It's nice to know some small-town institutions aren't being obliterated in the wired world:
They're known as “tradio,” or “radio eBay” to their thousands of listeners in smaller communities around the Hoosier state. On any given day, listeners call broadcast trading posts trying to buy and sell goods, whether it be a St. Bernard, a living room set, an old Coke Machine - or the driver's-side door to a gray 1988 Chevrolet pickup. And that's in a 15-minute span on a Tuesday.
A standard in some Indiana communities, radio call-in trading shows seem to withstand the allure of more modern services with their small-town flavor. Trading post shows emerged in the 1950s in many communities with little alternative communication, transitioning from broadcasting local news and notes to offering an on-air forum to give old things new homes.
I've lived in some parts of small-town Indiana and driven through enough of the rest of it to be very familiar with these swap-shop programs. I catch one periodically on my drives to and from Indianapolis, and it's always sort of comforting, one small sign that the whole world isn't turning upside down. These programs are like the police logs some small-town newspapers run. They can give you the flavor of a place quicker than a drive through town and better than 20 economic-development reports by "experts."
They were also proof -- way back in the '50s -- of the kind of connectedness people sought that the Internet is providing.
