Sounds

                                                     

As you can tell I have been stuck in nostalgia for a while, I have just decided to enjoy it and let it work itself out of my system. After all the olden ways and olden days have brought me to this place, to this day, and though I liked it there, I “love” it here.. so I won't stay away too long!




I am “loving” the old time radio shows and music I recently found. I enjoy the memories that flood back, the sounds of the voices missed now for almost a whole generation, the clean hokey jokes, the feeling that we all knew each other. Sitting around the radio was an intimate thing to do, you gathered close, elbow-to-elbow, with chin in hand and eyes glazed, then you were out of there, gone! Listening to the same program or the same song took everyone in different places. Bound only by the words and mood of the music, you could fly, no pictures to distract, no one else’s ideas or barging in. Just you, the melody; the story; the Ajax cleanser; the Ipana toothpaste; and the Duz detergent together for a while.



There were happy sounds coming from the speakers; swing, big band and jazz, put you in that Saturday glow. The laughter came often, Gracie Allen was so silly, I imagined her with platinum tight curls hugging her head and short silk dresses with big flowers or birds printed on them, George Burns, I could smell his cigar, gruff old Rochester with a door- man’s suit on, though I think he wasn’t a doorman. "Queen For a Day", so exciting I pictured all the women who won prizes looked like my Walker Grandmother; and that’s when I first heard of a Norge washing machine, and it was electric and had "bells and whistles", she sure could have used one.



I remember a particular nighttime road trip with my family and an uncle and aunt and their two kiddos that made nine of us in that car. I do not remember being uncomfortable, I do remember the music and the feeling of being lifted away to some exotic land—gazing at the moon and wishing on a star— it might not even have been on earth. I remember looking at the moon and seeing the man there, he was looking straight at me, my mother always saw the side view of him, I could see both but this night I choose his full face. I always wished on him rather than the stars—he was bigger more powerful—and this night I ask him, silently of course, “The Question” and I waited for his answer.



Sammy Kay’s, Harry James the orchestra guys, Bing Crosby the crooner and Bob Hope the comedian, the best of times. My Mother listened to a soap opera, but I tuned that out. The Westerns, Tom Mix, Lone Ranger and Tonto, Gene Autry—my hero—and the young upstart Roy Rogers but Dale Evans won my heart. The western music the Sons of the Pioneers, breath taking, you could smell the campfire.



I miss the radio, my imagination has been in neutral for so long now, well maybe not too long, but television certainly does not challenge it at all. I do play my radio in the car but then there is so much reality going on I do not dare get lost in my thoughts. I miss the look of our radio, the sound of it, and yes the feel of it, all of the little tubes that made it work, got hot.



Could it be what I am really missing is my childhood, now that I am getting close to my second one I am lingering around in thoughts of my first one, background music and all?



Oh yes, that old moon man answered! I did marry the most handsome man and we swung around on the stars and nibbled  moon cheese, and from time to time….