You guys have brought back some memories of childhood for sure. It was a brave new world of rocket ships and television, X-rays and scientific wonders. Before television there was the wonder of radio and as a little fellow I recall evenings spent around a large wooden radio cabinet which had a green "eye" that came on when the radio was turned on. Certain evenings of the week had favorite programs, some of which were different for us kids than for our parents and grand parents. Amos & Andy we all liked. My brother and I would try to imitate their Negro voices. "Hello dere, Andy" and "how ya doin' Kingfish?"
I can still see in my mind's eye my sweet Indian grandmother (we kids called her "Da") in her rocking chair with some kind of hand work in darning socks or knitting or needlepoint and nearby my grandfather in his old Morris chair smoking his cigarettes, purposely rolled one handed with great dexterity since he knew little boys were studying his performance. Velvet tobacco in a can. He had been a child laborer in a cigar factory as a little fellow in Ottumwa, Iowa and always seemed to me a dangerous man, quiet and impeccable in how he did things. "Wa" became a machinist as a grownup and a licensed boilermaker, proud Mason, father and grandpa. One of sixteen children he had quit school in the third grade to go to work and by the time I knew him owned his own home and an automobile, was respected by those who knew him as the foreman at Hartzog Wonder Drill and was a self made man. I still dream him all these years later, me watching him sharpen his straightedge razor on a wide leather strop, back and forth with light catching on the deadly blade... his stopping momentarily, looking down at me and saying "...if you were my boy", clearly implying that the leather strop would find a home on my backside at the slightest infraction. His idea of grand parenting had to do with fear and his quiet word was law. My grandparents were the yin and yang of childhood; she the sweet and he the sour, he the impending storm and she the safe harbor.
Anyway, in the time we lived with them evenings drew us together around the radio and as willing participants we joined in as attentive listeners... hearing the voice of Orson Welles as "The Shadow" (Lamont Cranston), the yapping sled dog team of Sgt. Preston of the Yukon commanding his team with such words as "...on you huskies" and the command to get going by yelling out "mush" which I later learned was some radio show writer's faulty guesswork. "Hike" is the actual command. But no matter, we heard dogs and the wind and could imagine the blowing snow and white, frozen landscape. Along with the radio actors and sound effects people we in radio land were participants doing our part to provide the "video" part of the presentation. Somehow it was more real than television. Sometimes I wonder if television was a step forwards or a step back. It is like the difference between reading the book or watching the movie version of the same story. They each have their place, except for those who no longer read.
Coffee cup is empty and so am I.
SB
