lot of radio stations so the airwaves weren't cluttered with local stuff. At night, there was nothing between us and the sounds which stirred our imaginations from places such as Albuquerque, Oklahoma City, and Denver.

In those days, AM radio was pretty diverse. There was music, of course, news, and talk shows, as well as advertising and weather. The Omaha stations featured farm reports and something about hog futures. Sometimes the smaller town stations had a hospital report where you could actually hear a list of who was in the local hospital that day. HIPAA regulations hadn't yet been invented.

One of the Chicago stations had a great late-night review of the newest porn movies and a psychologist who answered all kinds of questions about sex. Boy did I learn a lot on those nights. In the 70s, I found sex to be a thrilling and exciting subject.

About this time, cable television was starting to catch on. We got it before larger cities because we needed it. Scottsbluff's two local stations couldn't carry all the national network programming, but cable enabled us to get ABC, NBC, and CBS affiliates from Denver, as well as Channel 2 which in those days was known primarily for Blinky the Clown and reruns. Cable fixtures such as MTV and CNN were still a few years away.

In the late 70s, John's parents sprung for HBO. We didn't care that this radical new pay channel showed recent movies with no commercials. We were more interested in the R rated movies and seeing naked boobs. Yes, I know what you're thinking, but for me it was just a phase. That obsession kind of replaced the radio during sleepovers.

Nowadays, it's easy to log onto the internet and listen to a radio station from anywhere in the world. Not that I ever do it. It doesn't seem like such a big deal now when it's so easy. But I remember that magical feeling of awe when I was a kid, listening to sounds from far away. Just because we couldn't yet surf the net doesn't mean our imaginations were stuck in Scottsbluff. We were surfing the stratosphere.