As a child in 1949, I had a routine of surreptitiously going into the living room after everyone was asleep to listen to late night radio on our old console. I was fascinated by the lighted dial, knobs, and buttons that would bring sound into the room (albeit very low so as not to alert my sleeping parents). After slowly creeping the tuner across the dial through the static and passing faint voices that seemed to be speaking in tongues, I would suddenly be blasted into a panic as country music filled the room for a few seconds until I could reduce the volume. I had no idea what I was hearing back then, I just knew I was fascinated by the music and the magical cabinet that produced it.
When my father discovered my late-night activity I expected to be reprimanded. Instead, Dad told me he knew the doctor who started the station just one hundred miles east of where he grew up. Unfortunately, I quickly lost interest in his stories, especially the part about him scratching a crystal to pick up early radio broadcasts and then listening through a headset. After all, I was only seven years old and likely very tired.
Fast forward 70-some years. I was reminiscing with Max Morath recently and our rambling conversation drifted to his early
