My family moved to Florida right after World War II. I had been born in late 1938, so I was plenty small in 1946 or 1947. Reading and the radio were big time for the tot that I was. Books are eternal, but radio was quite finite, thus went away too soon for me. Nevertheless, at the time I began listening in Florida, radio was still in its heyday.
Looking back, I think all those radio dramas and variety programs constituted a second family. Relistening to some of those old broadcasts, I am completely sure of my thinking that these programs became a second family to me, as well as to many others.
Leap ahead to 2007. I received MP3 CDs recently of all the Gene Autry Melody Ranch radio programs which ran between 1940 and 1956. Despite the atrocious variability in quality, I have been mentally transported back to that part of my childhood devoted to Gene Autry in the movies, on records, and on radio. I have felt the return of that "family feeling" listening to these programs.
Listeners able to comprehend such as radio dramas and variety programs but who did not reach that comprehension after the late 1950s have absolutely no idea of the experience we had, those of us who lived old timey radio. Television has not and cannot replace radio programs of that caliber. We who heard them "live" lived them. Hearing them some 50+ years later for those who were too young cannot recreate the incredible thrill we experienced.
Our first television came close to 1960, at the very end of the radio era. I have too little memory of the significance of that transition. I was too busy growing up.
I am about 55 - 60 years since the end of that era, but the rehearing has lifted my spirits enormously. I can bring full adult mentation and sophistication to those days, and I know that we had something very special--something perhaps gone forever.
I will go into more of this later because it dovetails with my reading from the era that preceded mine but transited mine as well. I will probably focus mostly on my childhood hero and now adult hero, Gene Autry.
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