Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Nattering on Neonatal Transport With a Dear Old Friend, Air Medical Journal

2022; Elsevier BV; Volume: 41; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.amj.2022.01.003

1532-6497

Carlo Bellini,

Transportation and Mobility Innovations

It was the time of dreams and adventure. It was the time when everything was imaginable, and, even more than that, everything was possible. It was the summer of the rite of passage, the overcoming of adolescence that the “maturity examination” at the end of liceo certified, delivering the passport for adulthood that began with enrollment at the university. During the summer of 1972, everything was allowed—even my father, who was perhaps a bit crazy or at least too optimistic, giving me his old blue sedan for the epic journey that would take me from the shores of the Genoese Mediterranean to the ends of the world toward that mythical North Cape whose location was unknown by almost all of the other graduates that year. 1972 was the time when the world was boiling, shaking with great ideas and ideals, but it was also an era in which news emerged slowly, spread more by insinuating itself than by overwhelming everything and everyone as it happens today. Some news stations created more legends than certainties, and for this reason they were extremely attractive and full of charm. My peers and I all longed to listen to RTL 208, Radio Luxembourg, but it almost never reached Italy because of the Alps according to 1 of our peers, although this person later boasted of being able to listen to it using sophisticated equipment recovered from who knows where. Some of our older brothers and sisters said that 208 transmitted from the sea, from something similar to a pirate ship that was unmanned and adrift but unreachable and unsinkable. This station broadcast rock and roll never heard before—legends, in fact! Legends who were capable of nourishing the restlessness of young hearts. The first time I listened to 208, finally being certain of its existence, was while driving on the long and flat German highways toward Denmark and then up toward the clear skies and the long shadows of Scandinavia, which were rare in the latitudes of the Mediterranean Sea, and then the blond girls who populated our youthful dreams and who watched us from the walls of our rooms. When the prehistoric battery-powered radio we were carrying on board picked up 208, it was broadcasting “Have You Ever Seen the Rain” by Creedence Clearwater Revival, a famous war song that has accompanied me often since that day.