And other body parts, too……..
As time passed, mom started buying daddy birthday/Xmas presents like gadgets and oddball tools. He never said word one about what he wanted (other than a new son, I suppose), so she just took the old ‘throw enough shit against the wall, something will stick’ tactic.
Maybe third or fourth grade: pay dirt.
She found a large radio that had AM/FM and police/ambulance radio bands. He knew cops from working as an insurance investigator, so he found frequencies quickly, and became thoroughly addicted soon after. He tired of post-news evening TV–dramas like cop/detective shows were a waste of time, as he often couldn’t follow plots. And, as you heard, most comedy didn’t appeal unless it was corrosive.
If daddy was bored with TV, he’d start thinking, which was dangerous. He’d find ways to criticize me and/or pick a fight with mom. So this radio was like giving a binkie to a screaming infant.
Time for a bowl of pretzels and a Coke–plop beside an end table and leave this radio on for hours; I’d hear it upstairs. Sometimes it was nothing except cops calling in to say they were getting a snack or the Fire Department time signatures (still remember: ‘KGA 407, Fire Department Testing, Time 0200 hours). He’d turn the lights off, chain smoke, and listen until bedtime.
But some nights you got action: car accidents, marauding juveniles threatening wholesale revolution, barking dogs, shoplifting juveniles, house fires, crowd control, juvenile speeding tickets, even fights and gunshots. Occasionally, cops goofed on each other or muttered sighs when they got an assignment to call some lady who called every other day about the neighbor’s dog/cat/horse/child.
Summer became surreal. He’d be on the front porch at night, dragging an extension cord; sitting for hours at a time, chain smoking under the dim light of the radio. Since we had canvas awnings (a tale for another day, folks), you couldn’t see him in the dark, just hear the police and fire calls.
Think on that for a minute?
“What’s your dad do after work?”
“Oh, he just sits on the front porch, smoking and listening to police calls.” Weird shit…..