The Big Broadcast, delayed
One of my most notable pieces of furniture... well, okay... my only notable piece of furniture... is a wooden Zenith console radio.

Pre-WWII materials, glass and brass and wood. Beautiful walnut veneers with marqueted inlays. It was a top-of-the-line model when sold new in 1941 for the kingly sum of $130. But wow, what a bargain! War-jittery folk capable of the investment could effortlessly listen to American and "foreign," police, shortwave, aviation and marine broadcasts with pushbutton tuning. They could lock in the faint gasps of European nations under siege through use of a "signal-seeking" tuning eye! And pull those thunderous Churchillian speeches down from the stratosphere through a ridiculously complex-looking box antenna array called a "Wavemagnet!"

I bought it years ago for twenty bucks, and while the cabinet needed lots of work, I found the damn thing was in playing condition. The guy who sold it to me said it was "shot," but from Day One with me it worked. It sounded as good as it must have when that 15-inch conical speaker with "Radiorgan" tone controls was replicating The Great Gildersleeve, Bing Crosby, or Edward R. Murrow. I cleaned it up, refinished it, replaced the dry-rotted insulation with fresh wiring, and it's been a prized possession ever since.

But, alas, one move too many silenced this beast. I plugged it in when I first got to Springfield, and as the set warmed up, snap crackle pop yikes. I always figured I'd kill it eventually, feeling fortunate it ever played for me to begin with. It's still a beautiful piece of furniture, I reasoned, though I was sad nonetheless.

And of course, I came to miss the opportunity for transporting to a time before mine. It was comforting when I could occasionally switch on that functioning antique, sit in a darkened room with the dial and tubes aglow, and call up some obscure station playing old shows or music. I came to realize my ritual was sort of an antidote to my massed array of Dolby 5.1 surround sound, CD/DVD, 30" video screen, and etc. And perhaps, on a larger scale, to my stressed out technologically driven life in general. Must be something like what the kids have in mind, resurrecting those old 8-bit video game systems.

So I dug into sir Zenith, took it apart, found that the tuner assembly had indeed shorted. It took some Internet research and some cash, but I tracked down a replacement. Bought it, got it, puzzled over it.

I just finished putting the radio back together last night (with the anachronistic addition of some Radio Shack fusible links, thanks to some gratis advice from the guy who sold me the part). A month of work, there, summarized in a single sentence. I'm not electronically inclined, even for the relatively simple schematics of early radio receivers. I've no business doing any of this stuff unsupervised.

Early this morning came the moment of truth.

Plugged it in, turned it on, warmed it up. Fire extinguisher at my side. Hand on the power cord, ready to jerk it out of the wall as soon as the set started shooting anticipated sparks. But none of that happened. The glowing things glowed, and soothing static issued from the cloth grille.

I bravely stepped forward to touch the thing, still not believing I might have pulled this off successfully.

I spun the dial, heard the fzzt-fzzt of stations whirling by. Landed on some syndicated talk radio show, booming in loud and clear. And just as I was ready to do a happy Snoopy dance for myself, the radio said, "p-TING!" and went silent.

p-TING? What?!?

Why, it's only a blown tube. Ha! Piece of cake... 30 years ago! They're rare as golden eggs now, of course. More Internet searches, less cash, and more silence await me. And I have the feeling this is only the beginning. 1:08:16 PM    comment []trackback []