Author:
Boyd Percy
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Date Posted: 02:47:52 08/04/13 Sun
>It's after Midnight, it's been a long day and there's
>a good reason I have to be up for another hour. (It
>involves towels in the dryer, if you must know.)
>
>This evening my wife and I drove up to a small
>speedway we particularly enjoy going to on nice warm
>summer Saturday evenings. Though the fields in the
>various heats and features were mostly on the smallish
>side, only one race was a real yawner. I took a camera
>with me, and for a while the light was just fantastic,
>so I got some good photos. Not a bad way to spend an
>evening.
>
>Usually when my wife and I go somewhere we take her
>car. Now, she's one of those people who has to have
>the radio going before they start the vehicle. I'm
>not; driving time is thinking time for me, and I find
>most radio rather distracting at best. I can stand a
>little light background music so long as there are no
>words in English to bother me, so my car radio will go
>months between being turned on.
>
>Unfortunately, my wife likes to listen to public
>radio, and not the kind of public radio stations that
>play a lot of classical music, either. Sometimes the
>news feature stories are mildly interesting but I'd
>rather not hear them. But we made it to the track not
>much the worse for wear. Also unfortunately, we got to
>the track just before "Prairie Home Companion" came
>on. That show is an exception to my rule, but my wife
>detests it. Go figure.
>
>The races went a little late, and it was just before
>eleven when we got heading home, to a particularly
>stupid comedy cut coming over the speaker. We couldn't
>have been more than a couple miles from the track when
>the next show came on: a rebroadcast of today's BBC
>World Program, which even my English son-in-law refers
>to as being "normally a bit dry" in true British
>understatement. The announcer started out, "In this
>hour we will examine the effects that the re-election
>of Robert Mugabe will have in Rhodesia . . ."
>
>Now, I'm sure that somewhere in the listening range of
>the radio station there must have been someone who
>would be mildly interested in that topic, but I'd bet
>good money that wouldn't include anyone driving home
>from a rather good short-track race in rural Michigan.
>There are limits, and Robert Mugabe is well beyond
>them. I started fiddling with the radio, and finally
>found the "seek" button. The first good station I came
>to had some pretty good music on it, although I find
>it difficult to describe. Light, but with a good beat,
>and somehow interesting; the singing was odd but
>totally unintelligible.
>
>"What’s this?" my wife asked.
>
>"Beats me," I said. "But it beats hell out of Robert
>Mugabe." We listened to the next couple cuts, one of
>which wasn't bad, sort of putting me in mind of
>old-time British Invasion music, and one that had an
>obnoxious, heavy beat and someone of indeterminate sex
>yowling like a cat in heat. Finally, the station
>identifier came on, a whispered "Alternative" with
>lots of reverb. That was it: an alternative rock
>station. I didn't even know we had one of them around
>here.
>
>Now, this wouldn't be my normal listening choice, but
>I was tired and a little light classical, if I could
>have found it, would probably have put me to sleep. It
>turned out that maybe one out of five cuts was pretty
>interesting, if not something I would listen to on a
>regular basis. Most of the rest were really not my cup
>of tea. Every now and then there would be something so
>obnoxious that I would have been tempted to hit the
>"seek" button again, except that every time I started
>to consider it, the words "Robert Mugabe" came to mind
>and I would decide to endure to the next tune.
>
>But the neat thing was there was only about one
>two-minute block of commercials in the hour drive
>home, and believe me, radio commercials can send my
>finger to the "seek" button just about more quickly
>than anything else. (And, for those not familiar with
>Public Radio, the "non-commercials" they have are
>often worse than the regular kind.) These commercials,
>well, they were hard to even tell they were
>commercials at first.
>
>So, all in all an interesting experience, and the
>right music to keep me awake on a long drive. Besides,
>once in a while it's probably good to get out of our
>comfort zones and see what else might be out there. I
>might even tune into the station again sometime,
>perhaps on another trip home from a race. After all,
>it's a safe bet that the words "Robert Mugabe" will
>never be mentioned . . .
>
>The dryer ought to be done by now and there's a pillow
>calling me.
>
>-- Wes
I'm with you on this matter. I could easily get along without a radio or CD player in my car. In the three years I've owned my car, I believe the only time the radio has been turned on is when my wife is in it. Since my response time has slowed down as I've gotten older, I try to avoid distractions while I'm driving.
I noticed when your wife asked a question, she said, "What's this"? Most of the characters in your books use the same phrasing. Generally, in the same circumstances, I would say, What's that? I wondering if that's a regional variation of American English, Northern or Midwestern versus Southern. While I asking, what does the Yopper term, Holywha, mean?
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