I once bought a radio from a junk shop in Carlotta, California. It was an old wooden round-top style with gold fabric on the front and one giant, round dial in the middle. It looked so American and full of history I didn’t care if it worked or not. I imagined families sitting around the radio listening to President Roosevelt’s weekly radio address. Or listening to the news of the first war to end all wars. I imagined radio shows like War of the Worlds coming through the speaker and scaring the shit out of Carlottians. It seemed so romantic. I paid $5 for it and I felt like I got the deal of the century.
I was excited to bring it home. I had just rented a funky old Victorian house and was enjoying decorating it with thrift store finds like this. The first thing I did was plug it in. On one frequency it made noises like an airplane engine. That was the only sound it ever made. I found some furniture polish and gave it a once over. When I got the dust off I noticed it had many tiny holes, like pin pricks. Almost too small to see. I imagined an old grandmother, hand sewing some undergarment in her rocking chair. She would be listening to her favorite radio soap opera and when her least favorite character would come on she would lean forward and stab at the radio with her sewing needle, whispering you little bitch, before leaning back to resume sewing. Giving just a slight glance over the top of her glasses making sure grandpa hadn’t heard.
I put the radio on top of a small table in the corner of the dining room. Friends would compliment me on it when they saw it. But being a single man in my 20’s I wasn’t much of a cleaner. The radio would always get really dusty. I thought maybe it was the rounded top that caused the dust to collect around the base. How was I to know?
Circumstances in my life changed and I needed to move to the City for a while. I didn’t want to lose the great deal I had on that house so I found someone to sublet for the summer, which turned into two, and eventually three. Before I left I moved much of my furniture, including the radio, into the basement.
Like they do, circumstances changed again and I left the City. What a relief it was to come home to my beautiful little Victorian. When I went to haul the radio back up from the basement I noticed the significant pile of fine brown dust around the base of it. The pin holes, which I remembered as being perhaps dozens, where now thousands, hundreds of thousands even. So many that when I touched the wooden side of the radio it gave way beneath my finger. I thought I’d bring the radio out into the light of the back yard and take a better look. I went to pull it off the shelf and felt the whole thing collapse. The weight of the speaker and the fuses forcing the front wall to fall in on itself. Underneath the thin varnish every wooden part had turned to dust, a large plume of which covered me and filled the basement. What a shame, I thought, I liked that radio. I scooped it into a trash can.
As I was sweeping the last of the dust off the shelf I noticed the wall behind it had a few pin holes in it. A few feet away there were more. I got on a chair and looked closely at the floor joists above my head. More holes than I could count. I followed the joists to the center of the basement, to the main beam holding up the house. It looked like teeny tiny Swiss cheese. The center post, I noticed now, had a heavy ring of light brown powder around it’s base. I touched it with my finger, gently, and heard a crinkle, like a small dry twig snapping. I backed out of the basement room and shut the door. I saw pin holes in the door and the trim. As I walked around the house I saw more, in the siding and in the windows.
I called my landlord that day, and told him I needed to move again.
Paul, you just got back.
I know, I told him, but circumstances have changed.
No comments:
Post a Comment