My early childhood sucked.
That's not a whine or even a complaint and it's not an attempted excuse to explain away why I have turned into a curmudgeonly old guy at the age of sixty.
From my age of reasoning through 1974, my life just pretty much sucked. I didn't realize it at the time. I just thought everybody had a drunk for a father and an undereducated mother who was trapped in a soulless marriage.
Most of you who know me already know the details. Mom and I got out when I was sixteen, me with less emotional scars than her.
The bottom line? It was what it was.
As an only kid, I escaped into my own world. I would schedule and play entire seasons of an imaginary basketball league on the driveway in front of our house, including an intricate system of each of the eight teams having eight players, each taking precise number of shots. I kept league stats and everything.
I was also into books and would beg borrow and steal every book I could get my hands on. At one time, at the age of about 12, I had an operating lending library out of my house on South O Street. All the kids in the neighborhood could "check out" books and if they were late bringing them back, there was a nickel per day fine.
And I had my radio. Thank God for my radio. it was one of those bulky, AM/Shortwave monster combos that plugged into the wall. I still have it.
I honestly think the Old Man stole it off a box car when I was about eight, because it was brand new when I got it. Which would have been in 1965 or early 1967. And we wouldn't have had the money to buy it. The Stag, Lone Star, Old Milwaukee, and Pabst Blue Ribbon ate up most of the extraneous household budget.
Radio was my escape. Late at night when the atmospheric conditions were right I could listen to KDKA in Pittsburgh, WLS in Chicago, KOA from Denver, KMOX in St. Louis as well as tuning in shortwave conversations from around the world.
Late at night, with darkness all around me -- both literally and figuratively -- I could click on the radio. It took me to all those places and away from a two-bedroom house I hated to places and people far away.
It scarred me for life. To this day I go to sleep every night-not just some nights--with a radio tuned to AM under my pillow. My long-suffering wife can attest to that fact.
We had been married about seven years when I stumbled across some crazy guy on a station out there in the netherworld talking about UFO's, aliens, Bigfoot, the lost city of Atlantis, ghosts, demons, exorcism and everything else that a guy who already has insomnia probably shouldn't be listening to.
Art Bell. Coast to Coast. Whether I believed the stuff or not--and whether Art Bell did either --is of no consequence.
I was hooked. I have listened to the program without fail for probably 90% of my adult life. Art went crazy back in 2000 and "retired" and there have been other host over the years. George Noory is the guy now. I would listen if they made Deputy Dawg the host. It's ingrained into my being.
Art Bell was also a big "ham" radio guy and he would give out times he would be broadcasting on the shortwave, and I even listened to that.
It was the early 90's before I started working fulltime in the media. Television and radio. newspapers, etc. Back in 1987 I was -ahem-"between jobs" and as working as a night auditor at a local motel to pay the bills.
Art Bell gave me a night I will never forget. I went to work at 11:30, started the night audit at Midnight and was usually done by Midnight. I spent the rest of the night yawning and listening to Art Bell.
This night, Art starts the show by saying he wants to do something "totally different". He had been talking for a couple of weeks about some book that said the Anti-Christ had been born somewhere overseas in the early 80's. He invites the Anti-Christ to "call-in if your listening". Over the next three hours, thirty-seven people call in claiming to be bringer of the Apocalypse, the stablemate of the Four Horsemen and the purveyor of the End Times.
Scared the hell out of me. Not so much that I thought one of these loonies was the Anti-Christ. The fact that thirty-seven people actually thought they were and Art just sat there and talked to each of them like he was exchanging an apple pie recipe was what scared me.
I believe a lot of stuff -- especially when they talk about the JFK assassination -- and then there are some nights when I tell Katrina that everyone on the show is insane, including the frequent guest hosts. Chemtrails, alien abductions and a lot of the cryptozoology and conspiracy stuff makes me roll my eyes right before I go to sleep.
But it's always entertaining as hell.
Art Bell died on Friday. On Friday the 13th. At the age of seventy-two. And so far, just like everything else in the life of s renegade host from Pahrump, Nevada, his death is shrouded in mystery.
As Art was wont to say....I ain't saying it was aliens. But it was aliens.
Operator W6088 has gone 10-7 and will be 10-3 for the rest of eternity.
I believe I grieve his death more than I did the Old Man's.