An Old-Fashioned Evening

Last night after Willie was sound asleep, our workouts complete, the scattered toys and puzzles put away… Dan and I settled down for a quiet evening. He was on his laptop (scouring eBay for old baseball cards, I assume), and I was working on my quilt repair project.

The house was quiet. The quiet is nice (and rare when you share your home with a tiny tornado who doesn’t yet understand the concept of an “inside voice”). Yes, the quiet was nice, but I found myself wishing their was some noise. Maybe music? We don’t listen to music all that often. We should. We both love many different types of music. I asked Dan if he’d mind if I turned on the radio. He suggested we just find something he could stream from his laptop since the variety of music available on the internet is so vast. He found one of the internet radio websites that he likes, and started reading off categories: hard rock, country, dance party, classical, jazz, blues, alternative… the list went on and on.

I wondered aloud if they had any old time radio programs?” When I was a child (maybe 11 or 12) we didn’t have a tv for a while. During that time, we listened to the radio, records or tapes a lot. My folks had a collection of Old Time Radio on cassette that we played often. We enjoyed hearing the old recordings of classics from the 30s, 40s & 50s. There was Fibber McGee & Molly, Amos & Andy, Dragnet, The Shadow etc. Listening to those old shows (complete with original advertising) was something we did often during those years.

It was certainly a simple and old fashioned form of entertainment, but it was something that we did together as a family and that we all appreciated.

After a bit of searching, Dan found an episode of “The Adventures of Superman”, which we then listened to. This particular adventure was sponsored by Kellogg’s Pep, and like most of the programming from that era, was part of a series. It was fun, a little bit suspenseful, and definitely reflected the era in which it was first aired.

Someday I'd like to share this kind of programming with Willie. I hope he'll enjoy it as much as I do. I hope that as his childhood progresses, we can find the time to do "Simple Things" like this together. Whether it's listening to an old radio program, reading books, playing board games, going to the local museum... xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

My parents always made a point of doing those things with us.. things that were rarely extravagant or expensive, but which we really enjoyed. Those are the things I remember best, the memories I cherish the most. Those are kinds of activities I most look forward to sharing with Willie.

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We have a road trip planned for this summer to visit my Grandmother. I think I'll try to find some old radio shows on CD for the trip. That might be just the introduction our little guy needs, not to mention how fun it would be for me!

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It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's Christy on her way to Amazon to buy some Old Time Radio CDs... xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Photos: Bing Images