Radio Memories

      More Letters From Paradise
          Radio Memories

This afternoon the radio filled the room with Franz Liszt's "Le Prelude," and the Lone Ranger and Tonto rode again across my brain. With it came memories of sprawling on the living room floor, being treated to another  exciting adventure.

One other program filling my radio world, was "Captain Midnight and the Secret Squadron," which would  send you secret messages, if you had sent for the plastic decoder.

I also had at my fingertips the "Firestone Hour," and the "Telephone Hour," which introduced me to the world of classical music. One weekly program of the greatest interest was "Your Hit Parade," sponsored by Lucky Strike cigarettes. Their slogan was the letters L.S.M.F.T. (Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco). The orchestra would play the number ten song of the week, and so on,with great gusto, leading to the next song, and then to the top number one song of the week!  It was all very exciting!

The first radio I knew about was a crystal radio. Copper wire wound around an empty oatmeal box with  a crystal detector and a wire cat whisker. An insulated copper wire antenna strung in the attic or in the yard, and a good ground was needed. Listening with earphones to voices and music from miles away. And if the clouds were low, the radio signal would skip, and stations from far way could be heard. Very exciting!

Then everything changed with the debut of the vacuum tube.  Radios were now seen every where. Even in automobiles. The "Walkie Talkies," hand held field phones, used by soldiers in WWII, contained vacuum tubes. I find it interesting that American soldiers held by the enemy in prison camps, managed to build radios in secret. Now they could  chart the progress of the war.

When your radio was not working properly,you could take your tubes to a store with a proper cabinet, and put them in the correct  spaces by yourself, and check to see if they were alright.  If not, you read the number on the bad tube, and replaced it with a good one from the drawers in the cabinet.  If this didn't work, you could take it to a radio shop to have it repaired.

And then came the transistor to replace the tube. Small, light in weight, and I haven't a clue how it works.  But it spelled the end of vacuum tubes.  I was given a transistor radio which would fit in my pocket. Very expensive gift costing forty bucks.

Then suddenly there were pictures to go along with sound. The first t.v. I ever saw was in the window of a radio shop. A small round screen in a large box, glowing black and white, watched by a number of people standing with me, outside on the sidewalk.

Another time a few years later, a number of my friends and I would be invited to a house to watch t.v. This house had a large bay window, and turning around in my seat I saw people outside looking through the window at television!

Television quickly became a matter of fact.  Antennas sprang up on roofs everywhere. Sociologists studying the effects television was having on people, found that even those who had no t.v. had an antenna on their roof. And you know the rest of the story.

       Aloha
       Grant