Once upon a time, long before television came along and eventualy helped radio drift into the hands of the talk show jerks who now rattle on endlessly about sports and politics while we are trapped in our cars, the old home radio really was the great theater of the mind that some of us older folk remember it to be, Now we’ve given up that medium for what? Some guy rattling on for forty-five minutes about why Gary Kubiak should be fired as head coach of the Houston Texans? Or some other cool sports jerk calling our town “H Town” because he thinks that phrase sounds cooler to the national audience than the proud and simply powerful name of “Houston”? Or turning your ear and mind over to those radio personalities who want to ladle your brain with the thought that the world is coming to an end unless you buy into what they are selling at the 100% level?
Please. Minds be still. Click off the clamor of late 2009 car radios and find peace in recollections of a more pleasant time. I think they call them the good old days because time works pretty much like a colander. It sifts out anything watery and distasteful, the stuff we don’t want, and it allows us to keep only what is delicious. And for all of the 1930s and most of the 1940s, home radio was the greatest cafe in the world for everything that was delicious in the forms of drama, comedy, horror, or adventure.
Return with me now to those thrilling days of yesteryear’s home radio. “The Lone Ranger rides again!” I cannot begin to contain all I could write into a single blog, but what I will try to do here is share with you my personal recollections, as they come back to me spontaneously in bits and pieces. If you’re old enough, some of these recollections will be as familiar to you as sliced bread and peanut butter and jelly for lunch on a hot Houston summer day, but you will also have your own memories too. Today I really encourage you to add whatever strikes you too as comments on this article. Home Radio was our once precious and shared adventure, and it lives on to this very moment in the souls of everything we still value and pursue.
OK, here we go. …
A door opens, followed by the clattering sound of so many items hitting the floor. It’s Fibber McGee’s closet. Do you remember Fibber McGee & Molly? They used to live on Wistful Vista. … There’s a guy standing still at the street corner near the McGee house. He’s being held up at gunpoint by another man. All’s quiet until the man with the gun repeats something he’s apparently said before to Jack Benny, the silent man with his hands in the air. “I said, ‘Your money or your life!” the guman shouts. “I’m thinking! I’m thinking!!” Benny answers. …. Around the corner, from a second floor open window on the street side of the Mystic Knights of the Sea Lodge Hall, we can see two men talking. One of the men is wearing a medical examination light on his forehead, apparently getting ready to perform some kind of optometric exam of the other. They are so close we can hear their conversation. “Kingfish,” says the rotund sort of apprehensive-looking patient in this scene, Andy Brown, “I never knew that you had any training to be an eye doctor!” “Oh yes, Andy,” says the Kingfish. “Why only this morning I removed a Cadillac from a man’s eyes!” …. Moving further down the street, we see that a crowd has gathered. They are gazing up and pointing skyward at a red and blue object as it streaks across the city skies. “LOOK! UP IN THE SKY! …. IT’S A BIRD! … IT’S A PLANE! … NO, IT’S SUPERMAN!” …. Superman? Where is that absent-minded reporter Clark Kent when you really need him to cover a big story? …. It’s almost lunch time. We duck into a little grill and bar that seems like a good place to catch a cool one and a cold cut sandwich and chips. A baggy-faced man in a white shirt, green bow tie, and a bartender’s apron is leaning on the bar and chompimg on a big cigar as he answers a ringing phone. “Duffy’s Tavern, where the elite mete to eat. Archie the Manager speaking; Duffy ain’t here!” …. After a couple of Grand Prize beers and ham and cheese special, we walk further down the main drag. Turning into a nearby heavily wooded neighborhood, we are all of a sudden confronted with the coming of a monster thunder and rainstorm. We have no choice, but to beat a quick path to the nearest doorway of a most mysterious mansion. As we knock on the massive front door, it slowly creaks open, apparently of its own accord, but creaking all the way. The door opens into a pool of blackest darkness. We are stopped in our tracks and then stunned by a low-sounding voice that first only speaks to us from from the pitch black. “Good afternoon, I’m your host Raymond.” Then the body behind the forboding voice steps forward into the flickering light, and we find ourselves staring into the menacing white eyes of a tall thin man dressed all in black. “Welcome to Inner Sanctum!” the man says as his smiling voice breaks into a maniacal cackle of insane laughter. “Feet don’t fail us now,” we shout as we hightail it out of there, in spite of the storm. … Stopping off at a dry cleaner to literally get our clothes dried, we meet a man there who just came in to pick up his suit. He’s arranging to pick it up on credit until Saturday. The guy’s name is Joe Penner. He looks pretty disconsolate, even though the dry cleaning man let him have the suit on the cuff. “What’s the matter, Mr. Penner?” we couldn’t help but ask as he walked out the front door. “Same old thing,” Joe answers. “I was going to the horse track today, but my wife found my paycheck and blew all our money on the rent!” … Now late in the day, it’s getting close to the time we must go back to the future. Just enough time left to take in the last musical set of the Pappy Lee O’Daniel Light Crust Doughboy Band in person as they finish up their live broadcast at the radio station. It was great to hear again that great closing musical entreatment of the fans for support:
“If you like our songs and you think their fine, sit right down and drop a line, the Light Crust Doughboys of Burrough’s Mill!”
