What We Did For Fun: Mom Horning Story #4
One of my
earliest memories was of my mother bouncing up and down on the piano bench as
she played the spirited melodies of “Nola” and “Maple Leaf Rag.” She had played in silent movie theaters while
putting herself through business college, and she pounded out a rhythm that I
can feel to this day. We always had
“real” music in the house, and sheet music of the latest “Tin Pan Alley”
tunes. My sister played the piano, I the
violin. For “fun” we “tootled” on the
Ocarina, Flageolets, and shook Maracas.
My sister even mastered castanets.
When we went out
to the Lake in summer, we had the “Victrola”, a large oak cabinet with a
squared “dome” top. It had a handle to
turn to get the turntable spinning, and some triangular “needles” which were
wooden and had their own “sharpener.”
Records of Galli-Curci, Caruso, and Barney Google (with his Goo Goo
Googly Eyes) entertained us after long days in or on the water.
Back in the
city, when vacation was over, we went to neighborhood movie houses: one was the
“Zenith”, the other the “Egyptian.” The
latter had a bas relief sarcophagus and “Pharaoh Masks” on the walls. Saturday morning was “Kiddie Klub,” for
children under 10. The Five Cent
admission included the latest episode of the “serial” and a Tom Mix or Buck
Jones Cowboy Western. Wednesday nights
were “Dish Nights” for women only.
Mother was glad when I turned 12: then, as an adult, I could go with her
and my sister, and we’d get 3 Free cups, saucers, plates, or bowls. I still use the bonus Turkey platter that
cost the 3 of us two weeks worth of 25 cent movie admissions.
Sometime in the
spring of 1949, married and with two babies, I saw my first television set and
my first show. A lot of broad jokes,
pratfalls, cream pies in the face, came straight—with it’s comics—from the
Vaudeville stage. A year or so later, we
purchased our own set. It was a
second-hand, seven-inch, and encased in a blond mahogany cabinet. I remember our growing sons enraptured with
afternoon “kiddie” shows. “Miss
Frances”, a middle-aged, well-fed, ex-Kindergarten teacher, crept about on
bended knees, in order, I suppose, to better identify with her tiny
viewers. There were No Children On
her show. It was a presentation of how
to use crayons, round-edge scissors, and “library” paste. Clarabelle the Clown, Howdy Doody, Kukla,
Fran, and Ollie, and “Mr. Ed” entertained the children on this and later
sets. How we adults enjoyed the evenings
with “Major Bowes Amateur Hour,” and variety shows with ex vaudevillians! There was a flood of shows with personalities
such as George and Gracie, Jack and Mary Benny, Fanny Brice, and Fred
Allen. Stage plays and movies,
introduced by Hollywood stars, like the beautiful and gracious Loretta Young,
swooping in on her high heels and wearing glamorous gowns, kept us “glued” to
the set.
Television,
never abbreviated to TV in the early days, changed our lives. We stopped “looking” to radio for
entertainment and information, but I’ve never forgotten the pleasures of that
earlier medium, that allowed imaginations to soar.
My favorite was
a Saturday morning Children’s Theater, of Classic Fairy Tales, called “Let’s
Pretend.” “The Shadow,” a mystery show
with the haunting voice that shivered along our spines, when the spooky laugh
intoned “Only the Shadow knows,” was a weekly marvel. Little Orphan Annie’s theme song (“Who’s the
little chatterbox, the one with the pretty auburn locks?”) stays in my mind to
this day. My mother listened to Ma
Perkins, and bought her soap products.
Radio brought us music from symphony halls and noted artists like John
Charles Thomas, Lawrence Tibbett, and the Lieder Madame Schumann-Heink.
Baseball games
on summer evenings, enjoyed through open windows while sitting on our front porches
or backyards, carried more thrills with the announcer’s “Strike Three” than
viewing them now in living color. I
remember that summer when Joe Louis’s knockouts gathered adults around radios
while youngsters played Red Light-Green Light longer than usual under street
lamps, glad for more time to be out of doors in the cool breezes, before being
called to go to bed with the then un-air-conditioned houses. Radio didn’t imprison us in our homes, but it
sure captivated us. It was “A
Good Thing.”
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