The Pecan Park Eagle

Yesterday’s little trip into our electronicly audible past brought forth a lot of private e-mails and some public commentary on all of your early memories of our very much shared radio days. Today it might help put a temporary cap on the subject to just list some of the actors, characters, and sponsors that were the backbone of this whole wonderful experience back in the day. As much s possible, I will try to list these items here in some crude alphabetical order, but I can’t promise anything. Please feel free to comment and add to the lst in the comment section that follows:

Abbott and Costello, Fred Allen, Gracie Allen, The Original Amateur Hour with Major Bowles, Amos and Andy, Gene Autry, Jack Benny, Bobby Benson and the B-Bar-B Riders, Edgar Bergen, Boston Blackie, The Bickersons, Les Brown and His Band of Reknown, George Burns, Eddie Cantor, Cato, Jerry Cologna, Perry Como, Bing Crosby, Dennis Day, Cecil B. DeMille and the Lux Radio Theatre, Jimmy Durante, Fibber McGee and Molly, Gangbusters, Arthur Godfrey, Mr. District Attorney, The Great Gildersleve, The Green Hornet, announcer Bill Goodwin, Sterling Holloway, Bob Hope, Clem Kaddidlehopper, Danny Kaye, Sky King, Edward R. Murrow, Let’s Pretend, The Happy Gang of Buster Brown, Lifebuoy Soap, Life with Luigi, Charley McCarthy, Smilin’ Ed McConnell, The Mean Widdle Kid, Captain Midnight, Tom Mix, Digger O’Dell, Ovaltine, Oxydol, Joe Penner, Ma Perkins, Porcyurcorkis, The Quiz Kids, The Lone Ranger, Inner Sanctum and Host Raymond, Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, The Shadow, Frank Sinatra, Red Skelton, Baby Snooks,  The Sixty-Four Dollar Question, Mortimer Snerd, Superman, Danny Thomas, announcer John Scott Trotter, announcer Harry Von Zell, Wheaties (Breakfast of Champions), The Whistler, announcer Don Wilson, and “Thanks for the Memories,” and – “Goodnight, Mrs. Kalibash, wherever you are!”

As I leave you with the lyrics to the Lifebuoy Soap radio commercial jingle, all I can add is that It’s been a fun trip.

“Singin’ in the bathtub, singin’ for joy,

Livin’ the life of – Lifebuoy!

Can’t stop singin’ – because I know,

That Lifebuoy really stops ………..

B ……. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

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.