My first radio



Hälsingborg, Sweden in the summer of 1972.

I was 11 years old, sitting together with a classmate in the backseat of the car. We are on our way to a short holiday in Sweden. However, this was not that I was worried about. The only thing on my mind is that in a few minutes I will go to the big store in Hälsingborg and by my first radio ever!

Ever since I saw that my best friend had a little portable transistor radio, it was my biggest wish to have one for my own. If I wanted to listen to music I had to ask my parents if I am allowed use the record player or the old radio in the living room. Therefore, for a boy at my age it was a big thing that I was going to get "my own portable music" that could be played anywhere. It even got a little white earplug, so I didn't have to disturb anybody with the noise. For me this was the ultimate symbol of independence and freedom!

However a radio at that time was an expensive thing to own and the only way I could afford it, was saving all my money for several months and buying it in Sweden where radios was a lot cheaper than in Denmark at that time.

So there I was sitting on the backseat, with my mind troubled with questions like: Do I have enough money? What if the price is too high anyway? Do they still have any radios left? What if the Swedish children have bought all the radios?

I remember my father in the store asking the clerk about something and asking me for the crumpled money, that I had held in my hands during the trip. I got the box with a nice picture of a radio on the cover. Feverish I opened it and divorced the two white polystyrene parts. I took up the radio, which was with round dial knob and in a brown leather case. Walking back to the car I was very proud and also very nervous. I felt like this was my first step into the adult's world and I thought that everyone could see that: "there goes a boy, who just bought his own radio!"

As the years went by, I bought my first record player, Slade records, cassette recorder, moped, stereo amplifier, loudspeakers, cd player, VHS, DVD, Mobil phone etc.

I had forgotten story until some day for a few years ago I went to a flea market with my wife and my kids. There I saw a portable transistor radio just like the one I bought in Hälsingborg that summer in 1972. I bought it and for fun I have collected more than hundred radios with a funny or unique design

Asger Hunov

Copenhagen, february 2004