I Stole The Radio & David Crosby’s Passing

Time has shifted, more so for me than ever before. With the passing of David Crosby I now see that my lifetime span has shortened considerably. Let me explain.

Being born in 1962 on the wave of the British Wave; I grew up on The Beatles, The Kinks and the Rolling Stones. I became aware of an American version of this wave of music with the TV show The Monkees. Shortly after this I became aware of Seals & Crofts, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, T-Rex, CCR and The Eagles. These bands scan quite a few years between the late 60’s through to the early 70’s. This was a magical period for a kid like me who was to small to play sports and gravitated to music.

I pretty much always had a radio on nearby. I was so addicted to this sound that I stole a radio when I was around nine years old. There was a group of young teenage boys playing black top baseball at the local school yard in my neighborhood. I stopped by to watch as I was riding my bike. I think I was more attracted to the sound of their radio than their game. When one of the boys yelled at me to turn the radio off, I picked it up off the ground next to the telephone pole that it was leaning on. …

I’m actually sick to my stomach remembering doing what I was about to do.

… I turned the radio off. I kept it in my hands staring at it. I looked around and saw that no one was paying me any attention. I was becoming a thief at that precise moment. I slowly rode away on my bike and rode home. I put my bike in the garage and walked into the house and directly upstairs to my bedroom with the small transistor radio in my shaking hands. I turned the radio on and lowered the volume and started to surf the radio waves. Up the AM frequencies and down the FM ones. I started feeling guilty at what I had done and started thinking of excuses in case anyone should ask where I got the radio from.

The guilt started to grow inside of me. I had to get out of the house. I went out to the garage and grabbed my bike and rode around the neighborhood listening to the songs on CKLW. I ended up at the other side of the school from where I stole the radio. I climbed up into the crab apple tree and placed the radio securely on a thick branch. I was lost in the music before I realized that my name was being called out. I looked around and saw my babysitter down below calling up to me. Tim used to babysit me and my brothers only a couple of years before.

Tim asked me about the radio that I was listening to. I lied to Tim. I told him that I found it up here in the tree. He mentioned that one of his friends had just lost a radio earlier that day while playing baseball. I think he knew that I was the one who took it at that moment. I was shaking inside but would never admit to taking it. I often think about this moment yearly. How much guilt would have left my body just by admitting the truth. Instead I chose to keep it inside all of my life.

With the passing of David Crosby I felt the need to write about my theft of a radio when I was young. I really don’t know how this time in my life related to David. That is when the lyrics of one of David’s songs I was playing today spoke to me. That song is called ‘Laughing’, the live version. The lyrics swirled around in my head this morning while David sang them in his golden voice. The ‘man’ in the song was my baby sitter and the laughing child was Me. I thought I had found a light in the radio. Tim knew the truth and asked me if I would return it. I chose not to as I “had found it.”

Guilt can eat away a person from many directions and different ways. Shortly after my conversation with Tim I took the radio back to the telephone pole it had been laying against and left it there. I don’t know what happened to it after that. Still, the guilt of doing what I had done stayed with me until today. I was young and didn’t think of the ramifications that would eat inside my mind for all these years.

Ever since then, I have always saved and bought the things I desire to have, just to feel that I put forth the effort to own them. It’s a thing with me.

So anyway, that’s my story. I often think of Tim, and I have last seen his brother Chris at my mothers funeral. Seeing Chris was the best thing about my mothers funeral. I really loved those two brothers. I have such good memories of them when I was young going to Whitehouse Quarry with my Mom and brothers during the summer to swim. With my Dad taking me to watch Tim play basketball for Bowsher High School. They played a big part of my life. Chris washing his navy blue Mustang/Corvette (?) in front of his house in the summer. Tim joining the Navy as a submarine member and me feeling claustrophobic at the thought of being in such a confined space.

Whenever I hear Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and Seals & Crofts music my thoughts always turn to Tim and Chris. Basically, any music from that era I think of them, especially when I hear “Spinning Wheel” by Blood Sweat & Tears with Tim taking me out for a walk up and down my street.

Now since Davids passing I have come to realize that my time may come soon and all these memories that I have will vanish. But the thing is, I will cherish these memories to my dying day. They bring lightness into my life. As the song states, “Only Love Can Break Your Heart.” I have a desire that my Love for all the people who came into my life like Tim and Chris, continues beyond time and for all eternity. Ce la vie.

David Crosby on how to live your twilight years:

““If you spend that time doing everything you can to be happy, to help other people, to create, to make new things — to make anything better for anybody — if you spend your time doing positive stuff like that, then the time that you have left — whatever amount it is — will be well-spent. And that, I think, is the key.””
— -David Crosby