Over the past few days, I’ve been doing a lot of driving. When I drive, I listen to the radio. Here in Sandpoint, for years and years, that has meant you have the choice of exactly one FM radio station: 95.3 KPND. Sometimes at night or if you have a good radio, you can get stations in Spokane or Montana. However, the one station everyone can get is KPND. You hear its music playing in stores and when the transmitter on Schweitzer cuts out (which happens periodically), suddenly all is silent in Sandpoint retail establishments.
When I bought my car, given the state of the roads, I opted not to get a CD player. The sales guy at the car dealership was confused and stunned. I wanted the bottom of the line, cheapest factory radio because I knew that with all the dust and bumps, the lower tech my audio gear was, the more likely it would last. The idea of jouncing along hearing my CDs skip didn’t seem like a good idea.
So far, I’ve been correct in my assumption. Sure my radio is junky, but it still works 10 years later. And when you only get one radio station, who really cares anyway? Except now, we actually have a choice. In the last few months, a new FM radio station is available. Now we have The Point at 106.7, which plays classic rock.
When I was a teenager, car stereos were a big deal. Guys would compare the speakers they had added into their cars and gloat about the number of “presets” on their stereos. Some stereos let you program in huge numbers of radio stations, so you could just “flip channels” easily.
Now that I live in the land of two (sometimes three) radio stations, it’s quietly amusing to me how exciting it was to actually program in a new radio station into my car stereo. I’d forgotten how. So now buttons 1, 5, and 6 are programmed. Hey, what can I say; I like classic rock.