A tad off the subject. But I’m sitting here listening to an old Art Bell with Elizabeth Clair Prophet. I have zero idea who she is. But in general I find talk radio in the middle of night so sad and lonely. There is something haunting about the voices and bumper music. It is like the world is dark and quiet and turned off. And yet here are these people talking in the night. Sometimes I wonder who is listening? People in their cars, people working, those up sick or with a sick one, some like me with nothing to do.
I remember when I lived in Louisville, Kentucky and used to drive home to East Tennessee for holidays. I'd always leave after work on whatever day preceded the holiday and not arrive home until about midnight. At that time, I listened mostly to gospel music, but if I was tired of my tapes and couldn't find a gospel station on FM, I'd scan the AM dial. At night, I'd get all kinds of stations. I mostly remember trips in the winter when darkness would come quickly. I'd be driving for home around seven o'clock eastern time, but I'd sometimes catch a Chicago station that was still giving traffic reports. The Chicago stations have refined the whole thing to the extent that they seem to be talking in code to anyone unfamiliar with how their traffic reports are given. I had no idea what they were saying, but I always found listening to be interesting for a little bit. Catching hockey games from New York or Boston was always interesting as well. Again, there wasn't the same sense of strangeness that one gets from the after midnight talk show people, but the whole experience of driving in the darkness and hearing those strange stations from far away was interesting.
Bill