WJR – Wake Up And Sing Program – November 21, 1938 – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
When you went to bed last night it was November 6, 2021. You set all your clocks back an hour. Actually, you forgot you already set them back an hour, thinking you’d get a jump on things. So you wound up setting them back another hour; now you were two hours back.
You woke up in the morning with a start and immediately something seemed off. No cell phone – no digital clock. The eggshell White walls of your bedroom are replaced with flowered wallpaper; prints of red roses, all over the room. The room smells like mothballs and cigarettes – you quit smoking two years ago. Thick curtains block most of the light from outside so you can’t tell what time of day it is – you just know the room looks nothing like the room you to went to bed in last night.
There’s an enormous Zenith Radio against the wall at the foot of the bed. The glowing orange dial pulses as sound slowly fades in.
You don’t recognize the music right away. You’ve heard it someplace, but not like this. The announcer gives the time; it’s almost six o’clock. You remember you have to be somewhere. You bolt upright and look at your nightstand.
You’re standing in front of a barber shop. The Barber is staring at you blankly and finally motions for you to come in. You straighten your tie and head to the front door.
As you open it, a gust of hot wind hits you, and it suddenly starts to rain. You feel a force laying on your chest and you start gasping for air.
Your eyes open and there’s your hundred pound Newfoundland, Dexter – laying on you, licking your face, muttering and filling the air with gigantic dog breath.
The hour difference has screwed up Dexter’s routine and he has to go for a walk. You stumble out of bed and its your old familiar surroundings – you swear you’re laying off Espresso before going to bed.
You have the strangest dreams. But you wonder where that music came from.
Maybe it’s not November 1938 where you are, but for a half hour you get to hear a slice of it, all compliments of WJR in Detroit and the Wake Up And Sing program as you might have heard it.
Or imagined you did.
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