I received a Radio Spirits® catalog and had fun looking through it at the many old time radio broadcasts I used to listen to. People of my generation did not grow up watching television. There was no television to watch. Instead, we had the public library and the radio to listen to. I can remember radio broadcasts where I was totally absorbed in listening to Westerns, comedy, suspense and stories about action hero’s. Books were another wonderful source of entertainment. The Hardy Boys were as popular as  Harry Potter and were published as a series of detective adventures along with the classics. Hundreds of books of every kind were free to read. The library offered an unlimited source of escape and reading adventure.

Radio presented Western gun fighters, action hero’s, comedies and stories. Many of the children’s broadcasts had promotions where for a quarter and a required number of box tops from a sponsor’s product, like Wheaties, "the breakfast of champions." you could write in for a secret code ring or other wonderful prize. 

The Westerns were broadcasts about gunfighters like Hopalong Cassidy, The Lone Ranger, The Cisco Kid, Gunsmoke and Tales of the Texas Rangers. The action hero’s included Superman, The Green Hornet, The Shadow and The Whistler. There were the detective series as well. The Adventures of Philip Marlow, The Falcon and Yours Truly Johnny Dollar were my favorites. Adults preferred comedy such as Amos n’ Andy, Jack Benny, Lum and Abner, Fibber McGee and Molly, Burns and Allen, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, The Great Gildersleeve, Bob Hope and Abbott and Costello. For radio theater there was Lux Radio Theater, Suspense, Inner Sanctum Mysteries and the Mercury Theater presentations of Sherlock Holmes.

Edgar Bergen had a carpenter create a dummy, the wise cracking Charlie McCarthy and started on the radio on the Rudy Vallee’s royal Gelatin Hour in 1936. They were an instant success and were stared the next year on their own radio show as The Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy Show which didn’t leave the air until 1956. It was one of America’s favorite radio show.  Millions of people tuned in every week to listen. When the people who had tuned kept listening after one broadcast on Oct. 30, 1938 they heard Orson Welles present his infamous broadcast, War of the Worlds, which dramatized H.G. Wells story about an invasion of earth by aliens from Mars. Listeners thought it was an actual news broadcast sending thousands of people across the country into a panic.

Amos n’ Andy program was so popular that many movie theaters would stop the movies and broadcast the show to the audience to avoid people staying home to listen to the program.

The Lone Ranger along with his faithful companion Tonto and his stallion Silver fought injustice all over the West. With the theme music from the William Tell Overture the program featured tales "from the thrilling days of yesteryear." The announcer would say "From out of the past came the thundering hoof beats of the great horse, Silver. The lone Ranger rides again." With justice done at the end of the radio program, someone would say "who was that masked man?" and one would hear the Lone Ranger sing out "Hi-O-Silver Away!" Then there was William Conrad who was Matt Dillon, U.S. Marshall of Dodge City, Kansas and in Gunsmoke he was "..the first man they look for, and the last one they want to meet."

Who can ever forget the sound effects when someone disobeyed Fibber McGee’s order "don’t open that closet?" For twenty years George Burns and Gracie Allen were America’s favorite comedy team. Gracie the scatterbrained wife and George the droll long suffering husband. William Bendix starred as Chester A. Riley in the comedy, Life of Riley where the character Digger O’Dell were a feature.

The Green Hornet with his trusted aide Kato battled criminals as they roared along in their Black Beauty automobile. But it was Superman, the man of steel, who was "faster then a speeding bullet" who began on the radio in 1940. Clark Kent, the mild mannered newspaper man was really Superman who kept the people of Metropolis out of harms way. "Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman!" The Shadow radio program would begin with "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows." He would prove that "the weed of crime bears bitter fruit" and Lamont Cranston with Margot Lane would frustrate criminals.

The Whistler was introduced with whistling and the Whistler would say "…I know the nameless terrors of which they dare not speak." When Suspense came on the radio the announcer would tell you to "Lock the doors. Draw the blinds. Then brace yourself for radio’s outstanding theater of thrills."

To me, radio was far more thrilling and captivating then television because one created images in one’s mind of what was not visible. The imagination is a better source of entertainment then the reality of television. Books offered the same kind of escape into the imagination of the mind. I’m glad we didn’t have television when I was a youngster. I would have missed some wonderful enjoyment in the theater of the mind.