Let the Nostalgia Begin

I’m staying in Platteville longer than I had expected, reinforcing that school of thought that the critical years of human development are between three and five. I could have been anywhere during those formative years, but Platteville it was. We had no television. Mom and Dad knew some people who did. When we were visiting the Swan family in Denver once, their children invited me to watch this little round screen with them. As I already mentioned, Bobbo and Grannie had a television, and I suppose that Grandma and Grandpa did too, although I don’t remember them having one until Grandpa bought a color television so that Grandma could watch the Rose Parade. Radio was the medium. Dad marked the spot on the console dial in the living room so that I could tune in Aunt Dottie from Fort Collins and listen to episodes of Sparky and Bozo the Clown. Mom and I would listen to Jack Benny on Saturday nights as we folded the bulletins to be used in worship the next morning. Occasionally, Dad would need to visit someone hospitalized in Denver and Mom and I would listen to Dragnet on the car radio as we waited. Grandma and Grandpa always had KOA tuned in to Pete Smythe’s show as breakfast was being prepared. The fascination of radio was that it stimulated visions to accompany what one was hearing, which was very entertaining (although it was often a rude awakening to ever see a picture of what that voice on the radio actually looked like). I guess I’ve earned the right to look back to those as simpler times, and to wonder what childhood must be like for the kids today who are bombarded by media. We boomers were born on the cusp of technology, perhaps slightly better equipped to ask the psalmist’s question, “What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?” (Psalm 8:4, KJV)