RADIO DAYS

I turned on the TV and started to watch CNN and its continuous drone of wars, fires, death and destruction – always the same, just the names and places change as it goes around the world.  24 hours of despair and I wonder why I ever watch it - very depressing…And then I thought about how it used to be, and I’m back in 1950 carrying my dinner plate to the "zink".

After dinner, which we always ate precisely at 5 on the dot. (and it was called supper by my folks as this was a working man’s household) I would adjourn to the living room tune our big radio and lay down in front of the dark mahogany box.  The warm glow of the dial would light my way to the urgent sound of the William Tell Overture – The Lone Ranger rides again into another episode of adventure for the masked one and his trusty companion Tonto.  The show always began with a  Hi Ho Silver Away!  And they would gallop off to another saga of the old west. 

(Author's note:  Tonto called the Lone - Kemosabe – (Google tells me it means "faithful friend"in the Potawatomi, but a similar word in Spanish also means stupid one?) I guess Tonto really didn't have a first name for his boss, except Lone? - so this salutation established just who was who in their relationship.)

    

The show was just 15 minutes long – just long enough for a crime, a gun fight and the bad guys to be caught and punished - the Ranger always won.  (Unlike today’s computer enhanced dramas where the good guys are usually the bad guys and they get away with violent mayhem as we sit through a 102 car, truck, train, or plane wrecks accompanied with surround sound – fun, fun, fun.  

(Ask a kid today to name a hero – their blank stare is frightening!)  But not for us kids in the hay days of radio. 

And there were a bunch to chose form of cowboy heroes – Gene Autry the Singing Cowboy…Hopalong Cassidy with his two six shooters and the big black hat…and many more, each with their own brand of 15 minute shooting and wooing every night of the week.  And these shows were followed by G-men and Supermen and other guys who could fly, run, climb or swim faster than the bad guys.  We had heroes.

But the Lone Ranger was my favorite – I think it was the mask that did it for me.

I had almost a full hour of the radio adventure until I had to turn the dial over to the proprietors of my life. My folks would discuss “what’s on tonight?” and then they too listened and laughed and cried with their favorite shows.  Indeed the radio was “our theater of the mind” as our imaginations painted wonderful pictures of the world of heroes and villains, comedians and crooners.  And then we all went to bed early.

One day after I got home from school my radio days died a quick death and the big Philco was rarely turned on again. 

George Brown the new TV dealer (and only repairman in town) delivered our first Television set – and our world of listening turned to watching.  He carried in a very big black case of tools and started to install an “antennae” on our roof with a wire leading to our living room. He aimed it with the help of my grandmother who let him know when the fuzz was gone on the small screen.   

A ten inch Admiral TV then came to life. 

That night my uncle, aunt and my cousins crowded with us around the little screen as we watched a crazy guy named Milton (who was wearing a dress) get hit in the face with a giant  pie – now this was indeed entertainment!  Three channels were available.  And for the next few weeks sometimes we just watched a test pattern which hummed until the station started a show.

And that night this hypnotic box of tubes and wires change me, my family and our whole world – forever. 

But that’s another story!