Last night as I laid in bed and failed to go to sleep, I decided to listen to some music from my nearby device. My taste in music covers nearly every genre available, so many times I end up hearing strange combinations of songs falling back-to-back.
Megadeth pounding in to the mellifluous Platters, anyone?
Case in point, Harry Nilsson’s “Put the Lime in the Coconut,” played and was followed by the song “Amos Moses,” by Jerry Reed. What is so meaningful to me about this is that this isn’t the first time these two songs have played one after the other in my life.
It was mid-summer, 1971 and the family was visiting my cousin’s at their cabin along the Mad River in Trinity County. My older cousin’s Gary and Steve and my younger brother Adam and I were still awake listening to KATA 1340 AM blasting out of Arcata as we lay in the upper loft of the barn, which had been converted to a sleeping area, when the two songs came on.
Since it was an AM station, the signal came in like a powerhouse after dark, while fading to nothing more than static during the day.
The four of us sang as much of each song as we knew at the top of our lungs, laughing and giggling all along the way. We ended up getting so loud that Uncle Adam had to come out and remind us that we were supposed to be going to sleep and not engaging in horseplay.
“Turn off that radio and good night, guys” he called up to us. Steve reached over and the music came to an abrupt end for that night.
And I as I listened to last strains of ‘Amos Moses,’ fade from my device, I couldn’t help but marvel at the knowledge that I would one day spin records for that same radio station in the 1980’s.
The Old Blog in the Desert 
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