Monday, February 28, 2011

RADIO DAYS AND PIN CURLS

An early recollection about living in the Franklin Park house is the family radio and Saturday nights.

When I was little, my family had a small radio.  It was about the size of a shoe box. The exterior of the radio was an off white material called Bakelite.  It had a knob or two and a dial that was used to tune in the station that you wanted to listen to.  It doesn't sound very special.  But back in those olden days, it was pretty state of the art.  Since television was  in the early stages of development way back then, the radio was a source of family entertainment.  When the radio was on, the  tubes inside the radio glowed. It seems to me that we would often listen to the radio with the lights in the room turned off as the glow from the radio provided the only light.


                      The "Glow In The Dark" Radio was similar to this one.

On Saturday nights, after bath time, I remember gathering around the family radio with my sisters and listening to a favorite weekly program.  As we sat listening to the radio, my mother would be putting our freshly washed hair up in pin curls using bobby pins.  Mother had attended beauty school before getting married and had great skill with pin curls and bobby pins.  She always wanted  her girls to look their finest for church meetings the next day.  So we would go to bed with our damp hair in pin curls and a scarf tied around our head to keep the pin curls in place as we slept. On Sunday morning, the scarfs came off, the curls were brushed out and church clothes put on.  Off we went to church, looking mighty fancy.

No comments:

Post a Comment