Throughout the making, the lanky youths of King’s Cove “drapped in” on Lee whenever they could, to see how the work was progressing.
Now, when Big Sandy and Lem hurried along the shady lane in the dusk, and on up to the workshop, they found Tony and little Mackey and Joe Burk already there ahead of them.
“The aerial’s done up!” shouted Tony Zita. “Done did it yesterday. Had to finish the job by lantern light.”
“I helped!” little Mackey Bobb was fairly bristling with pride. “Us all went up through that funny little door right in the roof of this here house. One end of the wire’s hitched to a pole that’s lashed onto a chimney. T’other end of the wire is rigged to a scantling what’s nailed to the barn.”
“And you’re countin’ on that high-sittin’ wire to pick up music out of the air for you?” asked Big Sandy incredulously.
“Jumping catfish, no!” exploded Lee, who was cutting wrapping paper into long strips. “We’ve got to hitch up a sight of apparatus here in the house, too.”
“Ain’t there something I can do?” Lem Hicks moved over to the bench where Lee was working.
Soon everybody was hard at it, doing whatever he could on this strange contraption young Renaud was evolving. The younger boys scraped and trimmed at smoothing off the heavy oak plank that was to be the base of the outfit.
Lee had spread around him on table and bench a half dozen “Radio Worlds,” propped open to show diagrams full of coils and lines, and lettered at certain points, A, B, C, D, and so on.
“This paper says the timing coil is most important, so we better go mighty careful on that.” Lee produced a piece of old-fashioned wooden curtain pole, three inches in diameter. “A ten-inch length is all we need.”