I Watched it All on the Radio

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So here is a daily dose of nostalgia in both color (above) and black & white (below), even though I'm too young (49 years old) to remember it.  Families would gather around the big "stand-up" radios in their dens and listen to ball games, Amos 'n Andy, and (who can ever forget) the Orson Welles' "The War of the Worlds" radio drama broadcast, in which he convinced many Americans that an actual invasion from Mars was taking place!  People sat around radios like this and used their imaginations to fill in the blanks that Televisions, computers, and cell phones now do.

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We don't have cable and sometimes when my team plays on a cable channel that I cannot catch, it is fun to listen to an LSU football game on the radio.  You can tune in to Jim Hawthorne and Doug Moreau calling the game on WWL Radio out of New Orleans. Jim will say, "The Tigers come out to the field wearing gold pants, white shirts, and purple numbers.  Harris is under center, and they are in an I-formation with Dupre split wide to the right."  And I'm right there.  My imagination fills in the sights, sounds, smells and atmosphere as I wait for the play to unfold.

When my great grandmother passed away in 1987 I was given her old radio.  I have a photo of it below.  She was born in 1901 and I'm sure she spent much time in front of this old radio "passing the time," listening to a favorite program.

I refinished the cabinet around 1990 and purchased a piece of upholstery to cover the speaker portion at the bottom of the cabinet.  I think it is a nice looking radio, with a back-lit dial and three knobs on the front.  I just wished it still worked.

If you turn around the back, you can see the components that ran the radio, consisting of a bunch of vacuum tubes, capacitors, resistors and electronics encased in cylinders and compartments.  This was probably state-of-the art at the time it was made, but now, compared with electronics today, it seems primitive.

This radio is a Stewart-Warner model R-104-A and from what I can learn it was produced around 1931.  I did a Google search on the manufacturer and found This Article that gave some very interesting facts.

First, Stewart-Warner was founded in 1905 and they made the speedometers in the Ford Model T. They also made the "Zerk" grease fitting (nipple attachment) that you fit your grease gun into to pump grease into bearings!  I always thought Zerk was an odd name, but it turns out it was named after Oscar Zerk, the inventor or person to whom the patent of the grease fitting was granted.  Oscar worked for the Alemite Co. which later changed its name to Stewart-Warner.

The main plant and headquarters of Stewart-Warner was located in Chicago.  In the photo above you can see "MADE IN U.S.A." proudly emblazoned on the serial plate. Well, that is no more.  In 1989 the new owner of Stewart-Warner moved all operations to Juarez, Mexico and shuttered the plant you see below that still employed 700 people at the time.  Sad that the employees that once worked in that bustling place lost their jobs and the once busy office is vacant, dormant, and fenced off with grass growing up in the pavement.

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I pulled one of the tubes out of the old radio receiver to get a closer look.  Pretty neat. The receiver has 'Superheterodyne' written on the side of it.  I had never heard of that word, but it refers to a method of designing wireless communications or broadcast equipment. 

I searched around and found a couple of websites in which this very radio (in working condition!) was selling for $299.  I would assume it would sell for a lot more than that.  Of course I'd never sell it.  It is a neat connection to an earlier, simpler time.  

There is a country and western singer named Lionel Cartwright who sang a song  in 1990 called "I watched it all on my radio" that is about those simpler times when radio was king.  Here are a few of the lyrics:

And right about midnight, some preacher came on

To tell me what's right, to tell me what's wrong

And there was a test at the sound of the beep

"It was only a test" the voice would repeat

And the National Anthem would sing me to sleep

I had a six-transistor when I was a kid

Under my pillow, I kept it hid

When the lights went out, and no one could see

Over the airwaves, the world came to me

And I had a seat on the very front row

And I watched it all on my radio

I watched it all on my radio

Did you ever "watch it all" on your radio?