For two years we occupied the same space
every week for nine months each year, yet
we never met until thirty years later, at the home
of friends in common, and the realization
was the source of surprise and humor.
How could you inhabit the halls and studios
of a radio station, college but the world
did not know that, at least not the local
world our signal reached, driving
the chemistry department to tears
when we slipped our assigned frequency,
and never meet, not even in the once
meat locker converted to a record library
when the station took over the kitchen
of what was once a dining hall. Radio,
we came to realize before the movie
Pirate Radio told the world, is several
worlds in one, each existing in its own
time but in a common place. He had
a late night show, I the morning two days
a week and as News Director I lived
in the back room that had a desk
and the news wires, UPI and AP, and rarely
set foot into the studios after the evening news.
We became good friends and shared our
memories of our time almost, but never together.