The Last Radio Signal From Katherine Street

 

The Last Radio Signal from Katherine Street

Author’s Note (2025): This story was found in a box of old manuscripts at a Fairmont estate sale. Dated 1974, it was never published, but along with the recently discovered The Katherine Street Basement Tapes it tells a tale that feels too important to leave lost.

The neon glow of Fairmont’s downtown was already fading in the rearview mirror as I turned onto a side street, engine humming low. The only sound, besides the rattling of my old Chevy’s dashboard, was the hiss of static from the FM dial. I was chasing a ghost—an outlaw of the airwaves.

Somewhere in this town, buried beneath brick and mortar, was a voice that had once shaped my nights. The Man with No Name. He vanished from the high desert airwaves in ‘72, leaving behind nothing but rumors and a trail of static. Some said he walked off into the desert. Some claimed he’d been shut down, silenced. But a guy in a dorm room at WVU swore he’d heard that same voice on a low-power FM station broadcasting out of a basement in Fairmont. And so I came.

The signal was weak, but the music punched through like a beacon. Pink Floyd’s “Fearless” wove through the static, the distant cheers from the Liverpool crowd crackling in and out. It was something AM radio wouldn’t touch—too long, too strange, too alive.

I pulled up in front of a row of houses, the address I’d been given barely visible on the rain-washed street sign. 505 Katherine Street. No sign, no call letters. Just a dim light behind a basement window.

I knocked. The door creaked open just enough for a pair of wary eyes to size me up. Then, a gruff voice: “You lost?”

“I’m looking for a station,” I said. “Radio Free Fairmont.”

A pause. Then the door opened wider.

The basement was small, walls lined with shelves of reel-to-reel tapes and stacks of vinyl. The kind of place where time slowed down. A turntable spun lazily in the corner, needle riding the grooves of Spirit’s “Nature’s Way.”

And behind the microphone, a figure leaned back in a worn-out chair, hair long, beard wilder than I remembered from the old KSFR days. The voice was the same, but the eyes—those eyes had seen things.

“I heard you in Santa Fe,” I blurted out. “Back when you were the Man with No Name.”

A slow shake of the head. “You got the wrong guy.”

“Bullshit,” I said. “That’s your voice on the air. You disappeared in ‘72. Everyone thought you were dead.”

He sighed, flicked a switch, and the mic went dead. The only sound now was the reel-to-reel spinning behind him, the tail end of Hawkwind’s “Space Is Deep” fading into silence.

“I didn’t disappear,” he said. “I just stopped needing a name.”

I stared at him, waiting for something more. He leaned forward, eyes locking onto mine. “You think you’re looking for me,” he said, voice lower now. “But you’re just looking for proof that people like me exist. That there’s something outside the charts and commercials and safe little playlists. Something wild. But it’s not about me. It’s about the signal.”

I let that sit for a moment. The rain outside picked up, drumming lightly against the basement window.

“Then why are you here?” I asked.

He chuckled, reaching for another reel. “Maybe I’m just making sure the signal stays alive.”

He threaded the tape, flicked the switch, and suddenly, Mickey Newbury’s “Looks Like Rain” poured into the room like a ghost from another time. The moment stretched out, endless.

I wanted to press him, to get answers, to know—but something told me it wasn’t about knowing. It was about listening.

I left before the song was over. The last thing I heard as I climbed the stairs was his voice, slipping back into the ether:

“This is Radio Free Fairmont, keeping the signal alive… for those still searching.”

The manuscript ends there. No name. No credits. Just a lost transmission from a drifter in 1974. But the tapes exist. And if you listen close on the right kind of night, you might still hear him.

The Man with No Name. Still out there. Still riding the signal.

This soundtrack below mirrors the story’s arc, blending space rock, cosmic folk, deep FM album cuts, and psychedelic mystery. It feels like something you’d find in a dusty crate labeled “Radio Free Fairmont - 1974”, waiting for someone to press play.