DAY 92 - COUNTING DOWN TO THE 50TH

Good Morning, Class of '64

The Radio was an Elaborate Piece of  Furniture in the Home

Radio Poem

 
Bertolt Brecht

You little box, held to me escaping
So that your valves should not break
Carried from house to house to ship from sail to train,
So that my enemies might go on talking to me,
Near my bed, to my pain
The last thing at night, the first thing in the morning,
Of their victories and of my cares,
Promise me not to go silent all of a sudden.

Silvertone 7120

“So many people have the TV or radio 
constantly turned on "for company," 
or spend their time reading trashy novels, 
aimlessly surfing the Net, and so on. 
Then suddenly one day you are old or
 sick and you realize you have done nothing 
with your life. All your thoughts are other 
people's thoughts and you have no idea who 
you really are or what the purpose 
of your life might be.” 
Karen Kingston
Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui

Another Day with Larry

The Radio

Silvertone Model 2451 Farm Radio

We had no telephone. We had no daily newspaper. We saw our neighbors rarely. Our lifeline to the outside world was our Sears Silvertone battery-powered radio with the fifty-foot wire aerial.



We got our local news and weather forecasts from the radio. We got our national and international news from it. Dad liked Gabriel Heatter, and, after he went off the air, Lowell Thomas. Mom religiously listened to the funeral notices daily on WDNE, the Elkins station. We enjoyed country music and prizefights on the radio.

Gabriel Heatter

There's Good News Tonight

 

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Heatter 

Lowell Thomas

A Traveling Man

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowell_Thomas 

WDNE FM

A Country formatted broadcast radio station 
licensed to Elkins, West Virginia, serving 
the North-Central West Virginia area. 
WDNE-FM is owned and operated by 
West Virginia Radio Corporation.
ww.wdnefm.com/

We liked the great radio comedies. Jack Benny was my favorite - he still is. I have a good collection of Jack Benny and other great radio comedies on tape and CD. I enjoy them as much as I did then.The writing quality and timing of the performers fascinate me. I also liked Have Gun, Will Travel, Gunsmoke, Gangbusters, and The Inner Sanctum. 

Jack Benny
"Well!"

 

 Benny portrayed a miser who 

played his violin badly.

 He was always "39" years old, 

regardless of his actual age.

Known for his comic timing, 

and ability to create laughter 

with a pregnant pause or a single 

expression such as his 

signature exasperated "Well!".

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Benny

Listening to the radio is a very active mental process. You use your imagination to create mental images of the performers and scenes. That exercises the mind and stimulates creativity. Television is the opposite. It dulls the mind. Watching television is a very passive process.

I am so thankful I grew up in the era of radio. I “saw” Marshall Dillon, Chester’s limp, Jack Benny, Rochester, Mary Livingstone, Dennis Day, Amos, Andy, the Kingfish, George Burns, Gracie Allen, and so many more. And I saw them in living color and high definition! If you really want to dull a child’s mind, put him in front of a television set for several hours a day.

We saw it all, on the radio!

Antique Radios, Radio Catalogue 
and Radio Museum
http://www.radiomuseum.org/dsp_hersteller_detail.cfm?company_id=3331

Silvertone 6130

Silvertone: 1915-1972
Sears Archive
http://www.searsarchives.com/brands/silvertone.htm

Silvertone 7241

Early 1940's Silvertone 
battery operated
tube radio w/ battery eliminator

Sears Silvertone Images
https://www.google.com/search?q=Sears+Silvertone+battery-powered+radio&client=firefox-a&hs=ckR&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=sb&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=t9VsU9WHDNOwyAT-4IKQCw&ved=0CDsQsAQ&biw=1366&bih=610&dpr=1

Silvertone 7036a

My Wooden Radios
http://home.usit.net/~collies5/wooden.htm

Silvertone 6320

Antique Radios
http://www.collectorsweekly.com/radios/overview/stories 

Silvertone 6251

 Golden Age of Radio
http://www.cybercollege.com/frtv/frtv018.htm 

Silvertone 7134

 “I'm not trouble at all. 

I'm just a guy trying to get a girl 

to give him the time of day. 

I'm like every song on the radio.”
Hailey Abbott 

Boy Crazy 

Silvertone 7037

 “Lux spent the ride dialing the 

radio for her favorite song. 

"It makes me crazy," she said. 

