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I love History Detectives on PBS for many reasons, particularly because it piques my curiosity.  In the theremin episode they talked about the instrument’s usage in popular music of the 60’s. Off I went to Google, Wikipedia and eventually to YouTube.

A theremin is a musical instrument you play with out touching! It was one of the first electronic instruments and a major influence on Robert Moog, the inventor of the Moog Synthesizer. It was often use to add creepy music to films like Spellbound, The Lost Weekend and in 50’s era sci-fi movies.

In seeking out its usage in popular music I was transported back to a summer in the early 70’s; Whole Lotta Love blasting from the speakers at Ashfield Lake, my Aunt complaining “what is this noise?” Turns out the iconic sound in the so called “orgasm section” is Jimmy Page playing the theremin. Here is a video of Jimmy demonstrating the theremin to the Edge. The guy is a genius!

Apparently many great blue herons live along the banks of the Mystic River, less than two miles from my Somerville home. According to Wikipedia great blues are known to opportunistically feed on a rodents and other small mammals. The residents at the cat house better watch out!

great blue heron on Montrose Street roof

If you live in the Boston area, you’ve seen it hundreds of times – some poor sod pulled over on the non-existent shoulder of the Southeast Expressway creating an immediate bumper-to-bumper traffic jam. Well Sunday night – this was me. It also marked the worst trip back from the cape ever – four hours for what should have been an hour and a half trip.

I know now that what I was experienced was alternator failure, but at the time, the symptoms were quite spooky. First the cruise control stopped working and the car seemed to be losing power. Then the dashboard lights got dimmer, then the meters started jumping, then the radio died, then the engine quit. I guess new cars have warning lights for failing alternators, they must have invented these after 1992, the year my “whitey” came off the assembly line.

So there I was pulled over as far as possible, half of my car still in the right lane, praying that 1) the hazard lights would stay on and 2) that no one hit me. I moved over to the passengers side just in case and called 911.

After a long ten minutes a state policeman arrived and pushed me with his car to the Columbia Road exit and into an emergency parking area on the rotary.

columbia road rotary

I called AAA and waited over an hour for the tow truck to arrive, D & D Towing out of South Boston. The twenty-something driver quickly strapped the car onto his flatbed and I climbed into the cab. Much to my surprise, the cab was already full. He had two barely legal girls keeping him company; his girlfriend and his girlfriend’s girlfriend. It was now 11:00 PM and the expressway was cut to two lanes for after hours construction. So I got to spend nearly an hour with these jerks, hip-hop radio blasting in my ear.

When we finally got to Somerville, the driver couldn’t maneuver the flat bed into my driveway to unload the car. He seemed to be clueless as to options and then made a big deal about pushing the car into the driveway. “I’m not supposed to do this” he said, fishing for a tip. Then he needed $21 for the extra mileage, but couldn’t make change or take a credit card. “Why didn’t you tell me before?” he whined.

His already slim chance for a tip evaporated.