On top of the fridge in the old family home sat an old Bakelite wireless; they called it a "wireless" in those days even though you had to plug it in. Dark brown, with an almost art deco shape of rounded corners which echoed the curves of the Hallstrom fridge.
It was the type of radio which had the stations printed on the dial rather than numbers, as if to reflect the relative stability of society then when radio stations didn't come and go. How did they run up the dial? 2FC, 2BL, 2GB, 2UE, 2CH, 2UW, 2SM. Stations now irrelevant, or the home of shrill talk-back, or delineated by numbers rather than letters. No FM radio then.
All that came back to me unexpectedly, triggered when in the early hours one morning I heard "Pearly Shells" by Burl Ives on the radio. I was surprised by the vividness of the memory jolt. I remember that song being played on our old wireless too often, along with others like "Spanish Eyes" and "Hello Dolly".
The wireless seemed to be stuck permanently on 2GB. What would you call it now, "easy listening"? Until I was 12 or so, I had no experience of any other radio format – there was only one wireless in the house and I wouldn't have contemplated pulling a chair over, climbing up and changing the station.
Something changed for me, around 1966. Maybe it was starting high school, bringing exposure to a wider world. Whatever it was, I came across, and was captivated by, the Top 40. Every Saturday night, from 7 pm to 10 pm, they played the Top 40 on 2UE from bottom to top. Somehow I talked mum into letting me change the station just for that time, inflicting pop music on the house, and staying up till 10 o'clock.
Each week, some songs would be falling down the chart, others climbing; some shooting up the rankings as "star performers" with a bullet. I would be hanging out until maybe 10 to 10 before I could guess which song would be number 1 that week.
That Saturday night Top 40 was the highlight of my week, since I had outgrown Disneyland and was by then, if only just, a too-cool teenager. I'm not sure now what the rest of the family was doing, watching TV maybe, or the younger kids were in bed. I remember mum out in the dining room sewing and doing other jobs, tolerating the music.
The ritual went on for a couple of years may be, until mum got a small transistor radio which I was able to borrow and take into our bedroom – removing the affliction of pop music from the living areas to an audience which may have been more sympathetic or just didn't care yet, my younger brothers with whom I shared the room.
Eventually dad went on his first overseas business trip, and came back laden with duty free including the marvel of my own transistor radio. "Trannie" had a different meaning in those days.
I was struck by the power of that one sound bite, the opening bars of Pearly Shells, to pitch me back 45 years to memories which I hadn't touched for decades. Another time, I remember opening a pantry door in someone's house, and being taken back to the spicy, clovey smell of the cupboard in my nanna's old kitchen and the comfort of her cooking.
They are out there: sounds, smells, sights, even tastes, which help us, if we wish and if we care to notice, to capture things in our lives with which we have lost touch, like my tentative teenage breaking away. We just have to keep an eye, an ear and a nose out for them.
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