I came across the greatest thing I had as a kid that didn’t involve hits, runs and errors. My General Electric 6 transistor radio.
There’s no small irony that I found it buried in a box days after I took my latest digital dip. I got a smartphone. A Droid Eris. I am amazed at what it is capable of, and I’ve only scratched the surface of what it can do.
By height and width, if not depth, they’re about the same size.
But for all the things that Droid can do, it will never please me like that little radio.
It let me listen to Carl deSuze and Dave Maynard on WBZ, and the boss jocks on WRKO. It let me listen for school cancellations on WKOX without waking anyone up. And best of all, tucked under the pillow, it let me fall asleep to Curt Gowdy calling Red Sox games and Johnny Most hacking out Celtics play-by-play.
I have a nice stereo system, and my iPod is still a wonder to me. Right now, the Droid is more toy than tool, but that will evolve.
But that GE transistor radio. That was the best.
The Brooks File 
I have a similar radio (newer version) in my kitchen. It’s the perfect size to sit on the window sill above the sink to listen while I do the dishes or cook.
I had to search high and low for one and finallly found it….at an estate sale for $2 (batteries included.)
I, too, have an iPod, but it’s not the same. I LIKE hearing the DJs come in every now and then with a factoid or news or weather.
I would have liked to save the radio, but it was encrusted in stuff that didn’t look or smell healthy.
On a day when the Dallas Cowboys owner announced that “Cowboy” Stadium will be blown up by an 11 year old, on a day where the news out of New York City is the demolition starting on “Yankee” Stadium (even though the real Yankee stadium failed to exist after the renovation i the 1970’s), it’s nice to see and hear about that old transistor radio! Thanks Gerry, I needed that!
And Boston…please don’t ever tear down Fenway Park!
Some things are hard to comprehend, aren’t they?
I wish I could find my transister radio. That had been my best friend, had gotten me into ‘worlds’ that to this day music will bring me to.
I would be listening to WDRC, Dick Heatherton who at that time lived up the street from us while we lived on Baltic Street. Music was my savior – it made me block out the bad things and transformed me into the song that was playing on the radio.
I admit I don’t have a ‘Droid’ yet, not sure that I need it at this time, but I do have family members who have it and love it. I hope you get the same pleasure out of your Droid as your GE radio did.
The old radios picked up AM stations very well. The pick-up now on a lot of AM car and portable radios is not that good. Sox and Huskies aren’t on FM.
Bill, depending on where you are…you can pick up Sox games at 103.7 (WEEI-FM in Providence) and 105.5 (WVEI-FM in Springfield.)
In CT, it’s all AM:
WQUN 1220AM New Haven
WTIC 1080AM Hartford
WILI 1400AM Willimantic
WINY 1350AM Putnam
WGCH 1490AM Greenwich
Bill
Yes. AM isn’t what it was. I remember listening to Sandy Beach on WKBW in Buffalo. Joey Reynolds, too. WLS in Chicago. Faraway stations my little blue transistor picked up as I fell asleep in the 60s. These days you can’t pick up WTIC AM as you drive through Glastonbury.
Nice post, Gerry.
Thanks, Terry. Every now and then, on the way home from work, I still dawdle across the AM dial to see what’s out there.
Too much syndication, not enough local. But it’s all about the $$$.
Speaking of Joey Reynolds and Sandy Beach: they both mad the rounds of Hartford radio in the 60’s: Joey Reynolds at WPOP and Sandy Beach at WDRC. Those stations were popular way stations for DJ’s on their journies to major markets.