snapshot
It is Monday morning. Very early. When I woke up I was thinking back to a time before cell phones existed. I suppose that the amount of people who have had that experience is diminishing. There are likely some people out there who can't get one, or who are die hard holdouts and won't get one ever. A very large amount of society has been effected by them though. Shit changed when cell phones started being used for more than talking.
So what?
I don't know so what or where to go with that, or why I even typed it really. I'm half awake and typing before the caffeine kicks in. Cell phones were not what I was thinking about anyway. What got me thinking of the time before cell phones was clock radios, actually.
I had one beside my bed since digital was a new thing. About a year ago the one I had just stopped working. Something with the power cord. Sometimes it would stay on for days, and other times it would just randomly shut off until I wiggled the cord. Then it would come back on. I did that a few times before I just gave up and unplugged it. It sat there collecting dust for awhile before I threw it out.
Then I went without one beside the bed for maybe a year or so. I wear a watch that illuminates when I turn my wrist. Phone is beside the bed charging. There is little need for a clock beside the bed. Recently I got a new one though. It has big yellow numbers instead of red. Has a dimmer dial, and an alarm to set that I will never use. Has no radio though.
I remember when the latest technology was a digital clock radio. You could set it to wake you up with a radio station playing. It was actually a pretty nice way to wake up. Not very nice though if for some reason it was set to full volume static. That could cause you to wake up the same as if someone had started a chainsaw right next to your head.
There was a radio station that we could tune into. Oh man, even that is a weird thing to say now. Tune into. You had to be close to the radio station to be able to hear it clearly. So? So now you can listen to almost any radio station on the planet with the computer in the palm of your hand.
The station I used to tune into for my clock radio alarm was an easy listening station. It was not just soft rock or classical or anything like that. It was all elevator music 24/7. Popular songs of the time slowed down and had no vocals or drums or anything. Soothing. Smooth. It was great for the anxious child that I was. Now that I'm thinking about that radio station it reminds me of the other amazing feature of the clock radio... sleep mode. I would also go to sleep with that station playing. It would shut itself off in twenty minutes, or whatever.
And now I find myself thinking of my father and my older brother. My father worked in the factory I ended up working in for 20 years. After I dropped out of high school he hired me, and was my supervisor there.
He also had a woodworking shop in the garage at home, and he used to build things like shelves, workbenches and bookcases for employees to use in the factory. My brother and I used to help with delivering those things if they were a reasonable size for a child to lift and move. We would go at night when there was no one there. It was me holding the doors and them doing the lifting and moving. Funny to think that I was going to the factory for many years before I started working there. It was pretty exciting to go there at night when I was a kid.
One night came to mind. A snapshot really. A big old 80's sedan with a little trailer attached to be back of it. A cabinet of some kind secured in the trailer with a rope. Drifting down a narrow highway in the dark. A father with his two young sons. My brother in the passenger seat in the front. Me in the back. Our three faces lit up by the dim glow of the dashboard lighting. A guess at how old we were would be maybe 12 and 11. Maybe younger. My father would have been about 20 years younger than I am now. That elevator music radio station was playing. It came time for a break between songs, and it had a little tune for the call letters. C-H-A-Y, Huronia's welcome sound. (seeee-eeeee aayyych ayyyy whyyyyy... huuuuroniahhhhss welllcommm sound). My brother and father sang it out obnoxiously loudly and out of tune when the radio played it, and then we all laughed.
I have to get ready for my stupid job. Fuck Monday.
At least a long weekend is coming, and vacation is now only a month away.