The Soothing Sound of the City

The clang, clang, clang of streetcars; the whining, high-pitched screech
of ambulances and fire engines; the muffled roar of automobile traffic; the
urgent shouts of news vendors; the bustle of crowds on busy downtown streets
...

I remember those sounds of the city, and more, from my childhood in San
Francisco. But what I remember most vividly is the quiet, soothing sound of
radio. Back there in the early l940s, radio was as important as television
is today -- maybe even more important in neighborhoods like ours, where
there was precious little money for movies and other outside entertainment.

We lived on Rose Street, three blocks of steep, cobblestoned alley
on the edge of downtown. Certainly no one entering our crowded Victorian
flat near the top of the alley could doubt radio's importance. A radio stood
in a place of honor, as the centerpiece and focal point of the living room,
a tall rectangle of tan, highly polished wood, like a prized statue in some
provincial museum.

The family gathered nightly before it, bathed in the light from a glowing
green eye. It shone from the center of a line of numbers spread across the
top under a narrow strip of glass, just above a row of push buttons embossed
with the call letters of radio stations.

Hitler, what was he up to now? Could the British hold off the Germans? What
of the French and the others? What was happening in Asia? Could we stay out
of the war?

The radio brought us the answers, sometimes in the reassuring voice of
President Franklin D. Roosevelt himself, and much, much more -- drama,
comedy, adventure, music, sports.

I was greatly impressed with the cherished living room radio that was
almost my height, but I preferred to do my listening in the kitchen. The
modest little radio there, case cracked and tuning knob broken in half,
wasn't much. But there was a cast-iron stove in the kitchen that provided
the only heat in the drafty flat, by means of the gas-burning oven and, more
frequently, a wood-burning compartment on the side.

To this day, I remember that room as the coziest place I have ever been, and
I have never forgotten the sounds that were so much a part of the great
comfort and security I found there.

I can hear them now, the records played on a local station's daily Bing
Crosby show. Many I have not heard since, yet I can recall them at will.

"T'was just a garden in the rain, but then the sun came out again, and sent
us happily on our way..."

"I searched for gold on Treasure Island, and I found that gold when
you gave your golden love to me ...."

Pretty sappy stuff for an eight-year-old, but I didn't have the slightest
idea what the words meant. All that mattered was the incredibly soothing way
in which crooner Crosby delivered them.

"Bing," as she always called him, was a great favorite of my grandmother,
who presided over the kitchen. She was there virtually the whole day,
preparing meals, keeping the fire going and -- above all, it
often seemed -- listening to the radio. Almost never was it silent.

Ma Perkins, another pleasant, soothing voice I've never forgotten, was but
one of the soap opera characters who regularly visited the kitchen.
Breakfast without Ma Perkins was unthinkable.

The soap operas continued through the morning, but by the time I got back
from school nearby for lunch, it was music again.

Frequently it was live music from a local radio station that brought the
country to us city folks. The vehicle was Dude Martin's western swingband,
a favorite of the Oklahomans, Texans and Arkansans who had migrated to the
city from rural areas in their Dust Bowl plagued states.

After school came Captain Midnight, "Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy!"
and the other exciting adventurers, many with secret messages that could be
understood only by those of us with the decoders offered in exchange for box
tops from Wheaties and other products of our heroes' choice.

Not much different, I guess, from today's sports stars peddling sneakers on
television to their naive young fans. A lot cheaper for the kids' families,
though.

My grandmother did make sure we were well-stocked with Wheaties, Ovaltine
and such, but she drew the line at listening to kid shows. I was banished to
the living room for my after-school listening.

The radio was silent during dinner, but afterwards the grownups went into
the living room for grownup adventure and mystery programs like The Shadow,
and comic shows featuring Jack Benny, Fred Allen and others. Not much there
for a youngster -- and thanks for that. I usually went off to my bedroom to
read a book, a sometimes valuable practice that apparently has eluded many
young members of the TV and Internet generation. They seem always able to
find something of interest, if not value, to view or some mindless video
game to play.

Among many other things, young people today have an astounding variety of
televised sports events to choose from. But none of the TV games are
anywhere near as exciting as the sports broadcasts that were my favorites,
particularly the broadcasts of Jack Macdonald, radio voice of our beloved
San Francisco Seals, a minor league baseball fixture in the city for many
years before being displaced by the major-league Giants in 1958.

When Macdonald was at the microphone, players didn't simply hit home runs
over the fence. They smashed them through "Aunt Maggie's window" to the
sound of breaking glass supplied by the announcer. They didn't just
run, they "roared" around the bases. Balls "banged" off fences, managers
"screamed" at umpires (and umpires who made calls against the Seals usually
were wrong, sometimes plain stupid). Macdonald made every game sound like
the biggest of the year.

My grandmother didn't like Macdonald's broadcasts or any other baseball
programs any more than she liked Captain Midnight's adventures, but even she
understood the importance of the annual World Series. It was a national
event so important I was allowed to skip school to listen to the broadcasts
of the games from distant eastern cities, there being no TV and thus no
night games.

My grandmother would bring in sandwiches as I sat staring at the glowing eye
of the radio, imagining every move of the far away players.

Imagininq. That's what made the radio of my youth so different from the
television of today. We had only sounds, no pictures except those in our
minds. We had to imagine for ourselves what was going on. We had to think.
No one ever called us couch potatoes.

Copyright © 2006 Dick Meister

Story ID:	1173
Written by:	Dick Meister (bio, link, contact, other stories)
Story type:	Local History
Location:	San Francisco USA
Year:	1940