Great Bloodlines
Tonight I'm in the car and tuning in The Trading Post at 6:00 on 99.3 WTNS-FM.
My city friends don't appreciate how funny this show is. I've decided that's only because I've never recorded an installment for them. My local friends think it's hilarious so why can't the ones in area code 614 get it? It's on twice a day and I should just get something on tape. But who has an FM radio/cassette recorder anymore? I don't, but I'm betting some a regular caller does and might call tonight.
The show starts and I hear "And if air ain't no answer, leave a mess-eej" twice and I wish I'd grabbed one at Wal-Mart on my way home.
Tonight's show is duller than usual, and I note nothing more amusing than the same regulars offering to sell the same deliquent cell phones and other imagined bargains. I'm starting to I think maybe my friends are right: the show isn't that funny if you don't live here.
The host starts reading the write-in ads and it's not the regular announcer with the profound lisp, but a girl I've never heard before. To my surprise she's reading well and enunciating with care and I'm disappointed because some advertiser must have ordered the station manageer to make his announcers read the material and become familiar with it before they take it on the air.
The new girl doesn't let me down. "Someone," she tells us "is wanting to sell a seventy-number bag of cement," and I howl at the thought of her wearing headphones and a bewildered stare at "a 70# bag of cement" typed neatly in front of her.
I catch my breath and feel a twinge of conscience as I think I should be more charitable. After all, she sounds young and maybe that was the first time she had seen a "number sign" used to signify a pound.
But with a deep breath of her own, she's back. "Someone," she tells us carefully, "has a 15 year old mare with a foal standing beside her," and both she says have "great bloodly-ness."
I'm still in the car and I'm trying to keep it between the ditches as my eyes well up with tears. If you call my cell phone and I don't answer, leave a message. Someone ahead of me hit a deer and the road is covered with great blood lines.
Last edited by Area Man; 10-29-2008 at 10:15 PM.
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