Listening to My Life: The Other White House

Illustration by Yuta Onoda

One byproduct of having a teenage mother is that I got to know a generation I might not have otherwise. It’s rare to have great-grandparents alive into your 20s, but I did with my grandmother’s father, Jerry White. Jerry was part of a large (and, no coincidence, Irish Catholic) brood, the oldest and youngest of whom, Loretta (born 1901) and Arlene (born 1919), lived together in their two-story family home, painted white, from the early 1920s until their deaths. My mother’s generation was also large: six brothers and sisters. Most of them spent weekends at the White House as kids, and into the mid 1990s—from ages five to 19—so did I.

Going to Loretta and Arlene’s had a number of advantages over our cramped Section 8 apartment, beginning with location—the city was always cooler than the suburbs, even when I was six. They had a microwave in which to make nachos; an endless supply of Kemps Premium Peppermint Bon Bon ice cream; a big color TV (my mother and I subsisted for years on a 12-inch black-and-white); and a second floor where Loretta and Arlene both slept. I crashed in the middle room between theirs, and when they went to bed I’d make my move. I’m a born night owl, and being over there meant staying up as late as possible, watching movies on TV (two burned into memory, in very different ways, are the 1952 Doris Day musical April in Paris and the 1981 sexpoloitation Lunch Wagon) and, more importantly, listening to the radio.

The radio was on pretty much all the time over there—AM news and talk. There was one in every room, and both women—and soon enough, I—would have it not just in the bedroom at night, but in bed, under the pillow, usually tuned to Larry King’s all-night talk show. Occasionally I would sleep in Arlene’s room, on the floor, because her radio got better reception than mine.

Of course, I also listened to pop radio. At the big dining room table, I’d write or draw while listening to a small transistor. At about eight years old, I got ambitious and began a list of every single song ever written, a number I was certain would reach, God, like 500 maybe. (I think I got to about 70 before going to bed.) My interest in music eventually waned in favor of comics and, appropriately enough, old-time radio. But when it came back in full after I discovered the Beatles at age 12, my family indulged me as long as I listened quietly. I tried, not always successfully, to appease them.

Two radio memories stand out above all others, and both involve the same station, KJJO (104.1 FM), an early adopter of modern rock. In 1991, we had a blizzard, which is routine for Minneapolis in winter, and one DJ was stuck on-air for two extra shifts. She played through damn near everything except the one song I kept calling to request: Soho’s “Hippychick.” I badgered her every couple of hours until she finally gave in.

The other was almost opposite: I read a piece in City Pages, the local weekly, about this great new band playing the 7th Street Entry that night. They were called Nirvana. Writer Terri Sutton described their song “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in such hushed, reverential tones that I felt hopeless: I wasn’t at the show, and wasn’t likely to get in anyway. I closed the paper and marched to the radio, hoping to hear something equivalent to the fireworks Sutton had described. Within two minutes I heard a riff and a drumbeat, and immediately knew it was the same band. “For Christ’s sake,” Arlene yelled from the other room, “will you turn that shit down?”

Michaelangelo Matos is a music columnist for The Stranger and The Onion’s A.V. Club. He lives in Brooklyn.