Bitten By The Radio Bug

This ancient image from the late fifties is the first photographic evidence of my interest in playing records.    The idea of playing records on the radio wouldn't come along until I was in junior high school.  After a brief fascination with tape recorders similar to the ones used in the opening scenes of TV's Mission: Impossible, I received my very own GE AM clock radio as a 1966 Christmas gift from my grandmother.   She had a lot to do with my burgeoning broadcasting obsession.   When I felt like getting away from the world, I would explore the sometimes static-filled dial to find stations seldom heard when my parents had control of the radio.   There was some decent radio close by in New Haven, but Hartford had the classic Top 40 battle between WPOP and WDRC.   New York Top 40 station WABC had Dan Ingram, my favorite air personality of all time, but WMCA's "Good Guys" gave them a run for the money.   At night, CKLW  the "Big 8" would boom in from "The Motor City" while WLS and WCFL could also be heard after sunset from Chicago.   Early personality-driven talk radio on stations like WBZ/Boston caught my attention, too.   I eventually knew the call letters of hundreds of stations.   My grandmother influenced my radio interest in another way in 1970 when she arranged a tour of WELI's Radio Towers Park outside New Haven.   She knew the wife of WELI's music director, a wonderful gentleman named Nick Papp.   He showed me around the studios of one of the classier stations in Connecticut.   I was awestruck.   Still, it would be a few more years before I actually take the plunge.   I fell hard for radio, which is why I still try to keep it in my life.