Radios and Broadcasting in My Town by Carter Cook

What follow are excerpts from an article published in the Texas Antique Radio Club newsletter.

As a child I stood beside an end table and traced with my finger the pattern of cutouts for the speaker grille atop our Zenith 6-S-222. The receiver, a 1937 table top model, was the first radio I recall at home. It served faithfully for many years. My parents bought the radio as they set up housekeeping after their marriage in 1938. I can’t remember when it was finally removed from its place in the living room but I expect that took place in the mid-1950s.

The memory of that cube-shaped wooden Zenith still evokes for me the days of network radio-- comedy, adventure and music-- only limited by the clarity of your imagination and the fading and the static. My dad had a never-fail trick for helping reception on especially troublesome nights. He’d hook the antenna wire from the Zenith to a metal smoking stand which stood by his chair. I still remember string of call signs mostly from stations in the south and Midwest where nightly we heard the network shows.

After World War II, our town supported two local stations. Neither of them, for the most part, broadcast the series that we usually listened to in the evenings. In fact, both were daylight only broadcasters for a number of years. One of the stations was an affiliate of the Mutual network which had some weekend programs to which I listened regularly. The stations also produced local, popular programs-- especially children’s shows, gospel "sangin,’" church remotes, sports events, farm reports, disk jockey programs and news.

Radios were a familiar part of almost every family I knew. I’d identify people with the radio they owned the same way I’d know them by car they drove or the house they lived in.

My grandmother who lived across the street was a big fan of University of Texas football. Who can forget the Humble Oil and Refining Company Southwest Conference football broadcasts and the sound of Kern Tips’ voice calling the play? Mamaw listened to the games on a Zenith Transoceanic for a good many years and then switched to a lighter, more portable radio on game days, the Westinghouse H-126 "refrigerator."

Across town, my Uncle Ned had a big, multiband, shutter-dial Zenith console. Unlike most of the family, Uncle Ned kept his main radio in his bedroom so his family would gather there on radio evenings.

My grandfather on the other side of the family had a reputation for treating equipment he owned roughly. My mother and aunts would cluck that he could buy a new Ford and within a year’s time have it battered and used up. Pop did like to drive his little sedans in the woods in places where four wheel drive would not have been enough. Anyhow, that might explain why I never remember a handsome, wooden cabinet receiver at his place, just a series of Bakelite table tops. He was probably as hard on radios as he was on Fords. Pop liked to sing along with his radios, though, and harbored a particular fondness for gospel quartet singing. He often took my grandmother to radio studio performances of such music at one or the other of the local radio stations.

Both the stations had studios with audience seating for 60 or more people. Many performances and events took place before a studio audience in these rooms. In each there was a small stage area with a piano, lectern and table. The lectern and table were graced with microphones while a towering boom mike angled recklessly near the lip of the stage. One could look from the audience seating area through the control room window at the impressive display of electronic gear bristling with switches and red indicator lights.

Hearing one’s name on the radio in those days was similar to but greater than seeing a complimentary mention of your name in print. Record request programs were popular not only because people enjoyed hearing the music but because the disk jockey always read over the air the name of the requester and the name of the person to whom the song was "dedicated".

People sent in their birth dates to the radio stations just so they could hear their name read on their birthday. A popular local children’s program at the time was the birthday interview show. Submission of the child’s name and birthday would rate an invitation to appear on a Saturday morning radio show at the studio to be interviewed, perhaps win prizes and eat ice cream and cake with the other celebrants from that week.

At Christmas, one of the stations featured live broadcasts from Santa direct from the North Pole. The program was always introduced with simulated short wave conversation between the announcer and Santa as contact was established. For the first three minutes or so of the Santa broadcast, realistic sounding static and hissing partially obscured the dialog. At last the noise would fade and Santa would read Christmas letters from children who had mailed their wants to the radio station. It was a signal honor to have your letter read on the air.

About 1951, my mother and dad added a high tech, red General Electric clock radio to their bedside table. This device, Dad explained to friends and relatives whom he invited back to take a look, would not only play like a normal radio but would also wake you up or lull you to sleep with music and start your electric coffee pot in the morning!

Television came to our attention about 1949. The first television I recall seeing was a tiny-screened Hallicrafters (probably) my Uncle Bill brought back from a stint in the Air Force. We had no antenna. Even if we’d had one, the nearest television transmitter was probably 120 miles distant. Nevertheless, we trekked over to Pop’s house just to look at it setting on the table, unplugged. The next year, on vacation in Galveston, I saw a television set actually operating in a showroom window.

That same year, or the year after, my Uncle Cecil in Houston bought a TV. The first time I got to watch it the horizontal hold got out of synch and the picture turned to diagonal bars. Uncle Cecil didn’t know how to fix this anomaly. He suggested that the problem was likely something wrong at the transmitter and we should just wait patiently until they got the picture straightened out "down at the station." We waited and even watched those novel bars with considerable interest. It did right itself after several minutes and Uncle Cecil used the return of the picture to justify his careful and accurate handling of the crisis.

In a year or so, the first hometown radio dealers began putting televisions in their show windows and allowing them to run during the evening hours. These receivers were connected to high gain antennas put up as high as the merchants could raise them. Some nights, there was actually a usable picture. We’d join other families with lawn chairs and popcorn to watch TV outside the store window during pleasant evenings. The dealers thoughtfully put extension speakers on the sidewalk.

By 1953, Dad had bought a television. Word was out within a year that our town was going to get a television station in the near future. By the summer of 1955, there were test patterns on the air. We watched test patterns. Really.

Finally, in the fall, the new local television station was inaugurated with a live remote broadcast from the high school auditorium. I am certain that there must have been resounding speeches from various dignitaries about the progress of the city, state, and electronics in general, but I wasn’t paying any attention. I was part of the trombone section in the band and we-- yes, we-- were going to perform on TELEVISION.

I sincerely doubt that there were many people left to see the show on the tube. Everyone was down at the high school auditorium watching in person while this new wonder unfolded.

Biographical note. The author is a radio enthusiast in Austin, Texas. He has witten for the Southwestern Historical Quarterly and the Lonestar Waveform of the Texas Antique Radio Club. He and his wife Martha collect, repair and sell 40s and 50s radios. to send Carter e-mail.

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