A huge flashback happened when my granddaughter announced she read the first chapter of a book for an audio recording.
“Really? Is it going to be a video?”
“No, it’s an audio.”
“You mean like the old radio shows I listened to as a kid?”
Well ... she’s never heard one so she wasn’t certain.
Wonderful memories flooded my brain as I recalled after school programing on KRLC, our only local radio station. We were able to get public radio from WSU and sometimes a Spokane station, but they were sketchy in bad weather.
The dramatized kids’ stories stirred my imagination. The music, sound effects and identifiable voices are still stored on the back shelves of my mind. Here’s a few that stuck with me through the years:
“Challenge of the Yukon” with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Sgt. Preston and his lead sled dog, King, always got their man after going through snow, ice, sleet and other perilous situations.
“Lassie,” the wonder dog always came to the rescue. She so impressed me that when I got my dog at the age of 7 — of course, I named her Lassie (like every other kid in the world).
“The Lone Ranger” — who could ever forget the masked man’s “Hi Ho Silver!” call at the beginning and end of the program or the way he and Tonto worked together to solve crimes of all kinds. The beat of horses’ hooves still run through my audio memory collection.
“Sky King,” the hero of the air, used his war-flight experience to solve enormous problems which gave me a longing to learn to fly like he taught his teenage sidekick.
“Buck Rogers” was exposed to radioactive gas, slept for who knows how long, and woke up in the year 2419. He experienced all kinds of new inventions. Now that we’re closer to that date, his imaginative experience would pale in the face of what is real in the 21st century.
“Tom Mix,” the good cowboy with the white hat, was the man everyone turned to when there was a problem. He never let them down.
“Big John and Sparkie” — Sparkie was an elf and Big John his protector. Together they brought about a lot of good things to the world.
“Tarzan and Jane” opened the jungle world to me. I’d never had the real experience. The sounds of the animals and the scream of Tarzan as he swung on vines through the trees will always be another sound implanted in me.
Saturday morning held the anticipation of “Howdy Doodie” time and the “Buster Brown Gang” with the dog, Tag. Buster Brown and Tag was actually a half-hour commercial story that promoted the Buster Brown kid’s shoes. I never had a pair. They were too expensive.
On public radio from WSU, I first heard the story of the “Littlest Angel.” I remember crying as a 6-year-old, sympathizing with the main character because it seemed so unfair to be little.
Look at all those heroes planted in my life through what we now call voice acting and sound effects. There were cowboys, horses, dogs, Indians, jungle creatures, a pilot, a masked man, police, an angel, science fiction characters, a forest ranger and even a wooden puppet who shaped my confidence that there would always be someone to rescue me should I ever need it.
With only voices and cleverly created sounds of movements and action, those radio “actors” stimulated my imagination. I literally saw the story with my ears. The pictures were vivid in my mind.
When I got older, Mom and Dad let me listen to “The Shadow.” I thought, is there a real shadow? Does he know when I do something wrong or something’s going to happen to me? “Only the shadow knows.” (Was that a foreshadowing of God’s character? Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)
I’m excited that voice acting storytelling is making a comeback. I looked up “old time radio shows,” and discovered many have been preserved and are available on CDs. Now I know what I’m going to get my family and the neighborhood kids for Christmas. Will they see with their ears or does the brain need to recalculate information? What will their reaction be?
Chase Hoseley is a freelance writer and retired kindergarten teacher who lives in Clarkston. She can be reached at shoseley8@gmail.com.
