Bob Steel. Snow days. WTIC-AM 1080. Kitchen half-wall nearly right behind me when seated at "my place" at the kitchen table. Conelrad markers on the sliderule tuning dial. The volume and tuning knobs on this radio were operated like thumbwheels. In a design similar to old roll top desks, there was a sliding cover that would hide the controls and slide rule dial. Quite classy. Leather. Wood. AC/DC design, though I didn't realize this until many years later when I checked one of these out at a flea market.

Just looking at this radio brings back fond memories of waking up to see snow falling. My sisters and I having breakfast while both keeping an eye on the snow falling outside the kitchen window and an ear on the radio. We impatiently waited for the announcer to get to the "Fs" in the alphabetically ordered school closings list. Thank goodness we were in the Farmington school system and not Torrington, Vernon or Warren! The wait would have been too much.

"... Ellington, Enfield, Essex, Fairfield ... FARMINGTON!

Relief and elation. Off with the school clothes and on with the "play" clothes: boots, mittens, scarves, and caps. Sleds, tobogans, and aluminum flying saucers. The sliding hill, conveniently abbreviated to just "The Hill." Good times.

And imagine this - all without direct parental supervision and policing. How did we ever survive?

Grandparents frequently spoil their grandchildren, mine being no different in that regard. Upon returning from wherever they happened to go for vacation, they would bring home goodies for my two sisters and me. After a vacation to Atlantic City, NJ, they game me this crystal radio.

A crystal radio isn't much more than a coil of wire, a capacitor and a crystal diode -- three parts, or components. Add an earpiece and hook up the antenna wire to a random length of wire or something metallic, and you were ready to tune for a radio station. This little gem wasn't a very hot performer, but it introduced me to more of The Wonder that is radio.

, which I somehow have managed to save all these years.

raffle ticket prize, ventilation holes in back projected light from the tube filaments onto the wall at night, thus providing a telltale sign to my folks that I was listening to the radio when I was supposed to be sleeping. After getting caught a few times, I devised a crude hood that contained the light yet maintained reasonable ventilation. external antenna result of hand capacity coupling affect with integral ferrite rod antenna.numerous of

This was the radio that brought me Tobey Kimball and UCONN basketball games, Joey Reynolds on WPOP-1410, the British Invasion of the 60s.

It also introduced me to listening late at night for stations from afar drifting in and out; a hobby in and of itself known as broadcast band (BCB) DXing. This hobby within a hobby turned me onto Jean Sheperd.

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