My interest in radio began in my pre-pubescent years.
As a kid in the Arkansas Ozarks, we had virtually no communications with the outside world. In the late 40s and early 50s, we lived in a valley and the nearest radio station was 50 miles away. The nearest phone was 20 miles away. Like KR7CQ, I had chores. I milked cows twice a day, "slopped" the hogs, gathered eggs and plowed the fields. We had two mules, Kit and Pat, and they wore me out tilling the soil and digging up potatoes. On rainy days, we sat on the front porch picking ticks off the dogs and throwing them in a #10 can with coal oil in it. We call it kerosene now.
I was special, though. I had a radio: a cat whisker radio. At night some of the 50kW clear channel stations would bounce around enough to reach me. Mostly, I think I listened to KMOX in St. Louis or WLW in Cincinnati but I'm not positive. That piqued my interest in commercial radio and later in life I worked part-time at a variety of radio and TV stations in Wichita, KS, Wetumpka, Auburn, Opelika and Montgomery in Alabama and in Columbus, GA. I still have my 3rd class radiotelephone license that was required to read the meters on the commercial transmitters. There was no test but you had to promise not to call a fake SOS or cuss on the air.
I've hit 3/4 of a century now and I still dabble around with radios.