1954: First Death & the Birth of the Transistor Radio ("Hey There" by Rosemary Clooney)

Glory

This is the first poem in a series of linked-poems I plan to write in Glory, a novel-in-verse based loosely on Visions of Glory by John Pontius, a spiritual account of “Spencer,” an unidentified individual who shared his visionary experience with Pontius.  In this poem, I took details from two paragraphs of his and juxtaposed them with the invention of the transistor radio.  The coinciding of these two events (and the song) is purely the product of my imagination even though the accounts individually are fairly true to their sources.

1954:  First Death & the Birth of the Transistor Radio

I was born dead

the day the transistor radio
came out: October 18, 1954.

The love child of Regency Division

of Industrial Development
Engineering Associates and
Texas Instruments was olive.
My skin was blue-black.

The doctor took one look at me

and handed me to one of four nurses.
An internal Texas Instruments Information
Bulletin stated TI-ers could be “justly proud”
of creating a tiny transistor cheaply enough
to replace tubes.   I too was tiny,
but unlike the radio, I had no signal.

The nurse wrapped me in newspaper

and placed me in a stainless steel sink.

At 6 feet, 6 inches, Jack St. Clair Kilby stood tall,

the proud daddy of the first integrated circuit.
My mother was bleeding badly
when they told her I was still born.
She was relieved.  She didn’t want me.

But somewhere there was a signal.

I was on some frequency.
The nurse picked me up to dispose of me
and found me struggling to breath.

Low clouds hung along the Wasatch Front.

I was driven to Primary Children’s Hospital.

My mother was told “I had pinked up”. 
On the radio, Rosemary Clooney sang,

Hey there you on that high flyin cloud
though he won't throw a crumb to you
you think someday he'll come to you
better forget him, him with his nose in the air
he has you dancin on a string...

 

To my mother, it could have been about my father,

but more likely a no-good, absent God.