That’s it for now. Hope you enjoyed this little trip half as much I did, folks. And please add your own radio recollections in the comment section below this article.
The Pecan Park Eagle 
December 16, 2009 at 2:25 pm |
What a wonderful trip down memory. I have an ugly scar on my chin because of “the Lone Ranger.” I would charge around my parents’ bedroom, waving my red toy pistol—an automatic that fit perfectly in my sweaty palms, as it played the “William Tell Overture,” at its opening. It was on at 7:30 in NYC and I would have to go to bed after it was over.
Well one night I tripped over what they used to call “the saddle” I think they called it—it separated different rooms—a real bump in my road. I landed on the weapon and cut my chin to ribbons. My dad, a doctor I might add, didn’t believe in stitches so I have that “fond” memory of the radio.
We got TV the next year and I never hurt myself with that. Bill Borst, “The Gospel Truth.”
December 16, 2009 at 3:16 pm |
Bill,
I am able to “re-live” those great days in radio with the XM radio I got last year. I listen to channel 164 almost exclusively when I am driving to College Station or Waco to announce college basketball games. XM also has an “all baseball–all the time” channel that catches my ear whenever I am driving around town.
December 16, 2009 at 7:01 pm |
Dear Bill, asusual I couldnt have said it better. I went to sleep every night with my little Philco on the table listening to the “remotes”, the dance bands from around the country “From the Starlight Roof high atop the Chase Park Plaza overlooking beautiful Forest Park and the Kingshighway, it’s the music of Jimmy Lunceford and his orchestra for your listening and dancing pleasure”. When I walked home from school for lunch at noon Ma Perkins was on for Oxydol followed by the low key humor of Vic and Sade, “radio’s home folks”. After school it was Captain Midnight and Tom Mix, wish I still had my Capt Midnight Secret Squadron decoder badge (10cents and an Ovaltine wrapper). How about “Lux Presents Hollywood” with host Cecil B DeMille (anytime you’re ready, CB). Baseball on the radio with Dizzy and Johnny O’Hara on KWK and France Laux on KMOX. I could go on for a few days. Thanks for the memories. BK
December 17, 2009 at 2:18 am |
Thanks to KMOX back in the sixties I was privileged to hear a lot of these “old” shows on Saturday nights (I was 13 in 1969).
I think my imagination does a better job conjuring up images of the radio stories than the TV ever can. Listening to radio stories is much more like reading than passively watching the tube.
Later, working on Saturday afternoons at the gas station I’d listen to KMOX (again) to Jack Benny, The Shadow, Burns and Allen (say G’night Gracie), GREAT STUFF!
I was lucky to get a glimpse of what you guys had.
Thanks for the “low tech. dreams” Bill!
December 17, 2009 at 11:17 pm |
Great column Bill! Here in the Washington, DC area we are fortunate to have WAMU-FM (American University Radio) that broadcasts 4 hours of old radio programs every Sunday night from 7 to 11 PM. Being just a little too young to have heard these programs in their heyday, I really enjoy some of these offerings. Among recent programs are “Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar”, “Dragnet” and “Gunsmoke”.
Now if we could only find some transcriptions of some old Washington Senators games for broadcast through March, things would be really superb!
January 4, 2010 at 7:41 pm |
For Art Audley, in September of 1939 Station WJSV in Washington DC recorded their entire days programs from 6Am to midnite. I have it all on cassettes. A young unknown Arthur Godfrey was the morning show guy, all the commercials and soaps and news for the entire day. Major Bowes Amateur Hour came on about 7pm. But the highlight for me was about 3 pm. Out to Griffith Stadium for the Senators-Indians game with your play by play man, Walter Johnson. There was a Wheaties commercial at the start and another at the end, period. Walter commented on a young fellow just brought up by the Indians, Lou Boudreau. “looks like a good prospect”. Another rookie was center fielder Elmer Gedeon, about 3 years later killed piloting a bomber over Germany. This was the only year Walter was at the mike, regular Arch McDonald had gone to NY but that didnt work out.