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Shannon’s Broadcast by Shannon Huniwell |
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There’s supposed to be significantly evocative symbolism in this month’s title. Actually though, “Unthawing a Frozen Moment in Radio’s Dynamic Ice Floe” probably sounds very much like a wordy topic of some state university professor’s dissertation, so I’d better just confess why we’ll be focusing on a local broadcast snippet from an otherwise non-descript late fall afternoon in 1971. It all began last winter when, from the cozy vantage point of a friend’s waterfront home, I noticed sheets of ice flowing down the river. There were hundreds of frozen pieces in diverse shapes and lengths, each interesting and every one soon gone from view via the otherwise invisible, unrelenting riparian current. This sight would have been completely forgotten had I not, a day or so later (while looking for those previously promised QSL cards for the “Shannon” column), found a tattered file folder containing two old letters. Perhaps I should throw my father into the mix here, as he was the catalyst for these documents. Dad had always suggested we “write an informational request” to a radio station whenever some school assignment called for me or my brother to practice our sentence structure, grammar, and writing skills. He’d help by dictating some now seemingly outdated polite business language like, “Would you be so kind as to send me one of your fine station coverage maps or other attractive promotional literature?” Close Your Eyes, Open Radio-TV Experimenter, And Point While certainly not observing scientific methodology, choosing a station to contact was always a fun part of the process. Dad would flip through Radio-TV Experimenter until hitting some random page of its White’s Radio Log, and then tell the letter writer to close his or her eyes and point. Whatever set of call letters the fickle finger landed upon would determine which lucky broadcast outlet got our juvenile request.
My brother magically motioned to a midwestern
daytimer, while I somehow selected a historically tiny Maryland AM. My
brother barely recalls the recipient of his long-ago assignment, but
fondly remembers our folks being so impressed with the station’s generous
response to their son’s simple hand-scratched note that they saved it in
that folder where mine was also deposited, albeit rather matter-of-factly,
a decade later. |
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