OUT OF THIN AIR

about us being on our own. But at Dad’s insistence that we were okay, and lulled by the fact that the music was coming through right on cue, she relaxed.

The fascinated crowd shoved each other to get closer to the booth. I can just picture Dad’s dark eyes twinkling as he explained to people what was going on. There was nothing he loved better than spreading the gospel of radio.

Back at the house, Marianne and I, delighted at the fine job we were doing, gained in confidence all the time. We put on a particularly fast piece of music and danced to it. Faster and faster we danced around the precariously balanced microphone until—crash! We tripped over the wires. Down came the books, the boxes, the Victrola, and the mike! At the Exhibition booth horrified listeners heard the screech of the needle, the crash, and the screech of the girls. Mother and Dad looked at each other aghast.

“Heavens Keith, what’s happened to the children?” she exclaimed.

Horrified, he answered, “What’s happened to my transmitter?”

Apart from being frightened, we were no worse for wear. Mother consoled us, Dad reassembled his equipment, and soon everything was back to normal.

My father’s passion for radio and his comittment to it was so profound that it pervaded all our lives. It was inevitable that we became a radio family. Our development as children was in sync with the development of CFCY.

Over the next few years, visitors to our house began to notice that we had quite a few kitchen chairs about the place—without backs. They were for the old—time fiddlers. Throughout the years a tradition ‘of old— time fiddling had developed at CFCY starting with a man called Lem Jay and ending with the famous Don Messer and his Islanders.

Lem, CFCY’s earliest performer, broadcast from Bayfield Street. His daughter, Mrs. Bruce MacLaren, told me that the most exciting event in Lem’s life was going to Charlottetown to play on the radio. Although the distance from Mount Stewart to Charlottetown is only about twenty miles, in the 1920’s that distance by rail took three hours, because the railroad on the Island tends to meander through everybody’s backyard. The people back then loved the slow journeys. It was a chance to see the countryside and talk to people.

Of course, as they say, everybody on the Island knows everybody else, and if they don’t know them personally, they know somebody who

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