Musky Wood

A sound blurries away, seemingly constant, as background noise. My brother used to get that look on his face - that look of earnesty, mixed with mischief, "that's the sound of the venus probe, he told me." Then he'd get a smirk. We laughed. It was funny because we were both thinking the same thing. He once told me, "some guy took a radio and mixed it with an old Philco TV and got signals from Nasa in his livingroom." I believed him. I wanted to believe that I could do that too.

I once sat with a beverage can, molding a battery to the top with some silly putty. I applied layer after layer of yellow paper glue, vigorously rubbing the glue into the putty with my index finger. I told my parents that I was building a robot which would do the dishes and my homework, and would make my mom's life easier. It was just the type of conflicted hope and despair present in my home. On the one hand I was fabricating a fantasy out of just stuff. On the other, my mom was harping about dishes and chores and I was saving the day by mashing a battery into a can with clay.

The sound in the background was one of the three or four shortwave radios in our home. As my dad finely tuned the dial, looking for Kol Yisrael (the voice of Israel), he passed over many strange and exotic frequencies. Pitters of noise, warping and waving sounds which seemed to emanate straight from Lost in Space - and a collage of languages, bits and pieces of news, story and music from a hundred nations. That's what my brother called the venus probe. When my dad's hand found the Israel broadcast, it was as though he had arrived home.

There was a big shortwave in my parent's bedroom - a Grundig, console stereo, with stainless steel push buttons. It opened in front to a record player and space for storing records - my parents shoved old photo albums inside it, instead. The flywheel tuning dial was heavy and plodding. I would throw the dial in one direction and watch the red needle skate across the band, backlit with small yellow light bulbs. I loved that stereo. Another was a portable, grey plastic radio which had AM, FM, two or three SW bands, and something called MB, which I was told was military band. When I played with that radio, I never heard anything on MB, even though I tried it every time I turned it on. It was like a ritual. I cannot adequately describe the sounds that come out of a shortwave radio. Electronic chirps, whirring, fluctuating notes - screaches, and the ever-present slapping sound. It sounded like a helicopter's blades in your kitchen, but slowed down. My mom would inevitably squeal, "oy, tachlish et zeh," (turn that down!) They stay with me today, enmeshed with the smell of decaying leaves, a chill in the air, the dread of homework languishing unfinished, and blue dusk over my street.