Radio Days

Joe, a New York Jew, fondly recalls his growing up period in the late 1930s and early 1940s in Rockaway, Queens. He not only lived with his parents - his father who would not divulge his occupation to Joe - but also with his mother's extended family out of financial necessity. That family consisted of biological aunts, an uncle by marriage, his grandmother and a cousin. Each member of the family had his or her routine - such as his cousin Ruthie listening to the neighbors' goings-on through the telephone party line - which grounded the activities. With the diversity of those activities, what tied the family together was listening to the radio. While the adults listened to a variety of talk shows and game shows - the former often providing an escape of being able to peer into the lives of the rich and famous - Joe loved the serials, and would have done anything to get a Masked Avenger secret decoder ring, the 15-cents which he didn't have to send away for it. Joe also recalls the back stories of some of the players in the New York radio scene, one in particular, Sally White, who wanted desperately to become a radio star, who worked as a cigarette girl at a Broadway club where many radio personalities hung out, and who was saddled with a non-radio Brooklyn accent. The radio also was the conduit for breaking news, some on a global scale - such as the US entering the war following the bombing of Pearl Harbor - and some more on a personal scale, both which nonetheless kept the listener glued to the radio for the outcome. But what everyone listened to was the music, especially his single Aunt Bea who wanted to get married but who always seemed to attract the wrong type of man. Joe still places certain songs from the era with certain events in his and his family's lives. But with each passing year, those memories become less pronounced in his brain.