The summer of 69, I was eighteen and had graduated from high school.
I was working 44 hours a week in a factory grinding welds.
It was a dirty sweaty job, but I made good money and I had college in front of me unlike most folk working there who would likely spend their lives doing this kind of hard labor.
As far as music, I remember how it was delivered and that was on AM Radio.
My alarm clock radio would wake me up at 6:00 am to the sounds of Larry Lujak known as Lawrence of Chicago.
WLS Am played Top 40, but I remembered how eclectic the Top 40 was.
Lujak loved to open up with Skeeter Davis singing The End of the World which had been around awhile and was more country than rock.
WLS would play Frank Sinatra’s Strangers in the Night and a lot of other eclectic tunes such as Percy Faith’s A Summer Place which was all instrumental but it still played mostly Rock and Roll.
I didn’t have my own car and a buddy who also worked at the factory would pick me up and we would listen to WLS on the AM radio both back and forth to the job.
And then of course as I grew older along came Rush Limbaugh who made his bones as AM DJ among other chores.
I miss AM Radio.
It was a populist medium.
I still listen to music but I miss someone spinning the tunes.
It's not gone completely. Yeserday, I discovered KYNO, which broadcasts Oldies, mainly from the 60s, out of Fresno, Calif. It exudes a 60s feel, with call signs that sound like those of the era, and 60s-style newscasts featuring the sound of a teletype in the background as the announcer broadcasts news events of 2025. The 50,000-watt station can be heard through much of the San Joaquin Valley.