On The Road With The Wolfman

I don’t remember cars always coming with a radio in them. I mean an AM radio, much less the not-yet-invented AM/FM radio. You turned it on, gave it time to warm up and in came the stations. Oddly enough, there were more stations on your car radio than on the house radio. Car radios had to be more sensitive.

You might be driving in areas where radio reception was not the best and you needed to pull the stations in out of the mud. Out on the open road, your home stations were audible for miles more than usual. My home station, WICC in Bridgeport, was audible for far more miles in the car than on any radio I might have.

They also ran on tubes, so if you were sitting with your Best Beloved, contemplating the trees in the woods, or the ships out at sea (or whatever else you were involved in), you had to be careful not to run the battery down. With today’s efficient radios, you and your beloved can go pretty far.

Although the “cold winter night” really makes no difference, rolling along at night and moving the tuning knob up and down the dial is great. Station after station roll in from places far and farther. WBT, Charlotte; KDKA, Pittsburgh; WOAI, San Antonio; KMOX, St. Louis, WBZ, Boston.

And those Mexican border-blasters just covered all of North America. We listened to the legendary Wolfman Jack (birthname: Bob Smith. More exciting name: The Wolfman).