On the Radio - Elizabeth Weld Nolan

The radio is small, square and white. It sits on a shelf above my grandfather’s shoulder and plays the news while we eat supper. Stories of the war in Europe and England paper the background, ``Today, U.S. forces…’’

The radio is in the car, a silver grille set into the dashboard of our black Buick with three holes in the hood. It is hot, and the car is parked in the garage. My older brother and I sit with the carved wooden garage doors flung wide as are the doors of the car, spread like wings for take-off, while he listens to the Brooklyn Dodgers 2,000 miles away. He was a fan before we left New York for New Mexico and follows the team from the only famly radio that can get the broadcast from Dodger Stadium. I am allowed to keep him company if I carry out my job of sitting on the passenger side with my big toe pressed against the little knob of the door light to keepit off. If it is left to shine at the same time the radio is on, it will burn out the car battery and earn us scoldings and trouble from our father. I am not really interested in baseball but I am thrilled to be allowed to keep company with my brother who is three and a half years older and lofty, or charming, as the mood strikes him. This is a major act of sibling kindness.

The little black radio sits on the shelf behind the toilet, far enough so I can’t reach it and electrocute myself as I lie in the bathtub, submerging as much of me as I can below the tepid water. We have a small hot water heater and the hot water runs out quickly, but I am determined to stay there until the end of ``Mr. and Mrs. North’’ and ``The Fat Man’’ whose show is introduced by the sound of him stepping on the scales which tick up and up and up to: 300 pounds!

The radio is on in the great wooden trastero, the cabinet, that holds the first high fidelity set in town, shipped from the East. My father on the couch listening to a recording of Wanda Landowska, the great harpsichordist, playing Bach. My mother, who hates the harpsichord, is in retreat at the other end of the house reading with the bedroom door closed. She is with him through the radio broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera which plays every Saturday afternoon and leaves when he putson Landowska.

The radio is on in my husband’s earbuds as he sits at the Giants game in his season seats, high above the Bay with a view of Oakland, the Bay Bridge, the ferry that brings fans from the north. He likes the commentary of the radio announcer because he hears information about the players and the history of games. At home, he does the same, preferring to hear the radio and see the screen with a lag of a few seconds, the radio telling the plays before they appear on television. He also takes walks with the games playing into his ears, making conversation with him like talking to a dear, absent-minded, slightly deaf person, requiring careful enunciation and sometimes a touch on the sleeve to get his attention. At least, to keep him company, I don’t have to keep my big toe on the light switch.