“You think you’ve been a nymphomaniac for fourteen years? Why cure it?”
When I started operating farm machinery, radios were a luxury item. I can remember the radio I screwed to the side of cab on our White combine. I could only receive two stations, and the combine cab had no insulation at all, so the radio was always covered with bean dust at the end of the day. The only station I could listen to with my AM antenna with it’s cable snaked out of the window was a country music station out of Fort Dodge, Iowa.
As it turned out, the late 70’s were the last time I listened to country music. Somebody gave me tickets to a Florida-Georgia Line concert a few years ago. Although the concert was in Missouri, I’m sure you could hear it on the Florida Georgia border. I lasted about fifteen minutes before the assault on my ear drums and my intelligence drove me from the concert.
I can still remember the first time I listened to Rush Limbaugh. It was really something quite different, and Limbaugh was, at least in the first few years, truly an amazing entertainer. So, although I never made it through the whole show he did manage to fill a few hours every week. I listened to a lot of public radio as well, particularly on the weekends. I’m sure I’ve heard almost every episode of the car guys and I’ve listened to a lot of Prairie Home Companion, although I often found Garrison Keillor a bit on the smug side. Late at night on Saturday nights the only radio station I could receive after 10 p.m. was the local public radio station playing a selection of what they called “smooth jazz.” Which is to jazz as light beer is to beer.
For a while there was a guy on Kansas City stations named Dr. Marshall Saper, a psychologist who took calls and gave advice on the air. He’s responsible for the quote at the head of this article, and I passed many a pleasant hour listening to his radio show.
Now, I’ll leave it to the professional societies to decide about the ethics of diagnosing mental problems in between commercials for auto dealers and clips of the “Chicken Man.” (That reference, by the way, will date me for those of my generation.) Anyway, I’m not sure it helped anybody’s mental health, but it made for hours of delightful listening for me, and as it turns out, a lot of farmers in our area. I once had a surreal conversation with a farmer 20 years my senior about the differences between situational depression and the chemical kind, and we all shared our favorite stories of the tortured souls who shared their stories each morning. And yes, it has occurred to me that this reflects somewhat badly on me, as discovered tendencies toward voyeurism of which I’m not altogether proud.
Saper had a mordant wit, and in his defense quickly sorted out those in real danger to themselves and handled the calls off the air. I’m sure some of the calls were not altogether on the level, but they were almost always interesting and sometimes uproariously funny. Saper’s show ended when he committed suicide the day before he was to appear in court in a messy civil suit. A tragedy rich in irony, I suppose, but I sure miss him when the days get long behind the wheel.
For years the local radio station filled its morning with a stable of ladies who spent hours talking about farm life in the days gone by and exchanging recipes. One of the shows was called Kitchen Klatter, which should tell you everything you need to know. Time passes, farm wives spend less time in the kitchen, and the station decided it was time to update its format. They proceeded to put on a nationally syndicated show hosted by a therapist who called herself Dr. Joy. I gave her a listen, and on the very first day, in the first hour of the three hour show, she received a call from a new bride who was having, shall we say, a disagreement in the bedroom with her new husband, a disagreement which she described in great anatomical detail. Dr. Joy advised her to: “imagine it’s a carrot.”
The station broke for a commercial, and Dr. Joy was never heard from again. I can only imagine ladies of a certain age all across southwest Iowa who normally tuned in for the latest and hottest take on jello salad with marshmallows and celery and instead found themselves in the midst of a discussion about young love.
Technology changes, sometimes for the better, and my listening choices are now much wider than ever before. I listen to podcasts by some of my favorite writers, investment podcasts, and when I choose music, I can design my own station from my playlist, with no commercials. Better yet, I can listen to the Cardinals and the Tigers without the static that so often accompanied Jack Buck or Mahlon Aldridge on the radio. I’ll let others talk about the sociological and political implications of listening to things perfectly suited to my own set of political, economic, and musical biases, while I enjoy listening to the things that I enjoy the most.
I grew up on a farm near Fort Dodge so you must have been listening to KVFD - I didn’t think its signal carried as far a Missouri. WHO in Des Moines, on the other hand, could be hear everywhere.