April 03 2004, 01:39 AM The Night Is Large

One of the wonderful things about shortwave radio are the startling little moments. In general, shortwave is not the cleanest of mediums; there is almost always a deep sub-current of static and wash that the words ride on, and sometimes, if the station is distant or weak, the noise underneath can swell up and founder the station, pulling it away and down into a random fate. I was listening to Radio Netherlands the other day and the station was fighting bravely, coming up for moments and then sinking back down again, a bit like talking to someone on a playground swing. They were running down notes for upcoming programming, and I was treated to hearing this:

shhhzzzhhhhzhzzzMan making love to a watermelon!ssssshhhzzzzz

We do not have a shortwave radio in the car (would that we did!); we rely on more standard signals from the sky, or more often various fixative bits of music we bring along and feed to the thing like an angry god. The other night it was raining hard and dark as we returned home from wherever, running south and west at all allowable speed and perhaps a bit more, alone on the wide unlit road. The road is an incongruous stretch up there, improbably wide as it sweeps and lows through and over largely empty patches of tree and farm. At night, there are few lights visible in the hills, and less so when the rain obscures them in their distance. It is not so strange to be alone on that road at night.

So we went, in our privacy and dry warmth from the wet against the glass in the roof, moving behind two ardent lights, always searching. We let the radio run the conversation for us, looking out into the depth outside and pulled along by the kick drum and the Medina Guitarron, the horns slipping in behind almost unnoticed over the road noise. We made the radio louder and sped on into the darkness, heading towards home, and I am glad that this particular slice of the American dream lives yet.