Stromberg-Carlson (another geezer thread)

[trof]

Posted this in the old time radio thread, but it sank like a stone. Thought I'd give it another chance.

We'd sit around the Stromberg-Carlson in the evenings and listen to the news with H. V. Kaltenborn. He was the Walter Cronkite (and then some) of his day. Then came Jack Benny, Amos & Andy, The Ted Mack Amateur Hour, and Double Or Nothing. I think you started out answering a question for one dollar and (MAYBE) progressed on up to The Sixty-Four Dollar Question. That's not a typo. The BIG prize was $64 back then. Have no idea how they arrived at that stopping point.

The S-C was a big mahogany thing about the size of a standard Wurlitzer juke box. Just without all the bubble lights. It had 4 or 5 radio bands, AM, short wave, long wave, medium wave, etc. No FM then. We could only get anything on the AM tuner.

It had a BUNCH of vacuum tubes about the size of a "D" cell battery. Every once in a while a tube would burn out and the radio would quit. You'd peek in the back and see which tube wasn't lit up, unplug it (after it had cooled down) and take it down to the drug store to get a replacement. There were a myriad of tube sizes in that radio, so you had to take the old one with you to make sure you got the right tube.

In the mornings Don McNeil's Breakfast Club was on. His sidekick was Sam something. A regular "gee whiz" segment was "Fiction and Fact With Sam's Almanac". They played a march each day and you were encouraged to get up and "march around the breakfast table". A forerunner of exercise shows. I don't remember that we ever did.

During the day the soaps were on. Young Widder Brown, Lorenzo Jones, Young Dr. Kildare, Stella Dallas, Portia Faces Life, Ma Brown. Also the ever popular "Queen for a Day". Monday through Friday they'd have some lady on with the worst sob story you ever heard. She won a bunch of prizes like washer, dryer, etc. for coming on and moaning her tale of woe into the microphone. A bit like our current tell-all shows.

When I got home from school I listened to Gene Autrey and the Melody Ranch, sponsored by Doublemint gum. I think Pat Buttram was Gene's sidekick. It was kinda standard that at some point during every program Gene would say "OK, lets go get those dirty rustlers (bank robbers, train robbers, claim jumpers), but first I wanna sing a little song. Ah'm back in the saddle again...".

Also Bobby Benson and the B Bar B riders. Bobby was always getting out of one hair raising scrape after another. Ovaltine always played an important part in his escape...somehow. There was The Phantom, and Captain Midnight too.

Saturdays I remember The Buster Brown Show with Smilin' Ed's gang and Froggy the Gremlin.

I also remember hearing the announcement of FDR's death. I was around 4 or 5, but I do remember it.

Thanks for stirring up the memories Mark414.
Anybody else actually there, "back in the day"?

[jdots]

1. I missed by a few years but became a fan later.

Visual stimulus was performed by a thing called the imagination.( dude that must have sucked ) .New York City would become still when certain shows were on the air,journalists read the news casts.Attention spans were not measured in micro seconds. It is hard to believe what replaced
that magic.

[pnorman]

2. (sniff!)

You brought back some fond memories. I too was a child of the Thirties (born: Feb. 17, 1930). And I remember those radio days very well ("From out of the past, comes the thundering hoofbeats of the great white horse Silver! The Lone Ranger rides again!"). From that day on to the present, "The William Tell Overture" is known to me (and most others of my generation) as the Lone Ranger music. I remember much of the rest, and I do recall the name of one of the few radios that were such an important part of my childhood ... Stromberg Carlson.

It's become a boring cliche of Geezerdom to refer how that VITAL "willing suspension of disbelief", was achieved with such low-tech means. But it WORKED ... and to a degree INCONCEIVABLE by you jaded young punks.

pnorman

[trof]

3. 1941 for me.

You won't believe this, especially since I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, but it wasn't until I saw Amos & Andy on TV that I realized the characters were black. I now know that the two white actors who portrayed them on radio (Freeman Godsden and Charles Correl) were white, but the fact that they were doing black schitk just didn't register.

Yeah, I think the capability of imagination has atrophied.

[trof]

4. Oh yeah...I think of it as "The Lone Ranger" music too.

[trof]

5. 3 years and a generation apart.

I was born in '41.
Miz t. in '44.
I grew up with radio.
She grew up with TV.
So near and yet so far.
;-)

[asjr]

6. AH, yes! I would be glued to the set in the late

afternoon keeping company with Jack Armstrong, the all American Boy! and Tom Mix, The Green Lantern and The Shadow. Mother listened to all the soap operas while ironing. Stella Dallas was her favorite. Later on Fibber McGee and Mollie would come on. Today, when I mention that I have a Fibber McGee closet people will react with WHO?

[trof]

7. "T'ain't funny McGee."

Molly's comeback became a family catchphrase.