As far back as I can remember, most
every house had a radio. Be it a table, stand up floor model,
or a radio phonograph combination. TV was added later to
combinations, but this was before TV.
Mother always had a little GE AM radio in her bed room.
Looked just like the one on the left. I can recall about
three times she put me in her bed when I was really sick
(mumps, measles, and strep throat) and couldn't go to
school. That radio brought such comfort.
There were times when I wasn't playing with friends, or
on a Sunday afternoon I listened to the radio simply for
enjoyment.
I didn't
have an assigned bedroom when we first moved in the
apartment over the drug store, I slept on the sofa in the
living room where we had a combination like the Philco on
the right. Just the other day John McCurdy was talking about
having the same model.
The
rectangular door in front would open up and you would slide
a 78 rpm recording and it would start automatically. We even
took it up on the Fields farm and they had square dances. A
couple of times I would "man" the phonograph until I fell
asleep on a pile of roofing shingles.
By
the time I was 14 I hade acquired, not only a bed room
to myself, but a Sears AM table radio that sat by my bed
and I listen to it mostly at night. It was my first
introduction to Black R & B. I couldn't find a
picture of it, but I got this one, on the left, which
resembles the one that Adel Cook (Feamster then) gave me
that belonged to her mother. I'd always admired it and
it had that big 12' speaker that put out a lot of bass,
which I only heard at the movies and the juke box at the
Snack Shack.
I
also use the speaker in the cabinet as the left channel
to my RCA phonograph after I converted it to stereo. Due
to the small room arrangement I had to place it in the
diagonally opposite corner from the phonograph. Not the
best placement for good stereo, but if you would stand
in the middle, a good bass note could put some pressure
on your ears.
The
reason I'm reminded of all this, for the first time in
many years, I'm home with a bad cold, in my bed
listening to my radio. I just returned from Maryland
where we attended my grandson's wedding and both Linda
and I caught cold. I think it's the first one I've had
in about 8 years.
Going back to bed, when you have a bad cold or you're
just plain miserable, flooded my mind with the "good"
memories of being sick. I was reminded of the 100s of
radio programs that we listened to before Television.
You had to use your imagination then, and I think it
made it great entertainment.
Now
it's just music, news, sports, weather or talk, and that's not
bad. However, you don't hear Red Skelton, Our Miss
Brooks, Inner Sanctum,
Gunsmoke, or any westerns, or any drama on the radio and
more, and that's too bad. It was great entertainment,
and it was good medicine for the bed ridden. I glad it
still works for me.
