210201 February 1, 2021

Looking Back in Time

"The Radio"

Tommy Towery

LHS '64

   Let's look back at the radios we had in school. I am cheating just a little bit on this one; because I only owned the radio I remember the best for about two weeks when I was a senior at Lee. That is because it was a graduation gift to me from my maternal grandmother. I think she knew I would need one to wake up when I got to college. I am not sure if she picked it out or me, but I really loved that little radio, and she was right – it did help me in my college days. The most prominent feature which did so was not the alarm, but the magic of a new thing they called a big “snooze button” on the top of it. On the back were knobs used to set the correct time and the time I wanted it to alarm. Wakeups could come either as a buzz or with music. It sat in a place of honor on my bedside table, easily within reach from my bed. I no longer have mine, even though it was used for many, many years. I had to go to the internet to get the photo above.

    The General Electric C415 is an AC operated 5 tube AM band clock radio.  The AM band frequency tuning range is 540 to 1600kHz.  Uses #44 lamp.  

    My graduation radio also had another high tech thing called a “sleep button” which gave me the option of keeping the radio playing for up to 60 minutes from the time I went to bed and then it would shut off automatically. 

    In a way it was also a low tech device in that it only could receive AM stations. In my memory the idea of FM music was still confined to classical songs and had yet to overtake the popularity of AM stations like “WAAY Radio; 1550 on your dial.” Stations were tuned in with the tuner dial and would often drift off frequency without an occasional tweak of the dial. The on/off switch also served as the volume control, an idea that seems to have stuck around even today.

    Also, on the AM dial there are two little triangle marks; one is at 640 and the other at 1240. These were the frequencies controlled by Conelrad. In the event of an emergency, all United States television and FM radio stations were required to stop broadcasting. Upon alert, most AM medium-wave stations shut down. The stations that stayed on the air would transmit on either 640 or 1240 kHz. They would transmit for several minutes and then go off the air, and another station would take over on the same frequency in a "round robin" chain. This was to confuse enemy aircraft who might be navigating using radio direction finding. By law, radio sets manufactured between 1953 and 1963 had these two frequencies marked by the triangle-in-circle ("CD Mark") symbol of Civil Defense.

    The clock was illuminated and was easy to see at night should I wake up at some strange hour. It was a low-wattage bulb which was almost a glow rather than a light. Of course it was an analog clock, meaning it had both hour and minute hands and even a second hand.

    One final thing worth mentioning, it depended on vacuum tube for power which required “warming up” to work rather than the transistors which would soon replace them.

    So, that was the basics of my radio in 1964; what about today?

    The truth is I really don’t have a radio in my bedroom any more. I do have a weather radio in the dining room for emergencies and still have a small transistor to listen to when we lose power. Rather, I depend upon an internet streaming device called an Amazon Echo for most of the music to which I listen today.

    The Echo, which answers to the name “Alexa” functions as my radio today and serves my every desire to listen to music. I don’t have to turn a tuning knob to find a station or a volume knob to control the volume. I can say something like “Alexa, play the Beach Boys” and it will find music by the group and start playing it for me, without me ever having to touch the device. And it does not just have to be a group, it can be as simple as a song. As I am writing this I just said “Alexa, play ‘Try Me’ by James Brown” and in less than five seconds the song is playing, just as I had requested. Its like the jukebox we played at Mullin's, only it has thousands of songs available and doesn't require me to drop a dime in a slot. In its basic stage, it draws music from the Amazon music library. It is not limited to Amazon’s music but can also play music from other streaming stations such as Spotify, I Heart Radio, or my favorite streamer - Pandora. Another feature of these streaming stations is the ability to build and save playlists of my favorite songs. Think back to the old 45RPM record players where you put a stack of your favorite songs on the spindle and it played them one after the other. Well, playlists do the same thing.

    Also, it is as simple as saying “Alexa, volume up” or “Alexa volume down” to control the level of the sound. There are plenty of other features which fall into multiple categories of the devices in our lives, and we will visit them later in this series of memories.

    So now I am asking you to send in any comparisons you have of your radio when you were a senior and the device you own today. 

From Our Mailbox 

Subject:    Outhouses

Elbert Balch

LHS '65

    Good description of how it was out in the country while we were flushing away at LHS. I have heard there was another option related to outhouse hygiene. Absent a Sears catalog or newspaper, corncobs could be used.  Brown cobs first and then a white one to verify the job was finished.

Subject:    A 4-Holer

Michael Griffith 

LHS '66

    My grandparents in Tennessee had a single holer when I was a pre-teen. When I was in Vietnam we had a 4-holer and "Charlie" liked to target it during the mortar attacks. Just a little  VC humor. 

Subject:    Drinking

Tom Gilbert 

LHS '67

    First Happy Anniversary to Sue and you, My church group and friends were the same - no drinking even after parties at Senior Prom and Graduation night.