Out my bedroom window is a large empty lot. At the far edge, just off Sunrise Highway, is the back of the Long Island Water Company. Occasionally—with no pattern I can figure out—a light shines from a ground floor window. I imagine it’s a mad genius scientist working on something new to do with water.
My father leaves home at 2 a.m. every other night for a 12-hour shift on his milk route. Some nights when he is gone and the light in the water company is out, I feel lost in vastness. But every once in awhile, my grandmother stays over with her sister (Aunt Jenny), my father is on his off-night sleeping next to my mother, my sister is in the next room, and the mad scientist is burning the after-midnight oil. I lie in bed listening to Long John Nebel on the transistor radio under my pillow (which enhances the sound while muffling it from others) talking to someone who has traveled on a flying saucer—and I feel cozy in my corner of the universe.
One night, while blindly scanning the dial under my pillow looking for Long John, I stumble upon a radio drama of drunkenness and thievery. Eventually, the drunken thief winds up at a mission called the Old Lighthouse, where he accepts Jesus and begins a life of devotion and virtue as the episode ends. The show is Unshackled, and it airs nightly at 2 a.m., opening with a fanfare from Lucille Becker’s organ, which goes on to punctuate the show. The Old Lighthouse is the nickname for the Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago.
I visualize a lighthouse with a revolving, glowing cross on top, rising out of a derelict-infested street, a line of sinners waiting for soup and salvation. Each episode features a life gone wrong—drunks, gamblers, and scoundrels—righted by the Mission’s good folks and the Good Book. I love the stories, right up until the transformation (which is quick and takes place late in the show) when I switch back to Long John’s tales of aliens in the heavens and ghosts on Earth.