Now, It’s Our Phones, Then It Was…

Radio with that Art Deco speaker, our family's version of the Chrysler Building, out of which came words and music to fill the room. We stared at the wood and fabric design in wonder, mesmerized by its arches and angles framing the dials and knobs. It was modernity itself, both visually and acoustically.

Turn it an eighth of an inch one way you got the philharmonic or the Hit Parade, the other way was the Quiz Kids or Ma Perkins putting a pie in the oven. We believed what we heard. When FDR gave his fireside chat, sixty million Americans were transfixed.

None of us doubted it was Charlie McCarthy’s voice, not the ventriloquist Edgar Bergen’s. Radio conjured images as if our own inner television screen. We exercised the muscle of our imagination.

The speaker was like the grill of a car. It distinguished the radio and attracted architects and designers to strut their stuff. Even Ferdinand Porsche had a snazzy one on the market in Germany. The R.C.A. brand was advertised in magazines with models swooning over the latest color and shape. 

We were becoming world-class consumers by the 1930’s as we feasted on cereals, soaps and cigarettes. Who could resist those broadcasted jingles?

The radio, whether a console or the size of a shoebox, commanded our attention. If the room was a drug store it would have been that raised place where the pharmacist presided between globes of colored water. If this were a synagogue it would be the bimah where the sacred text is stored. Maybe the druggist was a secret shaman performing miracle healings. I thought of my father that way. Remedies worked because he said they would. 

I also remember that December Sunday when the radio even overshadowed him. I was in his store when a program was interrupted with the news bulletin of Pearl Harbor. We all stared at that walnut wood and cloth speaker. Of course, I didn't know Pearl Harbor from Pearl Mittledorf but I knew it was bad news. I was a few months away from my 9^th birthday; the radio initiated me into the adult world.