The Irony Of It All

 

A year after my first glimpse of Saturn, my parents separated. My mothers’ lone salary was not enough to keep up with the mortgage payments. Sadly, this situation forced her to sell the house. To make matters worse, we moved into an apartment building, in Chomedey, no less.

 

Once in our new home, for a time at least, astronomy continued to be my main hobby. Both for security reasons and convenience, the telescope was always used from the vantage point of the apartment building’s roof (as opposed to it being set up on the sidewalk). Unfortunately, excessive light pollution made it a disappointing viewing experience. The moon was one of the few unearthly objects I could adequately view. 

 

One fateful Halloween evening, I turned on the radio and caught the middle of a news flash. An astronomer reported weird streaks of light on the surface of Mars. He described this phenomenon as being akin to a jet of blue flame shot from a cannon. Hearing this, I jumped up, seized the telescope, and ran up to the roof. I hastily propped up the instrument and, knowing the general vicinity of the planet, promptly located it. I scrutinized it for the longest time but was unable to discern any uncanny bursts of light whatsoever. The telescope was not powerful enough to provide a clear image of the astronomer’s description. Dejectedly, I gave up. Mumbling my disappointment and frustration, I slowly walked back down the stairs to the apartment.

 

Once in my bedroom, I kept listening to the radio. It eventually dawned on me that I had been deceived. What I had assumed to have been the nightly news, was in effect, an old recording of an Orson Welles radio broadcast. The irony of it was that my reaction had been similar to the listeners of the late ’30s. Had I tuned in from the very beginning, I would have easily ascertained that the contents of the broadcast were fictitious. Welles had taken a 19th-century Victorian English based story, incidentally written by H.G. Wells (no relation to Orson), and successfully altered it into a convincing 20th-century American news account. When the show first aired Halloween night in 1938, several reports of panic and hysteria surfaced. There were a few suicide attempts, but none confirmed. A lawsuit was even filed against the radio network but was quickly dismissed.

 

Today I chuckle at this memory. I felt embarrassed at being so easily fooled but also amused at the ease my imagination had run wild with the story. Astronomy had just taken a backseat to my new hobby, i.e., Old Time Radio.