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Excerpt Critique: “You Turn Me On, I’m a Radio”

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You Turn Me On, I’m a Radio

Women’s Fiction

In between the sink and the ice box was a small food panty with a glass door in front of which I danced for about seven years while my mother told me to set the table, wash my hands, don’t jump so much or I’ll spit up my food, and her last-ditch effort.

Stop dancing, you’re driving me crazy.

Behind this amazing private stage was the center of the house, our prime means of entertainment other than watching my brother build stuff, the tall stand-up Philco Radio.

Third room: Beyond the kitchen was the front parlor, the room for the television. On this day, still two years away from our first television, in our railroad apartment in Brooklyn, in the middle of a factory district on the cusp of the Golden Age of Radio and Television, my brother gave me my own, personal, private radio.

It was a table top Philco with a wooden finish I would one day paint a sickening turquoise, a horizontal AM dial, a needle which traveled with lightening speed east to west, two large round knobs for changing channels and controlling volume, and soft canvas material died a camel color, behind which were the tubes he could replace and the speaker.

A radio with a great sound and an AM dial that lit up in the dark and went from one end of the world to the other.

And that dear children was where our story began.

In a cold flat, in the fifties, at the beginning of the AM dial.

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