It was 1998, and I was driving home from
Colorado. Living in
Kansas City at the time, it was about a fourteen hour drive back from the
mountains. Having just completed a week of
snowboarding, I was returning to my life of
denial,
despair, and
incessant whining.
Fun for all ages. I had been on the road for about ten hours in my trusty
Jeep Cherokee.
As happened fairly often, I was feeling bad and not knowing why. Being bipolar, teenaged, and not given to introspection, I was not privy to the workings of my noggin. I changed radio stations as they faded in and out, and in the middle of Kansas, on a stupendously unexceptional part of I-70, I came across an FM classical station.
Rural Kansas has never been an NPR stronghold, and you could safely have sex with every clssical station director in the state without worrying about catching anything nasty.
The announcer came on and told me (like anyone else was listening) that they would be playing a selection of Russian Orthodox liturgical chants with instrumental accompaniment. The chants were so beautiful that I had to pull over. As soon as I had safely parked, I started sobbing. I sat there listening to them for about an hour and a half before coming home.
I've never been able to find that station since. It probably died a quiet little death before my next trip out there.