"You know they're playing it somewhere, 

but you have to find it.”
Jeffrey Eugenides

The Virgin Suicides

Silvertone from 1940

“...some nights I'd sneak out and listen 

to the radio in my Dad's old Chevy -

 children need solitude - 

they don't teach that in school...”
John Geddes

A Familiar Rain

Silvertone 7039

 “I want to broadcast your poem 

to me over the radio so everyone 

will know we love each other just 

as deeply as the people in pop songs.”
 Bauvard

The Prince Of Plungers

 

Yesterday Once More
Peaked at number 2 on the  
Billboard Hot 100 chart 
According to Cash Box, on June 2, 1973, 
"Yesterday Once More" was the highest-debuting 
single at No. 71 and by August 4 it reached No. 1. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yesterday_Once_More_%28song%29 
The Carpenters - 1973

Yesterday Once More

When I was young
I'd listen to the radio
Waitin' for my favorite songs 
When they played I'd sing along
It made me smile.

Those were such happy times
And not so long ago
How I wondered where they'd gone
But they're back again
Just like a long lost friend
All the songs I loved so well.

Every Sha-la-la-la
Every Wo-o-wo-o
Still shines
Every shing-a-ling-a-ling
That they're startin' to sing's
So fine.

When they get to the part
Where he's breakin' her heart
It can really make me cry
Just like before
It's yesterday once more.

Lookin' back on how it was
In years gone by
And the good times that I had
Makes today seem rather sad
So much has changed.

It was songs of love that
I would sing to then
And I'd memorize each word
Those old melodies
Still sound so good to me
As they melt the years away.

Every Sha-la-la-la
Every Wo-o-wo-o
Still shines
Every shing-a-ling-a-ling
That they're startin' to sing's
So fine.

All my best memories
Come back clearly to me
Some can even make me cry.
Just like before
It's yesterday once more. 

Farm Family Gathered Around the Radio

DAY 97 - COUNTING DOWN TO THE 50TH

Good Morning, Class of '64

Bringing in the Hay - John Whetton Ehringer

So God Made a Farmer
Paul Harvey

God Made a Farmer's Wife

Diane Wolfe Martin & Thomas Wolfe

“Why do farmers farm,
given their economic adversities
on top of the many
frustrations and difficulties
normal to farming?
And always the answer is:
"Love. They must do it for love."
Farmers farm for the love of farming.
They love to watch and nurture the growth of plants.

 They love to live in the presence of animals.
They love to work outdoors.
They love the weather,
maybe even when it is making them miserable.
They love to live where they work
and to work where they live.
If the scale of their farming is small enough,
they like to work in the company of their children
and with the help of their children.
They love the measure of independence that
farm life can still provide.
I have an idea that a lot of farmers have gone
to a lot of trouble merely to be self-employed
to live at least a part of their lives without a boss.”
Wendell Berry
Bringing it to the Table:
Writings on Farming and Food

Haying - Theodore Robinson

Sundays with Larry

Daily Chores

Field Hand With Scythe - John George Brown

On a subsistence farm, there was always field work. But chores had to be done each morning and evening before and after the field work.

The chores started with building the fire in the wood-burning cooking stove and, in colder weather, in the wood or coal heating stove. Dad always did that - it was nice to get up in a cold bedroom, hurriedly dress, and rush downstairs to huddle around the heating stove on cold winter mornings. Mom fixed breakfast and, often

 Breakfast - Nikolai Bogdanov Belskiy

a much harder task, got the rest of us up. My brother and I resisted. When we heard Dad say that it was time to get up, we knew it was time!  Mom fixed three meals a day, all from scratch, seven days a week, and made hot biscuits with most of them.

Milkin' - Dona And Jerry Locklair

After breakfast, the cows had to be milked. In the winter, that was done in the barn. We used a small pen about 100 yards from the house in the summer. We usually milked 3 cows. 

An additional task, one that I hated, in the summer was feeding the orphan lambs. We had 2 or 3 each year, lambs whose mother had died, had too many lambs to feed, or rejected them. We fed them from bottles with rubber nipples. They were very impatient and butted a lot - that butting sprayed milk all over but mostly in your face. I usually fed them through the vertical cracks in a gate to protect myself from warm milk spray.

