107.1
On the power of childhood radio stations and learning to tune out my brain
This column originally appeared in the Indiana Gazette and Blairsville Dispatch on Wednesday, April 2, 2025.
We had a family radio that we used almost every day when I was a child. Remember radios? Those clunky machines with cords that you plugged into the wall and had to fiddle with the tuning knob for five minutes until you got clear sound? Ours was gray and round, with a shiny, slim antenna poking upward to the sky, and we only ever listened to that station 107.1 — the soundtrack of my childhood, especially on crackling hot summer days spent out in the backyard at the pool.
As public school teachers, both of my parents had summers off, and for those blessed three months, we spent most days outside. There was a constant revolving door of friends, cousins, grandparents and neighbor kids that gathered at our pool to escape the blistering Pennsylvania heat.
In the morning, Mom lathered us up with sunscreen and then set us free, after which my heart decided the direction of my day. Sometimes I played in the pool or the yard. Sometimes I sat on a lounger wearing sunglasses eight sizes too big for my little face and slurped on a hunk of watermelon while I read a book. All the while, the music of 107.1 played in the background.
107.1 played a variety of classic hits spanning from the 1960s through the early 1990s. As a result, I’m well acquainted with Peter Frampton, the Temptations, Stevie Wonder, John Mellencamp, Joni Mitchell, Frankie Valli, Stevie Nicks, Bruce Springsteen, REO Speedwagon, Bob Seger, Elton John, Billy Joel, Rod Stewart — I could go on and on.
This is the only music I listened to, the only songs I knew. Seriously. I didn’t realize I wasn’t living in the 1970s until, like, third grade.
Those childhood summers were some of the best days of my life. The world was easier then, yes, but I was different, too. I was my truest self in childhood. A little girl who lived in a wonderful balance of heart and mind.
That’s the thing about the adult version of me, you see. I’m a little too cerebral, a little too thinky, for my own good. I can climb up inside of my head and stay there all day, obsessing and fretting and tangling my thoughts into knots. I convince myself this is the only way to stay safe and protected from the cruel uncertainties of the world.
But it’s no way to live, believe me. You do this as long as I have, and you start to forget about your heart. You home in on the mind and abandon the soul. You start to feel like a weird robotic creature, not entirely human, cut off from the circle of humanity. You get bitter and skeptical and easily frightened.
I haven’t always been this way, though.
Once I was just a little girl out in the back yard, who proudly wore her glimmering heart on the outside of her body, like a tutu or tiara. A little girl who loved life, who was passionate and full of love. Her heart grounded her. She was not tormented by her mind.
What a concept. Me? Nah. You have the wrong girl. Doesn’t sound like me.
But, somehow, it was.
Listen, I want to clarify that thinking in and of itself is not a bad thing. But for an obsessive personality like mine, it can turn into a drug. My head takes over like an Evil Overlord of Confusion and makes me second-guess every single thought, decision, feeling and desire. It tells me my heart is bad, it can’t be trusted, don’t listen to it, squash it and ignore it.
But this is a lie. Because all of the meaty good stuff that makes up a heart, like love and grace and peace and kindness and curiosity, can be relied on and trusted. I knew this as a child. I lived it every day.
Children seem to have an inherent sense of what is good and true and beautiful in the world. And they don’t have to think very hard to know it, do they? Like I’ve said before, they’re still halfway in heaven. They know things that the amnesia of adulthood conceals from us. It’s once we start teaching them to “put on their thinking caps” that the troubles begin.
But I would like to be friends with my heart again. I would like to consult it.
I’ve found that listening to music creates a ladder between mind and heart that allows me to climb down from my head for a while and just ... be. Little Kylie is preserved in the guitar chords and trinkling piano keys of all the songs of 107.1. All I have to do is listen.
That’s the magic of music — it doesn’t require us to think. It’s an automatic response that encompasses the entire range of tangible senses. We feel it in every way.
The songs of 107.1 taste like lemonade from a plastic pitcher and juicy hot dogs with charred bits; they smell like mown grass and my mother’s tanning lotion; they feel like Dorito dust clinging to the fingertips and the sizzling heat of a sunburn. I listen to these songs and don’t just hear music. I hear my cousins laughing and yelling in the pool during cannon-ball contests; I hear the voices of my mother and her adult friends yapping about everything and nothing in the plastic lounge chairs; I hear the mechanical whir of the riding mower as my dad zipped by the pool on his circuit around the yard.
Since I live in Ohio and no longer have access to 107.1, I created a playlist on Spotify and filled it with as many songs as I could remember. When I’m puttering around the house or driving in the car, I shuffle this playlist and try to remember how it felt to be alive all those years ago in the backyard, when life was simple and good.
Learning to believe that my heart is a good thing and not of lesser value than my mind will take time. Living this way will require some practice. And that’s what I plan to do: turn down the volume knob on the bully in my head and turn up the volume on 107.1 instead.
It’s time to take my thinking cap off for a bit and take a cue from the Doobie Brothers to just “listen to the music ...”
Thanks for reading! :)
It is amazing how music can bring back memories of our childhoods.. B-94 Jim and Quinn in the morning or y-103 are what I think of.. thank you for another awesome article!