Comments on: bob edwards | a voice in the box

By: Marty Robinson

Marty Robinson — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 14:14:28 +0000

Sitting in my Flash Cab in front of the Maryland Hotel on Rush street, waiting for a load, I read the newpaper out loud, dreaming of a radio career. At 3 a.m. one morning, a DJ on WEDC wonders if anyone knows of an all-night pizza joint that delivers. I call him. I know a place on North Avenue and Sedgewick,
and I will deliver it to his studio inside the showroom of Emil Denemark Cadillac on Ogden Avenue. He is grateful. He asks if I am interested in getting into radio. I am. He tells me to return the next night and read the 2 a.m. news. I alert my friends on Rush Street to listen: cab drivers, waitresses, hookers, bartenders. My broadcasting career had begun.

By: Patty Williamson

Patty Williamson — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 13:22:52 +0000

Racing home from school to sit in my grandpa’s chair by the old cabinet radio to listen while I ate a snack — often a buttery boiled potato (an Irish household, you know). My grandmother had her afternoon soaps — “Stella Dallas, Backstreet Wife.” Every year in December, WDAF in Kansas City ran “The Adventures of Cuddles and Tuckie,” two children who met Santa. I remember getting my own radio at 12 or 13, sitting in the dark, listening to “Your Hit Parade” on Saturday nights before I was old enough to date. My mother was surprised that I almost always knew which song would be number one. And I remember my grandfather listening to every game the St. Louis Cardinals played — in his blacksmith shop on Sundays, as my grandmother didn’t think it was appropriate to have the radio going in the house on the Sabbath. How I wish he could have seen just one game on TV. But I know he could imagine them in his mind — something the generations of TV-watching children don’t have the opportunity to do.

By: ami zarchi

ami zarchi — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 08:54:53 +0000

Stirring memories. Not only in America. Growing in Israel, radio was where you heard the pulse of the world, where you sniffed wars coming, where you got to know the dangers around and it was where you hooked up with the world. There were the happy songs, harvest still being a time for a tune, there were the sad songs, and when these started, you knew something’s amiss. There was the newest tunes, from the UK and the US, so far, so unlike anything else. There were the Radio Moskva songs of the Red Army choir, the deep voices of the wide steppes, and there were the heart-wrenching tearful love songs of Um-Kultum from Cairo. Her big heart shattered to pieces with every song she sang, and always resurrected dozens of times per day. That all was no precursor of the internet, it was a SETI project, and we were listening to the voices of other, distant, planets.

By: David Dix sr

David Dix sr — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 22:57:02 +0000

“Plunk your magic twanger, Froggy!”

“No, no, don’t touch that closet door!” (Fibber McGee and Molly)

“And what do you say, Midnight? N-I-I-C-E!” (Smilin’ Ed)

“Woof woof! That’s my dog Tige……”

“Who knows? The SHADOW knows….”

Water Commissioner Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve

The creaking door of INNER SANCTUM

‘”OUT OF THE PAGES OF HISTORY….”

“ARE YOU BLUE?….” (The Ink Spots)

“Jack? Oh, J-A-A-C-K?” (Allen’s Alley)

ad infinitum

Appreciated the Bob Edwards piece, and the posting on Jean Feraca

By: jackiella

jackiella — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 18:03:12 +0000

And Inner Sanctum and the Creaking Door; I always sat on the footstool with my feet up so nothing could “get” them. I also remember Sam Spade and even Buster Brown and his dog, Tige who lived in the shoe. I was just getting into The Bickersons and some adult-type programs when Korea happened and I had to sit with my feet up again. War was scary, even to my sophisticated pre-teen years.

By: jackiella

jackiella — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 17:59:02 +0000

I remember Inner Sanctum and the creaking door, too. I’d sit on the footstool in the living room with my feet up so nothing could “get” me. And The Shadow and Nick Carter. Even Buster Brown and his dog Tige who lived in the shoe. Wonderful radio memories. I was just getting into shows like The Bickersons when we went to war with North Korea and I began to pull my feet up again. Thanks for the memories, Norb.