Gathering Eggs - Dona & Jerry Locklair

The hogs and chickens had to be fed and any early morning eggs gathered. We fed the chickens commercial “scratch” feed, crushed oyster shell, and shelled corn, which, of course, first had to be shelled. We fed the hogs ear corn (They could shell it for themselves!) and table scraps called “slop,” hence, “slopping the hogs.” 

A Meal For the Pigs - Arthur Watson Sparks

The hogs were impatient. The bucket of slop had to be poured into a wooden trough. Trying to do that over a rail fence with impatient, hungry hogs fighting for it was a real pain, so we made U-shaped troughs that went through the fence into the feed trough to pour the slop into.That made a messy, smelly job a bit easier. We sometimes mixed a by-product of the flour industry, the ground wheat hulls called middlings, into the slop. The hogs and chickens both had to be fed again in the evenings and the eggs gathered again.

Boy Attacked by Hen - Wally Fialkowska

By the way, gathering eggs can be a very scary job for a little boy. Some of the hens do not like their eggs being taken and they can peck pretty hard. I’ve been chased out of the chicken house more than once by an irate hen. The smell in the chicken house was bad even for a farm.

Old Well Bucket - Gary Partin

Water had to be drawn from the well, probably 8 - 10 two-gallon buckets daily.

The wood box and kindling box for the cooking stove had to be filled every evening. We often had to carry in a few loads in the middle of the day in colder weather or when Mom was canning.

Country Kitchen - James Lumbers

Carrying the firewood, along with gathering the eggs, was one of my first chores. In colder weather, the wood or coal for the heating stove had to be carried. We burned 4 to 8 buckets of coal per day in winter. Of course the ashes had to be taken out daily.

In winter, the horse, cows, and sheep had to be fed and watered twice daily. We usually fed some grain in addition to the hay to the horse and cows. We also fed the corn fodder to the cows; they loved it. A month or so prior to lambing season, we supplemented the hay with a high-protein sweet feed (grain with molasses mixed in it) for the sheep.

Feeding Time - Gunning King

The hay was fed in the mangers to the horse and cows and spread on the ground for the sheep. The grain was fed in grain boxes, one for each animal, to the horse and cows. We had long, narrow troughs, 10 - 12 inches wide and up to 20 feet long to feed the sheep grain.

Sheep & Shepherd - Unknown

On cold days, ice in the spring had to be chopped out with an ax. When the snow was deep, we had to break trail through the snow so the sheep could get to water. The same process was repeated in the evenings, as was the milking.

In winter, the heating stove had to be banked so that the fire would not go out during the night. Dad always did that. He had a horrible fear of the house burning so he trusted no one else to do it.

Boots with Laces - Van Gogh

He hung our socks on the backs of ladder-back chairs around the stove and set our shoes and boots on the chairs. They were wonderfully warm when we put them on in the mornings. I miss that.

Man with Scythe - John Eastman

It is ironic that the house that Dad built and raised his family in did burn to the ground a short time after Mom and my brother left the mountain. It is more ironic that Mason was killed in a house fire a few months after leaving the mountain.

These chores took from one to two hours a day with an extra hour or two in bad weather. That was before and after the full day’s work in the fields.

“These memories are part of my heritage, 

the fabric of my personality, 

and as real to me as the land itself.”
Karen Jones Gowen

Farm Girl

Who's Gonna Feed Them Hogs? 

Tom T. Hall - 1971

Going Home - Dona & Jerry Locklair

“The fields are black and ploughed,

 and they lie like a great fan before us, 

with their furrows gathered in some hand 

beyond the sky, spreading forth from that hand, 

opening wide apart as they come toward us, 

like black pleats that sparkle 

with thin, green spangles.”
Ayn Rand

  Anthem

“A determined Yankee book drummer once

 told a Southerner that 'a set of books on 

scientific agriculture' would teach him to 

'farm twice as good as you do.' 

To which the Southerner replied: 

'Hell, son, I don't farm half as good 

as I know how now.”
Grady McWhiney 

Cracker Culture: 

Celtic Ways in the Old South

“Why does no one speak of the cultural 

advantages of the country?

 For example, is a well groomed, 

ecologically kept, sustainably fertile farm 

any less cultural, any less artful, 

than paintings of fat angels on church ceilings?”
Gene Logsdon

  Living at Nature's Pace:

 Farming and the American Dream  

 

Noonday in Summer - Jerome Thompson