Part Two: Stella Dalla, Jack Armstrog and Wait until Christmas

When we at last had to come in because it was dark.  We listened to our hour of radio shows.  Our radio  came in two separate parts, the radio part and the speaker.  Our speaker was on a long cord so I could pull it down on the sofa and put my ear right next to it and not bother my parents  The shows we listened to were Captain Midnight, Tom Mix, Jack Armstrong The All American Boy and Little Orphan Annie.  You could send away for wonders such as  Secret decoder rings or a desert gold mine map or Shirley Temple blue glass dishes.  My friend Boonie (TFS) than me always got far  more than I did because she and her brother ate more cereal and drank more Oveltine than I did.. That gold foil seal from under the lid of a can of ovaltine was truly precious.  The one thing I wanted more than antyhing else was my own Radio.  So starting in October I began pleading, whining, and fussing for a radio for Christmas.  Now one of the unbreakable rules in my family is  that presents were NEVER opened before Christmas morning.  They just lay tantalizing you under the tree.  About a week before this Christmas there appeared a radio sized box, weighing about what a radio might  weigh and in a plain brown wrapper.  I couldn't stand it!  My whining and begging reached epic proportions:  "Please couldn't I just open one package before Christmas morning"  Finally my father gave in.  I tore open the wrapper of the "radio" box opened it and found stones and sticks wrapped up in newspaper.  I was truly heartbroken.  My father smirked.  I was  awakened on Christmas morning by music.  Music playing from a radio right next to my bed on a special new table.  Happy ending and I learned the lesson....and now I could listen to the Loan Ranger at 7:30 just like everyone else.

My mother and I spent each summer with my grandmother in Portland. There never were any other youngsters to play with so I spent my time climbing trees and listening to Soap Operas on grandma's radio (not at the same time).  It was wonderful  I listened to Stella Dallas  and my favorite Our Gal Sunday,  The story of a little orphan girl left on the steps of two old miners in the town of Silver Creek Colorado.  The story that asks the question Can a little girl from a small town in the West find happiness as the wife of a wealthy AND TITLED Englishman ? Then there was Helen Trent who searched for romance at 35 and even BEYOND.  Also Ma Perkins, Just Plain bill barber of Hartville.

If all else failed we played with paperdolls.  We took the bus down town, went to Woolworths and for 10 cents bought a paperdoll book. Almost every book had the dresses of a famous movie actress and then costumes  from the latest movie. All we needed was scissors.

After my horse phase and my dog phase and my Little House in the Woods phase I became fascinated with the occult.  Sax Rhomer anf Edgar Allen Poe were my meat.  So I decided to give a Seance.  First I took the bus and went down town to Woolworths and bought glow in the dark paint. I came home and painted creepy faces on about eight shirt cardboards. I attached these to a string that I could pull across the room near the ceiling.  It looked great.  Then I dismantled my light which had a globe attached and used it for fortune telling.  I lighted it with my flashlight and changed colors with various scraps of fabric held over the flashlight.   I had a friend to help me with knocking and moaning.  Our Names were Swami and Logi.  I planned to hold the Seances in my closet.  So Logi and I made tickets and handed them out to the adults in the neighborhood. Then my father found out and began shouting about how I could never have the neighbors in my closet.  That was the end of that.