When I was a kid (WIWAK), Elder Brother and I spent a lot of time sitting on the dining room floor with one ear, each, plastered up against the speaker of our family's console radio. Our mother did not wish to hear any noise out of the radio. Serial programs on the radio made her "nervous". As long as we had our chores done, we might listen clandestinely.
To what did we listen? Portia Faces Life, Fibber McGee and Molly (which Dad enjoyed, too), Just Plain Bill, Hop Harrigan, Sky King....and maybe others that do not readily come to mind - The Adventures of Superman? Mind you, in general, each of the programs to which we listened was serialized into 15-minute segments. I do not recall how frequently segments were aired. I want to say that it was 2-3 times/week. Eh?
Each segment was presented by a consumer product. The programs that were directly aimed at kids were frequently sponsored by breakfast cereals and "good deals" were offered to kids. The most memorable offerings were for some kid-centric trinket for which we were encouraged to send in one or more box tops from the sponsoring cereal and coin. As the title of the posting spilled, the only thing I remember ordering through the mail for myself was a Sky King ring, of which I was reminded by Jean's recent posting on The Misadventures of Widowhood: T is for Toys—A Road Back to Childhood. I exchanged comments with another of Jean's readers resulting in my looking for offerings for sale of that ring. I found one at ebay.
Although the ad in the top image shows that Peter Pan was the sponsor of Sky King. I do not recall that. I would have sworn that I sent in 25 cents and a cereal box top. Regardless, I enjoyed the heck out of that ring - and - have no idea whatever happened to it.
A ring with a ball point pen hidden in it? Dang, that is cool. Do you remember if you could add more ink? The only thing better would be able to write in a NORMAL color, you know, NOT the color teachers use to grade papers :D
ReplyDeleteI do remember, Bogie: No, I could not. That was OK. I was just thrilled to have a ballpoint - rare in those days. They had not been around very long. (1947-1948, I'm thinking.) As the glow-in-the-dark plastic piece showed through the magnifying lens when the ring was all folded up, it looked somewhat like a cabochon moonstone set in red plastic.
ReplyDeleteYou remind me of one of the guys who worked for me back in the late 1970s. He told me that I should do markups in anything but red. I've tried to keep that in mind in the intervening years - at least, when reviewing something from someone who reported to me.
BTW: When we listened to Sky King, he flew a Cessna 310. Eventually, that was one of the legacy models for which my stress group was responsible - for the few years before I retired in 2004, I had that group.
ReplyDeleteWhat foreshadowing that you liked Sky King and then went into the airplane building business.
ReplyDeleteI remember watching the movie Earthquake on TV as a kid and wanting to be an engineer like Charlton Heston. I mean we all wanted to be firemen at some point too after watching Emergency. But I did get to be an engineer and build roads and bridges and a few buildings. And wear jeans with a blazer and drive a Bronco just like the movie. :-)
I think I saw Earthquake on TV, but that seems pretty recently, to me - lol. I could not have told you that Heston was in it, much less that he played an engineer. Your description of your OTJ clothing doesn't ring a bell but congratulations in livin' your dream. That's wonderful!
ReplyDeleteFrom the time the USA entered WWII, Elder Brother and I were struck with air operations. In 1942-43, our electrician father had followed military base construction work all over Texas (he built us a wooden house on the bed of his flat-bed Ford truck. I recall wandering over the sands, among the cactus, picking up old nails and pieces of small boards with which to build airplanes. My mom gave me one of her old purses and an oatmeal box in which to gather my treasures. We moved into a house in Tulsa OK in 1943 and stayed until late 1946. During various portions of that time our dad, mom, and mom's sister (who lived with us in Tulsa) worked at Douglas Aircraft and our dad worked as a "line boy" at Spartan. EB's and my favorite radio program was Hop Harrigan which featured Hop as a pilot and Tank Tinker as his mechanic. We used rocks to draw hangers and runways on our driveway from which we "flew" the airplanes that we built. I was shocked that I was the only one of us siblings who became a pilot. At least, Younger Brother, who was too young to play with us very much in Tulsa, worked at China Lake.