pg 43 Peep into the Past, Short Stories by Gordon and Belle Hall
Radios were just coming into use in the 1920s and 1930s. I remember I had two crystal sets which worked without batteries, but were never a success, at least mine weren’t.
In 1929, ‘I bought a little two-tube set from Chapman Brothers, cost $11 and Harold Spicer took it home for me on his cart so it wouldn’t get broken. It worked with a dry B battery, and had just earphones and no speaker. I put up two antenna poles in the yard about 18 feet high, and the wire between the poles was about 50 feet, then a lead-in wire took it into the house and hooked up to the set. CFCN, the Voice of Prairie, W.W. Grant.
One night a week, I think it was Saturday, there would be the Oldtimers with old-time music, music by Cy Ebener and the Kid, Cy Hopkins, Ma Trainer, and others. When the old-time music was on, we used to take the earphones off the headset and put it in a pail or some other deep dish, and the sound would amplify so that the whole family could hear the music, otherwise just one person son could wear the headset.
On a cold still winter night, around 10 to 11 p.m. when all was quiet, we could get a number of radio stations south in the United States, such as Del Rio, Texas, Denver, Colorado, Spokane, Washington, Los Angeles, and a host of others.
Our next radio was a cabinet model with of course a speaker, but still run by the big B battery which would last about a year. This was a big stride as the outside world was brought in, especially the hockey games with Foster Hewitt and his “Hello Canada” and so on.
Then on to the Second World War when Churchhill would speak and Roosevelt for the States. Families would gather around the Radio to hear the latest news from overseas.
Into the 50s and television, our folks used to comment they never expected to see things happening, taking place miles away on a screen in front of them. Nowadays our younger ones just take this for granted. So much for progress.
