Phil? Is that you?

Why do I love rural radio ads so damn much?

Its a silly question coming from someone born in Brooklyn that's lived in the New York metro area for almost 40 years now.

Once you leave the northwestern suburbs of New York City, things get fairly desolate fairly quickly. I know, its not the same kind of empty space one might find in Nebraska or Montana, but to a lifelong dweller in the suburban sprawl we call Long Island, the dead space between Deposit and Fishs Eddy can be kinda scary. The radio is often no help in remote areas, but once in a while you do accidentally find yourself confronted with a kind of retro-musical syzygy that can never occur within the strong gravity field of an urban area. One night in the early 90s while trying to stay awake along interstate whatever in the middle of nowhere, I heard Frankie Valli's Oh What a Night and Abba's Fernando a combined 6 times in less than 45 minutes. Its true, people. It happened.

Forget the music, though. Coverage is spotty at best, and aside from the above described flashback to 1975, nothing interesting is happening. That is, until you find out that there's a fish fry on Friday night at the First Methodist Church in Walnut Creek, or that Bower's Auto in Brunson is offering half price oil changes with the purchase of any brake job. There's comfort to be found in the fact that Chris Bernardo's Carpet Shack of DuBois, Pennsylvania (they say doo-BOYZ, by the way) is having a big sale.

I don't know exactly why this is comforting, but I my best guess is that rural radio ads, bad production values and all, are somehow life affirming. In the pitch darkness of an empty highway, with nothing but trees or mountains or cornfields around you, it hits you right in the ear. Proof of life at the local level. Someone is living a life here! People are born here. They grow up, they buy groceries and go to the movies here. They attend church services and wear out brakes and tires, and they die here, leaving the next generation to do it all over again. Its not at all depressing, though, as it means that even when it seems that there's nobody else on the planet but you, you're not alone. Somewhere, not too far away, a shopkeeper is locking up for the night, a family is sitting down to dinner, an 8-year-old boy is struggling with his homework, and a dog is barking at the neighbor's cat. They're out there, and that's comforting, even as each minute at 75 MPH pushes you back out into the void until the next pocket of life pops up on your radio dial.

I wonder if there are any good deals on shoes in Punxsutawney this week?