Saturday nights when Liz and Rob were not taller than we are, Saturday nights had kind of a ritual to them.
At 5 p.m., I’d turn on KBIA, the National Public Radio Station at the University of Missouri, and wait for A Prairie Home Companion to come on. I had my reel-to-reel SONY recorder wired into the radio and set at the slowest recording speed to record the two-hour program based around a mythical Minnesota town called Lake Wobegone (“a little town that time forgot and the decades cannot improve, where all of the women are strong, the men are good looking, and all the children are above average”) and the stories told by one of its former residents, Garrison Keillor.
I left the speakers off because we were still doing stuff at 5. Dinner was usually about 6. At 7 we’d gather in the living room where I rewound the tape and we’d listen back to the recording. Popcorn was part of the evening. While the playback was underway, I’d turn on my cassette recorder and dub the program onto the smaller format. There also in our house were some LP recordings of old radio programs—Jack Benny, Fibber and Molly, Suspense, Mr. Kean—Tracer of Lost Persons, Gangbusters, the Shadow, the Lone Ranger, the Green Hornet, Straight Arrow, Escape, etc.—some of which I dubbed onto cassettes before we went on long trips.
SiriusXm now has a channel for those old programs (the PHC is on Keillor’s webpage) but in those days, cars had cassette players and those programs came in handy when World War III broke out in the back seat. I’d just slide a cassette of Garrison or Jack or Fibber or Molly or one of the creepy shows into the player and peace would immediately break out behind us.
The kids’ imaginations were immediately seized by those radio shows. The “theatre of the mind” took over and for an hour or two the miles slipped by easily and quietly.
We are not alone in thinking children today are missing that important element in their development—-imagination. Oh, they can imagine they are great dragon fighters or world-saving soldiers on their computers. But it’s not the same, by far.
Radio could then, and still can today if we ignore the local stations that aren’t local anymore and aren’t imaginative anymore, and are mostly forums for people whose egos are their greatest asset, expand the mind far beyond anything we can see, even on a 100=inch flat screen screwed to the wall.
(In 1965, the great radio humorist Stan Freberg did a series of public service announcements for the Radio Advertising Bureau promoting radio. They’re all priceless but the fourth one, “Stretching the Imagination” is considered the classic:
(bing.com/search?q=Stan+freberg+who+listens+to+radio&form=ANNTH1&refig=6a8601c200594754ba45e2583e91c5c7&pc=HCTS)
The Singer is Sarah Vaughan.
Garrison Keillor is no longer doing his radio program but he does do stage shows recreating the program. He’s 84 now, writes books, lives in New York instead of Minnesota, and writes with his familiar droll humor a daily column.
A few days ago on the 17th, he offered this observation that we decided to pass along:
(7) Another modest proposal, but a good one
Yes, It is obvious that he’s a Democrat. In fact one of his books is called Home Grown Democrat. But he seems to capture the contradictory, confusing, infuriating political mess we are living through.
Saturday nights at our house aren’t so interesting anymore. The kids are all grown up and have their own families. Sometimes, though, we do have some popcorn. And in our cars, we can listen to Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, Gunsmoke (with William Conrad as Matt Dillon, Boston Blackie, Tales of the Texas Rangers, the creaking door of the Inner Sanctum and many more.
And the miles just slip away.