'Round About Midnight

My time of day. The smaller AM radio stations have shut down for the night and the distant stations come in loud and clear. After a while, from my home on the East Coast, I had heard a station on each AM frequency, from 540 all the way up to 1600. That took some doing and it took a lot of hours after midnight.

I did a fair amount of driving then. I worked at some radio stations where I'd do evenings to sign-off and I'd drive back to where I lived. If I didn't have the road to myself, it was nearly so. At one station, I'd occasionally drive the other way, to where my parents lived, leaving the station after its 12:07 a.m. sign off and arriving around 2:45. Me and the truckers. Or, from their point of view, the truckers and that guy in the old VW 'Ghia.

The newspaper I write for is also the one that provides me with copies of the paper for the radio program I do for the blind. Sometimes I go over there when the press run starts around 12:15 a.m.; more often, around 1:30, when the press stops for reloading and it's quiet in what's called the mailing room where the bundles are made up. A noisy newspaper operation becomes still for fifteen minutes while people stand around and chat.

'Round about midnight is the name of a song, but it's also the anthem of the nighthawks among us, the people whose lights are on when you look out your window on a sleepless night, who are the voices on the radio in the wee small hours.