Once upon a time in the fifties, Vin and Red went to New York city and brought me back a portable RCA Victor radio. My portable radio became the talk of the neighborhood just as my family’s possession of an eight inch teevee had been the talk five years before and our Admiral 4 speed (16,45,33,78) hi-fi system would become three years later.
My playmates were AMAZED that I could bring my radio into the backyard and it still would work. The radio was a three shades of brown rectangular object with its antenna tucked into its handle. The radio weighed about four pounds,
I always kept that radio close, whether I was indoors or outdoors, awake of asleep.
Vin made a radio stand for me in my bedroom. I’d lie in bed and listen to Red Wing games and rock and roll. Sometimes, I’d fall asleep with the radio rocking or Winging. Music and baseball became the backdrop of my dreams and thus, the soundtrack of my subconscious.
One night, I was soundtracking some serious rocking’ into my raped eye movement. The dream became lucid. I got control over my subconscious for the first time in my current memory. I knew where the music was coming from even as I dreamt about it. The music was coming from the radio on my stand six feet above my head. I dreamt that I had the coolest (and only) portable radio on the block. I dreamt that Be Boppa Lula would continue until I somehow wrapped my arm around the power cord of the radio and turned in my bed at which point the RCA would come crashing down on my skull, which would stop the music, either wake me up or knock me out, either way ending the dream.
I thought this was a pretty weird dream to be controlling.
The dream got even weirder when the music stopped before I willed it to stop.
The dream got much weirder when the radio smashed into my noggin.
The dream ended.
When I came to, my silent radio was on the floor next to my bed. I had a big egg on my forehead. I wondered “how long have I been out?”. To this day, I’m not sure.
I looked around my bedroom and discovered that it was exactly as I had dreamt it. I took a photograph of that room and that moment with my mind. That mental, latent image became a memory which lingered undescribed for three score years until it surfaced just now.
