Emotional Connections: Stocks, Radio, and Cycling

I can trace several interests and passions to my days as a newspaper boy. At eleven years old, I started a paper route with my brother and at 12 I began my own route that I kept until I was 16.  Not long after, I began to pay attention to the items that were on the front page. The first one to catch my eye was the Dow Jones Industrial Average. It always sat in the bottom right corner of A1. I could fold the papers in such a way, that almost like a flip-movie, I could read the summary of the day. I loved watching it go up and down.

When I was fourteen I called a local brokerage firm but was told that the minimum account required $10,000. I had a lot of money for a boy my age, but that sum was out of reach. Nevertheless I continued to watch the market over all of those years. Later when I did open a brokerage account my adviser frequently commented that I was one of very few clients who actually read annual reports and actively participated in my asset allocation.

But folding newspapers, delivering them and finally collecting the subscription fee proved a lonely job, or at least a solitary one. I found my cure and a life-long love for radio. My loneliness evaporated after I purchased a portable radio/television receiver from Radio Shack with my own money. The television signal only carried audio so I used my own imagination to create the visuals.

That device became a companion as I walked and rode the route making deliveries or collecting subscriptions. There's something about radio and the voices that stream from the ether that fuels the imagination with whimsical wonder. That simple radio player let me escape my small town and explore the bigger world as I listened and dreamed while I walked.  I still listen to the radio but I can now travel to Chicago, Spain or even China while walking or riding to the office.

Americans love their cars. Me? It's my bicycle. Almost every day I would get on my bicycle to deliver those papers, except when I was learning how to solve the Rubik's cube. I actually did that while on my paper route. In the beginning I used a hand-me-down bicycle from my older siblings. But when I could I bought my own Schwinn 10-speed. I love to hear the gentle hum of a well tuned bicycle. I also prefer the sound of a bicycle tire as it rolls across the pavement and the feel of the air blowing through my hair as I pedal and ride on my way.

I've never heard an engine that takes me back all the way to my childhood and to the houses of my neighbors and friends. Sometimes, when I am lucky, I'll find myself riding my bicycle, listening to a radio app while the commentators discuss the stock market.