GE Keyring Radio
GE Model P-850D keyring transistor (1964)
Can a Game Be Literature?

Mark's Pages

April 21, 2004:

Childhood fascination for transistor radios.

Sense of touch: cold, metal-smooth, with a finely-machined grating over the speaker which would catch your skin hairs if you rubbed it along your arm.

Sense of smell: electrical, like sparks and machine oil.

And the sound: thin, tinny, yet filled with excitement. All that first summer I thought "Like a Rolling Stone" and "I am a Rock" were by the same person. But then there were "Heart Full of Soul", "Satisfaction", "Get Off of My Cloud", "California Girls", "Help!", "Here Comes the Night", and my personal favorites, "Little Red Riding Hood" and "Snoopy Versus the Red Baron". I wanted to climb inside the little box to hear better. You knew there was a monster sound behind those skinny AM transmissions. If only you could get close enough to it!

Mine had a wrist strap, sort of a pale blue-gray color, plastic, very sweaty under the San Diego sun. It was attached to me, like the hand of an inseparable lover, like my camera is today. If I still had it I'd leave it next to my bed, more for its smell than its sound. For me transistor radios are forever the smell of rock and roll music.

I still had it in middle school, when the songs were by CCR and Carly Simon and T-Rex, and the big Stones number was "Brown Sugar".

You never forget your first love.