Who would have guessed that I could make a living selling Panasonic R-70 “Panapet” transistor radios to the natives of Santo André, the smallest island in the Azores? The island’s population (excluding me) was descended from a stone soup of the original African slaves (mainly Ewe and Fon), their Portuguese overseers and a batch of mutinous Scots tossed into the sea and (legend has it) rescued by turtles. In the three-way genetic wrestling match that resulted, the Portuguese lost outright and the Africans and Scots fought to a draw in which their descendants ended up with dark skin and nappy red hair. They subsisted on fish, taro roots and hot sauce and couldn’t be bothered to emigrate.

I was living there as the punch-line of a mid-life sulk in which I had set off from Gloucester, MA in an open rowboat with an ass-load of PowerBars and three carboys of tap water. By the time I washed up on Santo André I was delirious, forty pounds lighter and sick of traveling–so I moved into a hut and sent over to the big island for some gear.

I had been living there six months when Martim walked up and offered to trade me a carved eucalyptus Kawasaki ER-6N. It had freely-spinning wheels and appeared to have been carved out of a single chunk of wood. I took some photos, stuck it up on eBay and immediately made a couple hundred bucks. I bought Martim his Panasonic with the first forty bucks and tried to give him the rest but he told me to keep it and walked off with the radio.

After that it turned into a several-times-a-week thing. My neighbors would bring me carved iPads and Tesla Roadsters and Dyson vacuums and I would buy them R-70′s and keep the change. Strange system, right? Pretty soon everyone over thirteen had a Panasonic. They wore them on leather thongs around their necks like demented 1980′s rap stars.

On June 21 Martim came and got me. A couple of his buddies had caught and slaughtered some forest pigs and were throwing an all-island barbecue. I stuffed myself with spareribs and cane liquor, and when my speech started to slur João and Martim took me by the arms and staked me to the ground in the middle of a clearing. By craning my neck I could just make out the radio-wearing islanders forming tight concentric circles around me. At a signal from João, they all switched on their radios. The tiny Panasonics bleated out mid-Atlantic static that blurred with the sound of the wind and the crashing of the waves.

Everyone was staring at the sky, so I did too. The high clouds were coalescing. The radios began to hum. The clouds swam nearer and nearer until finally they resolved into a migratory herd of turtles, flying low with stately grace. Each island family mounted one and was borne away until the transistor hum faded.

After a few hours I was able to work my arms loose and free my legs. I sat very still until the stars came out, and then I walked back to my hut and fell right to sleep.

_{Image CC-BY-NC by MaryEllen and Paul}