MONDAY MEMORIES

I remember growing up in the fifties. In our home we always had music playing. My earliest memory was of a big brown radio that stood on the floor. We would always gather around at night and listen to the ole' radio programs such as "Fibber McGee and Molly"; "The Shadow","The Jack Benny Show""; and so many, many more. My dad, mother and brother all loved listening to all of these great radio shows. We would visualize what these people looked like. It is funny when I learned that Amos and Andy were black. Of course, we did not know then. We just would think in our heads what we THOUGHT people looked like. We did not have the advantage of TV or even a paper(we lived in the middle of the country) to let us know what people did look like. Funny how things have changed for us!

My dad would turn out the lights when, "The Shadow" would come on. He would try to scare us!! Then it was easy to scare us. Now it takes a LOT to do it to us.

At night we loved going to sleep with music so Dad rigged up a way to unplug the radio after everyone was asleep. He hooked up a rope to the cord of the radio. We would all go to sleep while listening to music. Sometime during the night when Dad would wake up he would just tug on the rope and unplug the radio. I still like going to sleep with music.

We had a little record player that played the small 45 rpm records that stacked up and would fall down and continue to play. It would play only a few at a time but they would usually be the BIG BANDS of the 40's. That is the music that I grew up with and still love it to this day.

Then along came Elvis, the Beatles and well you know the "Rest of the Story" (like Paul Harvey would say)....Great rock 'n roll came in and we all loved it and again I still do. Those are great memories. Memories around music are still some of my favorite memories. I am just a music NUT I guess. I love having the radio on in my car and I am always singing to it.