I have a lot of fond memories of entertainment in those halcyon days gone by. Radio? You bet. See, with a radio, your mind has to work. You imagine Fiber McGee and Molly’s closet crashing to the floor, Superman flying through the sky, The Shadow solving a crime, or Jack Benny’s Maxwell maybe. Fred Allen’s Alley with Mrs. Neusbaum, or Senator Claghorn saying, “I’m from the South.” I had the first TV in my neighborhood in 1948. A 7″ Hallicrafters set, which made me the envy of the neighborhood, but I soon realized that TV didn’t stimulate the imagination, because it was all there to see. As the screens got bigger, it took even less imagination, and now I have a 60″ screen, which gives us a private theatre, sort of, but we never watch commercial TV. (I watch the History Chanel on occasion, and have counted ten commercials at a break. What a turn off!) Only PBS or film, but none takes the place of radio, of which I have hundreds of hours of on tape and disc.
Music? The Big Band sound with Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, Bennie Goodman, et all, with swing music that had great rhythm, and people actually sang about things like love, blue skies, and nice things. Now? Rap and Hip Hop, whatever that is, and noise. I think that noise can best be defined as “unwanted sound,” and modern ’music’ (is it really music?), is, to me, unwanted sound.
Movies? Back then, we had color, black and white, and even cinemascope, but ’special effects’ hadn’t been invented, nor had computer produced scenes, action, crashes, and mayhem. The great film actors are dead. No computers either, so we read newspapers for our information, or listened to radio news broadcasts. When war was on, we saw newsreels in theatres or imagined the battles from firsthand broadcasts at the scene. That was WW II, some say, ’the last good war.’ Truman hadn’t gotten us into Korea, foolishly, nor had LBJ gotten us into Vietnam, foolishly, and George Bush hadn’t gotten us into Iraq or Afghanistan, also foolishly. Those wars cost over a hundred thousand American lives, millions of injuries, and debased the dollar incredibly.
Entertainment? Us kids had plenty. We went outside to play, and had no mind crippling video games. We played Red Rover, tag, dodge ball, hide and seek, jump rope, hop scotch, or maybe blind man’s bluff. When it got dark in winter, we went inside and played checkers, chess, ’Old Maid,’ Parcheesi, Monopoly, or even Canasta, which my wife and I still play on occasion. Remember, no TV, so we listened to 15 minute radio shows after we came in, such as Captain Midnight, Terry and the Pirates, or Jack Armstrong. Evenings we had The Lone Ranger, The Shadow, and later on in the evening, My Friend Irma, Fiber McGee and Molly, Jack Benny, Fred Allen, Can You Top This, and dozens of other radio shows, which all made one’s mind work.
All the artists which did the animations for Walt Disney must be dead, because the wonderful Snow White, Pinocchio, Bambi animations from Disney have been replaced with harsh, violent animations, also now from Disney and others. The movies of days gone past had detective stories, murder stories, comedies, and love stories, but the violence and special effects were left to today’s ’entertainment,’ which I choose to ignore and not patronize.
I am appreciative of today’s inventions and things which make us comfortable, and save effort, such as air mattresses, satellites, computers, microwaves, dishwashers, washing machines and dryers, tubeless tires, efficient heating systems, transistors, cell phones, and automatic transmissions, to name a few. However, with all the modern stuff we have, I am still of the opinion that life was a lot more wholesome, loving, considerate, and just plain warm, 65 years ago. Marriages lasted, kids turned out better, architecture was pleasing, all cars didn’t look alike, and entertainment was ever so much better, requiring the imagination to work. If you’re under 50, you probably hate these columns, but basically, my readers are over 50, and they might like to remember days gone past. Today, 30% of Americans are overweight, and far too many are actually obese. Kids have become addicted to video games, which feature war, and violence. In days long gone, there were no calculators, and if there were, they certainly would not have been allowed in a classroom. We had to think and do math with pencil and paper. Adults are addicted to TV, sports TV, and in many cases drugs. In those halcyon days gone by, drugs were unheard of, and all we had were drunks.
Next Tuesday, vote early and often!