Radio Free Montone: My Final Blog...From Here
By John Montone, 1010 WINS
This is my final blog…from my spot…in our house.
The rooms are almost barren but for boxes of our belongings. No pictures on the walls, no family photo albums on the coffee table.
I miss the sounds most of all. Children, then teenagers and finally young adults stomping up the stairs, opening the fridge, turning on the TVs -- too loudly. They were the life sounds that filled the space between the walls for more than twenty years.
We moved to 11 Highwood Terrace in Glen Rock not long after I took over as the morning street reporter for 1010 WINS. We felt financially secure enough to buy this "mover-upper," on a cul de sac and to eventually add on to it. Our neighbors became some of our closest friends. And their children became our children's best friends. Those friendships will endure.
All over our little town people whose sons and daughters went to school and played ball with our own are packing up…you know, "down-sizing." Sky high property taxes are a fact of life in the New York City suburbs and once your kids are out of school, well. It's not exactly breaking news.
The ageless beauty, Mary Montone, and I are luckier than most. We raised Mike, Jackie and Joey in a safe place with fine schools among men and women who became parents for all the right reasons. Well, most of them. Glen Rock is not the Garden of Eden, but we have very few complaints. And although it takes children, even adult children, many years to admit their mother and father have done anything right, lately ours have all visited and all seem to realize that they too were luckier than most.
I have no idea now many radio stories, promos and blogs I've typed and recorded in our basement. Until last year our Golden Retriever, Bella, would often curl up at my feet as I worked. Once in a while Bella would bark just as I began recording my story. Maybe she thought I was giving her a cue when I began counting down, "Three, two one."
Listen: Radio Free Montone
Bella's gone now. But she'll always live in our memories. As will 11 Highwood Terrace.
So that's it…until next week…from a new place. And now it's save, send, shut down, unplug and pack up.
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