Mother Radio first appeared on This Week in Amateur Radio in Random Access promos in 2005. She was one of the very first voice characters to interact with Zachary, aside from myself.
Mother Radio is every body's Brooklyn-born Jewish mother, even if you're not Jewish. In the course of the past few seasons, Mother Radio's voice has dropped considerably in pitch. She has become tougher. More crusty. In fact, Mother Radio is downright cranky.
The Mother Radio character is loosely based on my own maternal Grandmother, who was born and bred in the Bronx in the late 1800's. She had that curious prim and proper Depression Era social quality about her but she had her quirks. When I was a little kid making all kinds of little kid noises and little kid distractions, she would always advise that I should not "wake the baby
downstairs". This terse statement Mother Radio subsequently inherited and has belted out many times. Another stinging imperative: "Now do as you're told!" was a line lifted the cheesy B-flick "The Crawling Eye", fully in keeping with her character!
Despite her crabby nature, Mother Radio is still prim and proper enough not to utter any sort of street language. Thus, if she believes that you are full of baloney, she may decry that it's all "a boatload of floobus". To the best of my knowledge, there is no such word in the English language as floobus. But it sounded good so she owns it.
In January of 2008, personal details about Mother Radio became public knowledge over This Week in Amateur Radio. Mother Radio's actual name is Beverly Krasnov. It appears that she lives in Brooklyn (variously known as Big City) with her husband Boleslav Krasnov. Mr. Krasnov is employed at Canarsie Wireless as a technician of forty-five years seniority.
Both Beverly and Mr. Krasnov have hosted a number of recent Random Access Thoughts and Files. Beverly has covered the story of Marconi and the mystery television station KLEE while Boleslav has discussed StratoVision and Technology Curiosities and Complaints.
I selected the name Beverly for Mother Radio because to me, she was always a Beverly. Mr. Krasnov's first name Boleslav was my Father's first name, although everyone called him Bill. The last name Krasnov, I appropriated from a fellow ham radio friend, Bob Krasnoff KF4UVA, who currently lives with his wife Leah in Boynton Beach. It is my personal idiosyncrasy to oft times label various friends' wives by an alias other than their real names. So for Leah, I would on occasion refer to her as Beverly or Marilyn whenever we got together.
Speaking of Marilyn, Marilyn, the loopy British chick, is the Krasnovs' lovely daughter. Why she possesses a British dialect is not clear since she is Brooklyn-born. In contrast, Mother Radio has that crunchy three-pack-a-day growl while Boleslav speaks with a distinctively animated Brooklynese overtone. Marilyn is happily married to Mr. Munroe, a true Brit. But she hangs around the home nest with her parents a good deal of the time. Marilyn's favorite pastime is watching paint dry. She paints a room and then watches the paint dry. The Krasnovs have experienced continuous interior decoration since Marilyn was a teen. She expanded this obsessive compulsive behavior to her own pad busily painting walls while Mr. Munroe listens to non-directional aircraft radio beacons in his private study.
Meanwhile, Cigman Krasnov is Marilyn's fail-to-launch forty-five year old sibling. In addition, Cigman is indeed a chronic three-pack-a-day smoker and not necessarily the brightest bulb in the pack. He digs hot cars, fabulous babes and sleeps till noon. Given the present day cost of cigarettes and their attendant health issues, it is a puzzlement that Cigman goes so far against the social grain.
Zach hangs out the Krasnovs quite often, which is curious since he lives here in upstate New York. How he gets around is not clear.
Rumor has it that Commander Jainpain, yet another of my obtuse characters, may be in some way related to the Krasnovs. But...that's another story.
More later.
