While I’ve never thought of myself anything special. but I think one thing distinguishes me from most people. It is I’ve lived my whole life through radio.

Of course that was a given when I was a kid, since when it came to electronic home entertainment, radio was the only game in town. In fact, it was the only one on the planet. Ours was a huge 1939 Zenith cabinet model with a phonograph in the middle. It occupied THE place of honor in the living room.

As for TV? I can still remember when and where I saw my first one. It was 1954 and a kid named Herb and his mom had moved into the neighborhood. They’d moved from that bastion of worldliness and urbanity, and as befit such cosmopolites, they had a TV. It was a portable with a 12 inch screen and rabbit ears on top. It sat on their kitchen counter, on eye level with me and the first time I walked in their digs, there in all its black and glory was Howdy Doody and his posse.

Not only do I remember that moment, but I can still FEEL it. And when I think of Howdy and crew walking across the scream in their dreamlike marionette way, I’m transported back to 7-year-old me staring, enraptured, at what seemed like The Kingdom of God.

Not long afterwards, my family got our own TV and I now could feed my video habit without having to leave the comfort of my home.

I called it a habit because that’s exactly what it was, because when I was in the living room I watched it nonstop. But once I retreated upstairs to my bedroom, I was all ears.

From an early age I was a reader. And while reading later became a mania, as a kid it was simply a fact of life. I always had something to read — book, magazine, comic book, pamphlet — anything and everything, except my schoolwork. If you don’t believe me, I all you’d have had to do was look at my grades.

Here’s the thing about radio life in my Gilded Youth: The only station we could get was the local one, WNBZ. Or more exactly, it was the only station we could get without an antenna. And since we didn’t have one, that’s all she wrote (or if you’re a stickler for details, all she broadcast). With all due respect, WNBZ was square — so square, even my square brother thought it was square. The favored music stars were The Andrews Sisters, The Mills Brothers, Glenn Miller, Perry Como and maybe for a splash of cool, Theresa Brewer and the Lennon Sisters. Fine stuff in its own right, and loved in its time, which was long before mine, baby hipster that I was.

But all that changed in 1961 with two great additions to my life.

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Gettin’ outta town

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One was the launch of WIRD in Lake Placid. Like WNBZ, it went off the air at dusk, but that’s where the resemblance ended. WNBZ had an almost Shinto-like reverence for entertainment’s ancestors, and struggled mightily to keep the 30’s and 40’s alive and well, despite any societal forces that opposed such sacrilege. WIRD, on the other hand, was cool and — in comparison, at least — cutting edge. As proto-beatnik, it was my cup of espresso.

WIRD played new pop music, jazz and some folky stuff I’d never heard on WNBZ. I think its where I first heard Herbie Mann, Al Hirt, Johnny Mathis, Sarah Vaughan and Billy Ekstine. I KNOW it’s where I first heard Ray Charles and Peter, Paul and Mary. My favorite WIRD DJ was Neil Drew, who I thought was the epitome of cool. He was not only years ahead of me — he was LIGHTYEARS ahead of me (Seide Note: When I looked up his details for this column I found out at that time he was a greybeard of 21).

So when WIRD went off the air at dark, what did I do? Well, then things really started poppin’ due to the second great addition to my life. It was a hand-me-down Zenith “portable” radio, given to me by my Uncle Irving.

I put portable in quotes for a good reason: Compared to the size and sound quality of today’s radios, it was a behemoth. It was as big and heavy as a volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica and it would’ve gone through batteries like poop through a goose. Luckily, it could also be plugged into an outlet, so I was in business, for sure.

Best of all, it had a built-in antenna that pulled in stations from hundreds of miles away. My go-to was NYC’s WABC, and my favorite DJ was Cousin Brucie. But depending on my mood, I’d switch it up. There was WBZ in Boston with Arnie “Woo Woo” Ginsberg and The Night Train Show. The Night Train ran from 11:00 til midnight on Monday nights, so it goes without saying that school on Tuesdays was more of as struggle than the other days.

WPTR in Albany (Fify Thousand Watts of Power!!) had Boom Boom Brannigan at the mike, and WKBW in Buffalo, with the U.S.’s first shock jock, Joey “The Fat Man” Reynolds. Each of those guys had his own distinctive shtick and were the gunslingers of the Northeast’s airwaves. Of course they played rock n roll, which was my main interest, but not my only one, and thanks to radio I developed different tastes.

For one, I listened to NYC talk shows. Al Capp, on WBAI, the creator of L’il Abner, was a good story teller and I listened to him a fair amount. But when it came to storytelling, Jean Shepherd was THE master.

Shep was on WOR. He had a sizable output of short stories which combined hilarity with poignance, a skill I wish I had. He’s best known for the flick “A Christmas Story,” which is actually a combination of a bunch of his stories. The most amazing thing about him was he did his entire program without any written script or prompts. When I first heard that, I thought it was pure bumpf, but I’ve since read in a bunch of credible sources that it was indeed true. If you’ve never read his stuff and want to give it a shot, I’d recommend “The Endless Streetcar Ride into the Night and the Tinfoil Noose,” and “Wanda Hickey’s Night of Golden Memories.”

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The young folk at home

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To further satisfy my nascent sophistication, I’d occasionally catch Theodore Bikel on WBAI, and what a treat he was! Bikel was about as close to an entertainment Renaissance man as we’ve seen. He had a 60-year career as an actor, in films (both serious and comedic); he starred onstage, in both London and NYC. On Broadway he starred in Fiddler on the Roof for 2000 performances. He also was in “200 Motels,” Frank Zappa’s solo venture into film-making. He was also a lifetime social activist.

But his acting and social activism weren’t present on his show (at least not to the 15-year-old naif that I was). What WAS the focus of his show was folk music. Bikel was a singer and guitarist and master archivist and promoter of the folk scene (a further insight into his smarts: He could speak nine languages and he sang in 21).

Beyond his own performing, his contribution to folk music was vast. He started the first folk music coffee house in LA, the Unicorn. He also was one of the co-founders of the U.S.’s premier folk festival, the Newport Folk Festival. But that’s a resume; to me he was a life-changer, since his show was my introduction to folk music.

I may have had an inkling folk music existed, but when I thought of it, I thought of “Oh, Susanna,” “Camptown Races,” “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain,” and such stuff. What I didn’t know, much less could imagine was contemporary folk music, and that’s where Bikel came in.

I first heard Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, The Kingston Trio and Woody Guthrie on his show and others I no longer remember. He also did interviews with folk singers, which he recorded in Cafe’ Wha?, Gerde’s Folk City and The Gaslight Cafe, which were to the Greenwich Village folk scene what Lourdes is to faith healing.

And there I was taking it, and them, all in.

And guess what? Sixty-plus years later I still am.