A car without a radio sparks memories

My parents once bought a new car without a radio. It was 1963, and I was 14. This would be the car I would use to learn to drive. It would be the car in which I would take my driver's test. It would also be the car I would drive on my first dates.

Although it didn't have a radio, they would keep the car for more than three years and would have kept it longer, but I wrecked it one night on an empty, curvy country road. Trying to see my watch (the car also didn't have a dashboard clock), I ran off the road on the right, pulled back onto the road and went off on the left, scattering some cows where I punched through the fence. Rumors that I did it deliberately to get rid of the car with no radio are entirely false. But the replacement car did have a radio and a clock.

I was reminded of that car this morning when I headed out on a long trip in a car without a working radio. My car does have a radio. It just wasn't in a working mood this morning. It has been in a not-working mood a lot lately, seemingly more frequently. Cold weather seemed especially hard on it. The radio either failed to come on when the ignition was switched on, or it came on and cut off in rapid cycles. Although I took apart a portion of my car's interior looking for a broken wire or short circuit, I never found one, so I resigned myself to a trip without a radio.

Driving without a radio or recorded music is something I never do. The steady drone of the engine hypnotizes me and tempts me to sleep. But I drove all the way to Raleigh this morning with only occasional, intermittent sound from the car's audio system. Once past Cary and for the entire return trip of nearly 200 miles, I enjoyed a couple of CDs I had brought along and the area NPR stations. The radio worked perfectly on that final leg. And I've developed a new theory about the radio in my car. It must be moisture that is affecting it, short-circuiting its on-off switch or making it rapidly cycle. If that's the case, I might get by without paying for an expensive repair or having a car without a radio.

But my trip today gave me time to think about my parents, who never cared much for music that was sung outside of a church, and their car without a radio. They drove that car (before I got to drive it) all the way to Florida and back with no radio. It didn't seem like torture at the time.

Oh, and the car had no air conditioning either. Years later, I was discussing cars and air conditioning with a friend, who declared that, to him, air conditioning in a car was more important than tires. I kind of see his point. It's probably more important than a radio.