Tea and a Chat

TEA:

 

 

Construction photo of the day: The kettle made its way to the job site!

 

CHAT:

 

You might want a cup of tea right now because I'm going to chat at you for a while. Might be a bit of a ramble!

 

A thought struck me last night: what was life like before radio?

 

Not a profound thought, I know, but I was thinking of it in terms of how the in-home radio must have brought about a "new normal" in American family life.

 

Radios began to appear in every home about a hundred years ago. By the late 1920's and early 1930's the "golden age" of radio was in full swing. Many long to go back to those pre-TV days, when they see pictures of the family sitting in one room, quietly together listening to Lassie or the Lone Ranger. Eyes to tasks or each other, not glued to a screen. Mother knitting, children quietly playing in front of the radio. Happy memories for many I know.

 

Leffler, Warren K., photographer From Library of Congress

 

But without the family gathering around the radio, would perhaps the family have been gathered around the hearth or the table, listening to Father reading from the newspaper and commenting about the news, discussing it with Mother or helping the children understand it?

 

Would the family have been gathered to hear Mother read aloud from a book for entertainment?

 

Would the family have  listened to the older siblings read the Bible aloud for evening devotions? 

 

Would they have talked about their day, helped the children understand a concept for school, debated issues, solved problems?

Is that what life was like before radio? 

 

Maybe it was really boring. Maybe that is why people were excited to sit around and quit talking to each other, and listen to whoever was talking over the radio.

Publicity photograph of a family listening to a program from the Newark, New Jersey Telephone Herald March 30, 1912 Telephony magazine , via Wikimedia Commons

 

Harris & Ewing, photographer  via Library of Congress

F1jmm, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Crystal Radio Advertisement, 1922

(This photo looks like just about every family in the pandemic working online, school online, and socializing online, only put a device in front of them!)

Farm family listening to their radio
By George W. Ackerman, probably Ingham County, Michigan, August 15, 1930
National Archives and Records Administration, Records of the Extension Service

 

This scene would be the norm for the next 80 or so years, radio replaced by the Television later. Then color TV, cable TV,  computers for email, websites and internet, social media and (since all land-lines are becoming extinct) our interactive multi-media mobile phones. 

 

Of course, Movies were already around by the time Radio showed up. You could choose to pay to go to a movie. Most of them were no good (not much has changed), but at least they weren't piped into your home. A parent would have probably not wanted to pay to have their entire family go to a movie every night. Or maybe they would have liked to, and a radio was an investment for cheap entertainment. And quick news. However they justified it, you have probably thought the same thoughts in buying your internet devices. :)

Records and players were around too. But you'd have to listen to the same ones over and over. Radio was variety, it was fresh content. 

 

Radios soon found value in the kitchen, when homemaker's shows and recipes became a good marketing tool for companies like flour mills (Betty Crocker was on the radio in 1924). And I suppose soap operas had some sort of value for distracting the housewife from the tedious task of ironing, plunging her into the imaginary world of things she shouldn't have been thinking about, and encouraging gossip. I suppose without it, she could have been out talking to the neighbor over the fence about another neighbor. Maybe no difference.

I'm sure also that their value as babysitters soon became apparent. Keep the calm and quiet extended when junior comes home from school, by plopping him in front of a radio until dinner time and finding some story for him to listen to. Many parents undoubtedly put limits on radio time for their children, using it as leverage to make sure chores were done.

 

Dad comes home from work and listens to the news. No need to squint at tiny newsprint anymore. And of course all the news coming over the radio-- the voice through the air-- had to be right. Those were the days of authority in truth and trustworthiness. No "fake news" until the internet, eh? I suppose that the cry that newspapers were dying started back then, as well as paper books (I haven't researched it).

I guess I'm saying that all the things we complain about today, with internet and devices and the struggle we all have as families to provide "real life" moments (outdoor play, conversations) is nothing new. We've been practicing a device-oriented behaviour for about a century!

No condemnation here. I'm not saying that there were no good things on the radio. There were many people who put good and educational and useful things on it. My own grandfather gave sermons over the radio for decades. Today, we contend that the internet is not evil, but many Christians have put many good things on it and it can be a tool for good. So I'm not saying the radio was bad. But I am contemplating how it impacted us as a nation of families.

I told you it would be a ramble! What do you think? Have you ever thought of the radio as the "internet/social media" of a century ago?