Yes, it sounds like we are describing a time which has come and gone.
Kids today may not even know what a shortwave radio is. Some young people today don’t even listen to terrestrial radio at all. They are much more likely to listen to podcasts of programming, or satellite radio in the car.
Perhaps the way the world has changed, and with so much hi tech equipment such as computers, young people today just don’t have the same feeling many of us do about radio. The idea that we’re expressing about listening to shortwave radio from other countries, or AM radio stations from distant cities, is just lost on many young people today.
A while back some of us at work were discussing old dial telephones, party-lines, phone numbers that began with two letters, etc.; and a young thing in our office said, “Oh, I’ve seen one of those!” ;-)
-JT
And yet if the internet crashed, it would be back to shortwave again.
Hallicrafters once featured a multiband SW radio in a floor console with the dial/knobs facing up. Placed next to the easy chair it made one an “armchair adventurer” listening to shortwave stations. The ad depicted someone in a safari jacket & sun helmet `traveling the world’ with his fingers on the tuning dial while sipping a gin & tonic.
its like rainbows, helicopters or low flying planes....I still stop and watch...
wasn't it one of Maslows requirements to be "self actualized" is to take awe in little things?....
Related to what you say about the `yutes’ of today, I still have my Lionel train set from 1956. Collector values peaked in the early 1990’s and have tanked ever since. Ebay has a lot to do with cleaning out the nation’s attics & making yard sales nearly obsolete while lowering prices on collectibles.
But the fact is, kids don’t dig trains anymore. Talked to guys at Lionel meets who are brokenhearted they can’t get their grandsons interested in the train sets they would love to hand on. Gets put under the Christmas tree & that’s it.
Time...marches on.