My alarm clock

This is mostly a remembrance for my children. They probably will never read this but some might. As things go I will soon be gone. I wonder what my children will remember...

When I was very young, under ten years of age I wanted a radio alarm clock very badly. I think it took a while to talk my mom into it. I saw a good one in a grocery stamp catalog. Since it appeared "free" to my mom we drove across town to the Green Stamp Redemption Center and she traded the stamp books for a new radio alarm clock. It was much bigger than modern radio alarm clocks. It had a metal casing, was painted mostly red. It had quite a few vacuum tubes in it.

Remember grocery stamps? There were some that were green and some that were gold. I think those were the two main varieties. You got them for shopping in grocery stores. People saved these stamps. They had the glue that you moistened with your tongue to paste them into books. Get enough books full of stamps and you could get things. The redemption center had mostly things you did not need, not often even want unless you had hundreds of books. I'm sure my mother made me place the stamps in the books in order to be ready to get my radio alarm clock. She knew an eager worker when she saw one.

Anyway I loved that radio. I had it for about twenty years, so most of my life. It felt like an old trusted friend. I still mourn over it's loss even now when I think of it. I cannot remember quirt what happened but I think the radio stopped working and I had no idea how to fix it. I'm sure I spent quite a bit of time trying to find someone to fix it.

I feel that I never found it's equal. Alarm clocks have gotten me up and helped my get to sleep, with the timer for the radio ever since I was a little child. I do not use the alarm much anymore but I still use the radio to help me fall asleep.

The alarm was a buzzer. I missed the buzzer. All alarm clocks today have the "beep beep beep". I preferred the steady noise. It was hard to get used to the beeping sound. My old alarm had a lower timbre. The newer ones are higher and I don't hear quite as well at the higher timbre.

As a young adult I moved quite a bit. My old alarm was one of the few things that was non-negotiable. I needed a few clothes a razor, and my alarm clock. That's about it. I lived in dormitory styled arrangements several times. I had some roommates who would have gladly taken a sledge hammer to that radio and fortunately none of them ever did. Some people have a favorite pillow or a favorite teddy bear. I had my radio alarm clock.

As a child I could put the radio on timer and set the volume so low that (so I thought) only I could hear it and my mom could not. So I could listen to the Astros ball game as I fell asleep. I loved my radio for being able to do that.

This was before digital radios. This alarm clock had a face clock. But I could move the little alarm hand and place it exactly to the minute of when I wanted to get up. This was great for taking 15 minutes naps and so on.

The clock had its vagaries as it got older. Sometimes the alarm did not go off. The hour hand would seem to push the alarm marker. I eventually determined how to fix this.

There were, of course, a few times when I slept through this noisy alarm. So the deeper buzzer was not fool proof. But it always seemed to me better than the newer ones.

As a young parent I assumed my kids would be like me. Well I thought I understood that they wouldn't be. But some things are just so ingrained. My love of alarm clocks was like that. One Christmas I bought all four of them alarm clocks. (The youngest might have not even been in school yet. Yeah laugh its funny.) And also funny they never shared my love of radio alarm clocks. I never saw a one of them use the timer to fall asleep at night. That too me is still sad. To this day I still do not understand that. It makes me almost want to cry.