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A Blast from the Past on Airwaves of Time

Posted on August 09, 2010 at 11:41 AM
Last night I took an unexpected trip down memory lane, and it was a good walk!

About eight years ago I had my father's old "upright" cabinet AM/Shortwave radio refurbished, refinished the cabinet and displayed it in the older home my wife and I had restored. We later moved into a house in which the old Airline was "out of place" and the radio sat in my shop for five years.

Now that we're doing some redecorating and our tastes are moving from the "universal modern" we inherited with the new house, to "country cottage," the radio again has a spot in our living room, right under the American-made drop octagon clock (a reminder of my early years) I've babied since I bought it during a trip to Chicago for National 4-H Congress in1979 (I worked for Extension then).

Only one problem, the dial cord (a nylon or rosined cotton string that connects the variable capacitor tuner to the little needle that follows across the AM/Shortwave band dial) was broken and I had no idea what to use for its replacement or how to route the string through the various pulleys etc. A trip to the Internet solved that.

A few mouse clicks and I found "dial cord schematics" for 500 different AM radios built from 1938 to 1958, and enough forums to let me know that 30-pound-test braided nylon fishing line would work quite well as a replacement for the broken cord. "Braided nylon?," I thought. That's what Dad and I used for stink-baiting when I was a kid. So, I stripped 3 feet of black braided nylon fishing twine off his old Ambassador 5000 bait-casting reel and went to work.

After about an hour of trial and error on the correct tension, following figure 50 of the 500 I'd found on the Web, I put a dot of Superglue on the final "granny" knot and, VOILA!, the tuner capacitor (that little cheese slicer-looking part inside all older radios) worked as it should, and the tuner needle followed dutifully across the dial accurately finding WLS in Chicago and WBAP in Dallas (it was after sundown.)

That radio works as it did in February 1948 when my Dad bought it for his birthday (about two months before I was born). Its booming 10-inch speaker reminds me of how I became interested in the news listening to it as the Russians shot the hell out of Budapest with their tanks, crushing a revolt there iin 1956. It reminds me of political speeches I heard that same year from Dwight Eisenhower, and the news reports two years later of the fighting around the Suez Canal involving the British and assorted groups of Arabs that continue to kill each other in the same area today.

Made in the middle of the 20 years of "Made In America" pride, the old radio is a symbol of a time when quality mattered more than convenience. Of when folks like one's parents made a living making useful things like radios that were furniture. And, when a grade schooler could connect with the world by listening to the Mutual Broadcasting System and get "news" instead of today's mainly propaganda-laced show business.

I'm glad to have experienced those years, and my Dad's old radio, complete with his fishing line driving the tuning capacitor, makes me proud of the things he taught me.
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Comments
Posted by RHiebert on August 18 at 10:56 AM  
Great piece of writing, Dan. My Dad built and played his own Hawaiian guitar before my time but I heard him play it for years as a kid. RH
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About The Writer
Rural LivingDan Crummett is an Executive Editor for Farm Progress Cos., and oversees the company's regional magazines as well as Beef Producer and Irrigation Extra. During his tenure with the company he has been editor of the Oklahoma Farmer-Stockman and the Texas Farmer-Stockman before those magazines were combined. He is also a past president and board member of the American Agricultural Editors' Association and the Fellowship of Christian Farmers, International. He holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Oklahoma State University and a master's from OSU in Rural Adult Education.

Dan and his wife, Jerrie, live in Stillwater, Okla., where they are avid gardeners and landscapers and are the companions of two Great Pyrenees-cross dogs, Gretchen and Gracie, and three house cats who allow them to live with them. 
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