“I wonder if future generations will even hear about us. It’s not likely.”

– Wallace Shawn, Radio Days (1987)

So it’s late-December on a Sunday, and Mrs. Wife is out shopping. Having taken the nephew out yesterday to see Santa, I have the afternoon to do as I please – listen to old-time radio.

My first exposure to radio programs came in 1974, when I found a promo on the side of a box of Cheerios for “Adventure Theater, Sundays at 1 p.m. on your General Mills radio station, with your host Tom Bosley.”

A radio show with Howard Cunningham? Mr. C? I had no idea what our local General Mills station was, but I was definitely interested.

It took me a few weeks to locate the right station on the dial. That week’s episode was Moby Dick. I really don’t remember much about it, other than my dad poking his head into my room, asking me what I was doing. When I answered, he stopped to listen for a while, then he told me, “Come find me when this is over. I’ve got something to show you.”

At the age of 11, I naturally assumed it would be a chore of some sort, so I hardly broke any speed records when the show ended. But what he did show me was a photo of my grandfather, sitting in a chair, listening to the radio. I never knew him; he died in 1949. But Dad said he loved to listen to the radio. The Lone Ranger was his favorite.

My grandfather came to this country in 1894 at the age of 16. He spent a few years traveling out West, after the heyday of the frontier. I imagine to a poor immigrant boy, the tales told of the Wild West were all very romantic, and filled with adventure.

Instead, my grandfather ended up settling down in central Indiana, where he operated a saloon until Prohibition came to pass. The business was then converted to a dry goods store, and I’ve often wondered how many copies of Doc Savage or Action Comics passed across his magazine rack.

Radio brought the world to people of my grandfather’s generation, much as the Internet does today. He listened to Shakespeare and baseball games and election returns. And when his children served in World War II, the radio brought him news from where they might be, and hopefully some comforting sign that they were in no danger.

Sometime in the mid-1970s, I developed an interest in old radio shows. There was wave of 1930s-era nostalgia that swept over the country, fueled by such movies as Bonnie & Clyde (1967) and The Sting (1973). The public library had record albums featuring old episodes of The Shadow, a character I was familiar with from his appearance in Batman #253.

I soon took to checking out all the radio shows available at the library. It taught me about the great radio comedians such as Milton Berle and Jack Benny, as well as “tales calculated to keep you in... Suspense.” Even though sharks were never much of problem in Indiana, kids were afraid to go in the water thanks to the movie Jaws. Me, I had listened to a radio show entitled, “Sorry, Wrong Number.” It made me afraid to pick up the telephone.

Come wintertime, I tend to over-romanticized my youth in the 1970s, and the youth I imagine my dad might have had growing up in the 1930s. Part of it has to with the role radio plays in such holiday movies like A Christmas Story and Radio Days. I sit and listen to old episodes of the Green Hornet, The Shadow and Amos & Andy, and I think back to the role live radio played back then:

“We occupy a very privileged position in the world of entertainment, From Shakespeare to the circus, from baseball stadiums, to the silver screen, audiences have always left their homes to go to one theater or another. But we in radio are offered the unique honor to enter the homes of our audience.

“We’ve spent many a cozy evening in the comfort of your living rooms. We’ve had a standing invitation for breakfast and lunch in your kitchen. When your children were sick in bed with a cold, we stayed at their bedside and tried to cheer them up. And this Christmas Eve, if you find yourself alone, know that we have been alone together.

"That’s what radio does for strangers. It makes family of us all."

– from the TV series Remember WENN, 1996

I won’t say it was better than the Internet, I really don’t know. But at least you knew there was human voice on the other end.

As for my grandfather, I wish I could find the photo my dad showed me. As keeper of my family archives, I have no idea whatever became of it.

Still, I do have something better: I have the chair he was sitting in.

Praise and adulation? Scorn and ridicule? E-mail me at philip@comicbookbin.com