Memories from the first half of the 20th century

This morning when I called my sister at 9:00 as I do every day, I said "News from the Wright sisters" and I immediately had a flashback memory of a tv show we watched as a family in my early childhood of which I was very fond and so were my family.

The memory I had was of a black and white tv show where a stout older woman leaned out of a row home second floor window and called "Mrs. Goldberg!" That's all I remember. I know the show was about various events in the family members' lives but it is the lady leaning out of the second floor window calling Mrs. Goldberg that I remember.

I looked up that show and it ran from about 1949 to 1956, the early years of television for the general public. I know that because I remember my early adopter, Grandfather Joseph Lyons, buying the first tv in our neighborhood and all of us going over to look at it. All I remember is a vaguely faded green thick glass oval shaped screen with some samll figures on horseback galloping across a landscape - must have been a cowboy, wild west show. Not impressive at the time.

I don't remember our family's first tv, but I do remember all our early televisions were encased in furniture type cabinets. Our stereo too was in a vaguely Scandinavian style cabinet.

The other television shows I remember from the early days were Winky Dink And Me, and Willy the Worm, of course, children's shows. Before I leave Mrs. Goldberg however, I wanted to add that her show came from radio.

A once dear friend of mine from a writing club, Dorothy Stanaitis of the Riverton Writers, used to write about radio shows. She is a dozen years older than I am, in her 90's. We haven't seen one another in a decade partly because she moved into assisted living and then the pandemic drove a wedge between many old friendships. Dorothy wrote a lot of stories about the radio days and even did an entertaining presentation about the shows she remembered so vividly.

One thing I remember about Winky Dink was the Winky Dink Screen. My mother must have helped me to send away for it because it was while we lived in Philadelphia and I was under 10. I remember when it came in the mail and I could adhere it to the tv screen and solve the Winky Dink puzzle, thrilling.

Willy the Worm, Sally Star, Kukla Fran and Ollie, these were some other early shows I watched as a child and my most vivid tv show memory which I remind my brother Joe of every Halloween was a horror movie show the Roland Show, of Dracula and Wolfman classics with some comic alternates thrown in with the post world war 2 stars Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. It was on a UHF channel, maybe channel 48 and the theme song was the Monster Mash. The movies were mostly old black and white classics and always featured mansions with bookcases that were doors that led to tunnels that went down to the sea.

Enough reminiscing for today - off to pick up my sister and run some errands on this splendid September morning but I have to say these memories remind me of just how old I am - so old!

Happy Trails (from another tv show - Roy Rogers and Dale Evans) wrightj45@yahoo.com