Here’s are things I remember about listening to KOMA:
I’m six years old, soaking in the tub of the one bathroom my family of six shared in our white farmhouse in Logan, NM. We’re not supposed to soak. Someone is always waiting to get in the bathroom. But I was always a soaker, even in the second grade.
There’s a transistor radio on the back of the toilet. It’s a fixture, just like the sink and tub and the basket of funny books, which is what we call the Superman, Spiderman and Archie comic book collection that lives in a corner. I assume that everyone has a radio and funny books in their bathroom.
My older brothers and my sister listen to the radio all the time, which means that I listen to it as well. My dad turns it on in the morning while he’s shaving so that he can get the local news from the Tucumcari station. There’s no exhaust fan in the bathroom. (Of course there isn’t. I won’t know about exhaust fans in bathrooms until the Wallins remodel their house and put in a blue oval toilet and new fixtures, including a towel ring that is possibly solid gold, although it might be brass. It will be the fanciest bathroom I’ve seen in my lifetime. That will happen when I’m eight.)
Everyone flips on the radio when they go into the bathroom.
It’s 1966, and everyone I know listens to KOMA. The minute the sun goes down, every radio that isn’t already set to 1520 on the AM dial gets turned to KOMA.
I don’t know it at the time, but at 50,000 watts, KOMA was broadcasting to the entire country after sundown, especially in the west where there weren’t many rock music stations. There are guys in Vietnam who said they could pick it up when they were in their bunks.
All I know is that KOMA is as much a part of my life as the First Baptist Church of Logan, New Mexico, where I spend a large part of my week. School, church, KOMA, loosely in that order. There are chores in between, although as the baby of the family I don’t have many. Maybe drying the dishes after supper. Feeding the table scraps to the dogs. Folding towels.
There’s watching Dark Shadows when we come in from the school bus, which scares me enough that my brothers make fun of me, and my mom threatens to make me go in the other room while it’s on. Being the baby of the family is scary at times.
But in the tub, I’m not the baby. I’m all alone, which seldom happens, and I’ve brought a hairbrush to the bath with me. It’s my microphone and I’m singing along to the Monkees “I’m a Believer” and then The Beach Boys “Good Vibrations.” I know all the words and I’m certain I’ll be a rock star someday. I’m in love with Davey Jones. I’m living on a beach in California.
That night in the tub, I’m no longer afraid to spend the night away from home, no longer intimidated by the Hall boys on the school bus, no longer worried about being the least favorite student of my second-grade teacher. I’m just singing. I’m a Believer.
And then the Beach Boys end and an ad come on for a new movie. “Picture Mommy Dead” is the title, and there’s a low voice talking about a blazing inferno and then screaming. To me the scariest thing in the world is picturing my mom anywhere other than in the living room watching the news with Dad.
I’m up and out of the tub in a flash, drying off and slipping into my pajamas, finally opening the door so that my brother Klee can get in. Like I said, there’s always someone waiting to get into the bathroom.
The good news is that when I go to bed where I sleep with my older sister, she’ll have the radio on. I’ll forget picturing Mommy dead. Lovin’ Spoonful will be singing “Hot time, summer in the city. . .” and she’ll be reading until she’s sleepy enough to turn the light out and snuggle with me. I’ll drift off to Tommy James and the Shondells. Long after I’m asleep, she’ll turn KOMA off.
I listened to KOMA every night of my life. When we’d leave prayer meeting on Wednesday night, it would come on when the key was turned. We’d ride the eight miles out to the farm with “In the Year 2525” in the background while we talked about basketball and Belinda’s job waitressing at the Yucca Café and Klee’s overhaul of his pickup.
In 1973 when we lost the farm and moved to town, the cook in the café my parents bought would turn the volume on low in the kitchen, and I’d catch “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” when I walked through looking for my parents. In 1975 when I was dragging main with my friends, it was America and Linda Ronstadt, “Sister Golden Hair” and “When Will I Be Loved.” “Crocodile Rock” played over the dishwasher’s sinks at the Fireside.
All it takes now is for me to find those songs on Youtube and I’m back in those spaces, riding out to the lake in a car with my high school crush in 1977, dial tuned to 1520 and Peter Frampton singing “I’m in You.” Peter Frampton occupied a lot of my daydreaming moments, and then Barry Manilow, and then Barry Gibb. They knew exactly what to say to my nervous teenager self. They gave me confidence that I might survive after all.
When I went away to New Mexico State in 1978, I had a new clock radio that picked up KOMA. I had an orange quilt that my aunt Rena Faye had made as a graduation gift. It was comforting to curl up under that quilt while the radio played after dark.
I also had a roommate from House, someone who was as wide-eyed as I was at living in a city and having what seemed like limitless freedom. Claire and I would lay in the dark at the end of those days that were so new to a couple of small-town eastern New Mexico girls. I was still a bit afraid to stay away from home, but lying there, talking about some cute football player we saw at Corbett Center or what the Melrose girls said at dinner in the cafeteria, listening to Gerry Rafferty sing “Baker Street,” I thought I might be able to bear my homesickness after all.
Everyone I knew growing up has a KOMA memory. My husband remembers that the night JFK was shot, KOMA switched their format to classical music. He was eleven, driving from Santa Fe to Cimarron with his mother to meet his dad to go hunting. He says he watched the occasional tear roll down her cheeks while they listened to Bach and Beethoven. He wondered what would happen to the world now that the President has been killed.
KOMA switched to an all-country format in 1980. I don’t know what they play now. I just know that the music they played when I was a child was a constant comfort. And that I survived after all.