It was a sunny Sunday afternoon on November 28, 2004.

I was out shopping in the Houma area with my Dad and my brother.

My Dad had gone for a haircut, and then I drove with my brother and we went shopping.

I don’t recall if my brother bought anything or not, but I went to GoodWill and saw something I just had to have.

It was a LifeLong Baby Boom Box, model number 2225, and that will be the item that this piece is a review of.

This neat little radio was selling for 84 Cents + tax at my local GoodWill and I had a five-dollar bill on my person, so happily I purchased it.

We then drove back and picked my Dad up and eventually went home.

This may seem like a wonderful time of my life, but it wasn’t.

I had broken down with schizophrenia that previous summer and had since stabilized, but was on a medication that did treat my positive symptoms quite well but made my negative symptoms worse.

Therefore, my ability to feel pleasure was severely hindered at best and non-existant at worst.

During this time of my life, there were only two activities I engaged in that caused me to feel any pleasure at all.

They were:

Watching soap operas.

AND

Listening to the radio.

So, a good bit of my free time entailed one of these two activities.

This was pre-Katrina, so there were a lot more radio broadcasts in my area to choose from then there are in 2020.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again, Hurricane Katrina ruined radio broadcasting in New Orleans and it has yet to recover some fifteen years later.

By the way, my condition would not improve until late January of 2006 when I was prescribed a different medicine.

So, this radio became a constant companion of mine for the next several months.

I had quickly realized that it was just compact enough to fit in my school uniform pants pocket.

Therefore, I took it to school every day and it would entertain me while waiting for after school activities.

I would usually keep it tuned to KCIL which at the time was on 107.5 MHz.

Country music was very good at this point, but it also kept me updated on the weather.

This may come as a shock to you, the reader, but during this time of my life, I didn’t EDC a dedicated Weather Radio.

However, I did frequently carry a higher-end Motorola Talkabout two way radio that also had weather built-in.

I remember one evening in early December of 2004, doing some volunteer work for Key Club at a local catholic church. Well, that radio, which was in my pocket, informed me of some stormy weather that was due in my area later that evening.

I spent many afternoons waiting for Key Club meetings listening to that radio sitting or standing on the stairwells.

On the evening of my eighteenth birthday, it was with this radio that I caught WSM out of Nashville.

Unfortunately, it killed on me in May or June of 2005. All I remember was sitting outside at night listening to it and then it broke.

Though it sounds very well, it’s not exactly the most rugged radio there is.

I don’t have a complete list of all the technical specs, but I’ll list what I know:

It has a Frequency Range of 540-1700 KHz on AM and 88-108 MHz on FM.

It is powered by 4 AA batteries.

Since it is a boom box, there are two front-firing speakers with very adequate maybe even stereo sound.

The tuner is not very selective and it usually only picks up the stronger, nearby stations.

Still, for 84 Cents plus tax, this was not a bad find.

They go for much more on eBay nowadays.

I will still deduct a whole point for the tuner being so poor and the design not being rugged enough, so all in all, I give it a radio of 4 out of 5 stars.

This was good for me while I was in high school, and yes, helped me maintain my sanity, literally, but I’ve since upgraded to better radios to listen to.

I hope you, the reader, have been informed and entertained.

May God richly bless you!

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