Antenna of the Universe

I subscribe to Harper's for two English teacher reasons: some of the best short prose in print, and some of the best writing prompts around. (I can do without Lewis Lapham.)

This month's memoir, "Antenna of the Universe" by Don Wallace, is a sterling example of the former. Wallace remembers his grandfather of the same name.

Good reception was Grandpa Wallace's governing obsession. He had spent his entire life seeking it, ever since 1909, when as a boy of eleven he'd wrapped a Quaker Oats box with wire, filled a test tube with iron filings, slung an antenna out the window to the neighbor's roof, and begun intercepting pulses of short waves.

Young Don is invited out to Grandpa's to file QSL cards, notices sent by ham operators to confirm transmission, for 35 cents an hour plus meals. (See here for a sample QSL card, here for an aerial shot of Wallace's massive rhombic antenna, and here for a photo of the man himself.) Baffled by the operation, he makes a mess of Grandpa's efforts.

"What did you think you were doing?" "You haven't been filing." "You ruined my system." "Don't you care?" "Years and years--wasted--never be able to find some of those cards." "What's wrong with you?"

In the end, though, young Don finds a strange sort of redemption when his Grandfather discovers him "singing in code."

I'm ruining the piece by even attempting to condense it. You really ought to find a copy at the library and read it all. (You'll get the pleasure of Nathanael Johnson's "Swine of the Times" as well, more than you need to know about where your Easter ham comes from.)