Recently I have been re-listening to a collection of old time radio shows; I have also been sharing these with my two 30-something children. I listened to these radio shows for the first time beginning in 1949. We had to use our imagination as we listened to ‘The Shadow’ or to ‘Gang-Busters’ or to ‘Nick Carter Master Detective’ or to ‘Fibber Magee and Molly’ or to ‘Burns and Allen’ or to… ah, the list is legion. Today I am blessed, among other things, with a vivid imagination and visual abilities which I cultivated during my formative years as a result of listening to these radio broadcasts. In 1951, as I recall, my dad bought our family our first television set. At times we could hardly see the picture because of all of the snow on the screen – I grew up in Wisconsin and we were quite familiar with snow; but this was a different type of snow. This snow could be semi-controlled by the ‘rabbit ears’ sitting on top of our T.V set.
During these years our mother (we had many kids in our family; I was the fourth in line – at times for food literally) would cut up chicken, chop eggs, add real mayonnaise on the same board with the same knife and, miracle of miracles none of us ever got food poisoning. When mom put out hamburger to thaw we would often sneak a hand-full of raw meat and run outside and enjoy its bloody flavor. We often took our lunch to school with our sandwiches wrapped in wax paper, crammed next to a cookie, some raw veggies, and a napkin and all of this was stuffed in a brown paper bag. The bag sat in our locker all morning and was retrieved at lunch time. We ate some of it, traded some of it, tasted other kids’ food, picked scraps off of the floor if they looked inviting and then we often tasted the scraps. Another miracle. None of us ever got e-coli.
During the summer months (Memorial Day through Labor Day) we lived in a cottage on a lake. This lake was a mile long and about a half-mile wide. It was a ‘spring-fed’ lake; we obtained our drinking water by rowing a boat across the lake and putting our large 20 gallon cooler under a long pipe that jutted out from the bank; in addition to obtaining the most wonderful drinking water we experienced a great workout – did you ever row a large rowboat against a strong current for a half mile. I can still taste this real-spring water. We had no idea what it was like to swim in a swimming pool – how lame. If we swallowed some lake water – which happened several times a day – none of us got sick. The water was always cool-to-cold because of the many springs ‘feeding’ the lake. Summers were heaven on earth for us.
In grade school we participated in ‘gym class.’ No one ever failed gym class; ‘gym’ has morphed into ‘PE’ and kids can actually fail ‘PE.’– how lame. We were at risk for serious injury for the high top ‘All Stars’ or ‘Keds’ that we wore did not have ‘air cushions’ or ‘springs’ or ‘support arches’ – most of us survived (then there was Rick Z. who always got hurt; Rick was ot able to run 30 yards without falling down – then he morphed into an all-state basketball player in high school – go figure).
I attended a Catholic grade school. . .[to be continued]
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