Early Entertainment

It was a different time in America. We actually had sidewalks that served the art of walking, wagon dragging, bicycle and tricycle riding.  The sidewalks had been there for years and were often uneven from the overgrowth of roots from the Chinese Elms that lined the streets of the small town that served as my introduction to this world. Saturday mornings were usually spent at my maternal grandmother’s apartment that my Dad had built on the back of our property. We would watch Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, The Lone Ranger and any other westerns that could be received by antenna from the televisions stations that were one hundred thirty-five miles away. Of course, the shows were in black, white and snow but with my trained eye I could imagine myself taking part in the taming of the Wild West. That segment of my life ended when my Grandmother passed when I was 6 years old. Since we didn’t have a TV we would, on occasion, go over to a family friend’s house to watch Disney’s Wonderful World of Color on Sunday night.

From that time on the early Saturday mornings where spent by the radio listening to a variety of children’s radio programs. There were usually biblically based, and they came from faraway places like Kalamazoo, Michigan and Chicago, Illinois. Another standard was the Wednesday night Salvation Army Hour that lasted thirty minutes. I ask my Dad why they called it an hour and he explained the meaning of “poetic license”. After lunch my sister and I would walk to the library to pick up the next week’s supply of reading materials. Linda was kind of a book worm who would even read under the blankets with a flashlight late into the nights. Generally, my interests included history, biographies, and political novels. These were left to read until the sun had set because during the daylight I was constantly building and rebuilding project after project. My Dad had given me all of the wood that he had used for concrete forms and a can of used nails. Initially I had to straighten out the nails from the last project and then I would draw the plans in my Big Chief tablet and then proceed to build a variety of things that ranged from boxes to gallows complete with a trap door in memory of Black Jack Ketchum. For some reason my Mother didn’t appreciate the gallows. During the winter months more, time was spent reading or practicing the art of marble playing.