Little Town, Great Big Life. Curtiss Matlock Ann

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СКАЧАТЬ and it is time for a change. There’s folks here that need wakin’ up. I’ll thank you kindly for a cup of coffee,” he added as he made his way stiffly into the sound studio and dropped with some relief into his large swivel chair.

      Jim Rainwater returned with the coffee. Winston sipped from the steaming mug that bore his name, stared at the microphone hanging over his desk and felt himself warm and his heart settle down.

      “We’ll start up on the hour,” he told the young man.

      Jim Rainwater shoved the weather forecast and a playlist in front of Winston. Slipping on his headphones, Winston positioned himself and adjusted the height of the microphone. He spoke in a moderate tone. “Testing…one, three, six, pick up sticks.” Retaining his own front teeth helped Winston to come over clear, and Jim Rainwater corrected a lot of the graveling of his voice with electronics.

      The hour hand hit straight up. The young man pointed a finger at him.

      Winston put his lips to the microphone and came out with, “GET UP, GET UP, YOU SLEE-PY-HEAD. GET UP AND GET YOUR BOD-Y FED!”

      Jim Rainwater jumped and grabbed his earphones. Dumb-founded, he stared at Winston.

      For his part, Winston, imagining his voice going out over the airwaves and entering radios in thousands of homes of people just waiting breathlessly for him, continued happily: “It’s six o’clock, ’n’ day is knockin’. GET UP, GET UP, YOU SLEE-PY-HEAD! GET UP AND GET YOUR BOD-Y FED!”

      CHAPTER 2

      1550 on the Radio Dial

       Joy in the Morning!

      IN ACTUALITY, WINSTON’S ASSUMPTION AS TO THE number of listeners was quite overblown. There were perhaps only two-dozen people with their radios tuned to the small local station. In the main, these were those whose cheap radios could not pick up the far-off stations, and mothers and school-teachers who listened while they drank strong coffee and waited for Jim Rainwater to provide the weather forecast and school lunch menu, followed by an hour of uninterrupted guitar instrumentals and alternative folk tunes of the sort that hardly any radio station played at any time, but which made a pleasant change from their little ones’ Disney radio or teenagers’ MTV.

      At Winston’s shout, at least two people raced to turn off their radios, and three to turn up the volume, wondering if they had heard correctly. More than one person had been in the act of something they would not want anyone to know about and were jarred out of it.

      One normally dour wife and mother, Rosalba Garcia, smiled a very rare smile, stamped out her cigarette and proceeded to the beds of her husband and three teenage sons, leaning over each head and shouting the singsong tune, “GET UP, GET UP, YOU SLEE-PY-HEAD!”

      Inez Cooper, an early riser who was working on an agenda for the next meeting of the Methodist Ladies’ Circle, of which she was president, spewed her first sip of coffee all over her notes on that week’s scripture lesson about seeking peace. She jumped up to go tell her husband what Winston had done. Norman was also an early riser and out in his workshop. Inez got another shock when she caught Norman smoking a cigarette, which he was supposed to have given up three years ago, when the doctor told him that he had borderline emphysema and high enough cholesterol for an instant stroke. Winston had just ruined Inez’s morning all the way around. Norman wasn’t happy with him, either.

      Julia Jenkins-Tinsley, early forties and an ardent jogger, had just settled her headset radio over her ears as she headed for the front door. Her overweight and much older husband, G. Juice Tinsley, was sprawled in his Fruit of the Looms on the couch where he usually slept these days, snoring like a freight train, and she was sick of hearing it. Winston’s voice hit Julia’s ears as she stepped out the door. She had the headset volume turned up and was about struck deaf.

      Winston hollered out his reveille again at six-fifteen, like the chime on Big Ben.

      Just after that, the phone rang back at his own house, where Corrine Pendley was already up and trying on her new, and first ever, Wonderbra, which she had bought, in secret, at a J. C. Penney sale, and viewing her sixteen-year-old breasts in the bra in front of her full-length mirror. At the ringing of the phone, she jumped, grabbed her robe and threw it around her as she raced to answer. In her mind, she imagined Aunt Marilee coming in and finding her in the bra. Aunt Marilee had ideas about what was age-proper, and she had been known to see through doors, too.

      The caller was old Mr. Northrupt from across the street. “I want to talk to Tate!”

      “Yes, sir,” was the only reply to that.

      Checking to make certain her robe was securely tied, Corrine stepped out into the hall and almost ran into Papa Tate heading into the nursery, looking all tired and with his hair standing on end, as he often did in the morning. Handing him the phone, Corrine went to take care of her tiny niece, who was climbing over the toddler bed rails. She could hear Mr. Northrupt’s voice coming out of the phone. “Did you cancel my show? I think you could at least have told me. I didn’t have to find out by hearin’ Winston on there. Did you know he’s on there? Well, he is. He’s doin’ a reveille.”

      Papa Tate calmed Mr. Northrupt down. “Winston’s just playin’ a prank. You still go on at seven.” He had to repeat this several times in different ways. Then Papa Tate hung up and told Corrine that he had changed his mind about the fun of owning a radio station.

      Across the street, Everett Northrupt was not appeased. He stomped around, mad as a wet hen. He was the host of the 7:00 a.m. Everett in the Morning show. He liked that his show came right after Jim Rainwater playing a solid block of instrumental music, of a respectable nature. It was a perfect intro to Everett’s two hours of easy listening and intelligent commentary on the news and world at large. He considered his show an equal with NPR, and one of the rare venues in town for raising the consciousness of his listeners. Why, he had even interviewed by phone half a dozen state congressmen, one U.S. senator and a Pulitzer nominee (who happened to be station owner Tate Holloway).

      Now old Winston was going to ruin all that. Winston stirred everything up with his rowdiness and wild musical leanings.

      Emitting a few curses and condemnations as he pulled clothes from his neatly arranged drawers and closet, he woke his wife, Doris, who wanted to know what in the world was happening.

      “It’s Winston…that’s who it is!” shouted Everett, jerking up his trousers. “Big windbag.”

      His wife said, “Well, for heaven’s sake, shut up about it!” and threw a pillow at him.

      Out at the edge of town, John Cole Berry was tiptoeing around his kitchen, attempting to slip out to a crucial early-morning business meeting without waking his light-sleeping wife, Emma, who was sure to want to make him breakfast. Emma thought food solved all problems. John Cole had just lifted the pot from the fancy stainless coffeemaker that Emma had recently bought, when some voice started yelling to get up and get his body fed.

      Surprised, John Cole sloshed hot coffee all over his hand and the counter. He stared at the coffeemaker, a brand-new modern contraption that Emma had bought just the previous week, which did everything in the world, except make good coffee. It apparently had a radio in it. He went to punching buttons to shut it off. Why did a coffeemaker have a radio? Had Emma programmed it to say get fed? It would be just like her.

      The radio, now playing music, shut off just as Emma called sleepily from the bedroom, “Honey…”

      Grabbing СКАЧАТЬ