Today, radio programming consists mostly of music and talk shows. It wasn't always that way. Back in the day, the late thirties and World War II days, drama ruled the airwaves. In the movie, “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou” there is a scene near the end showing an elderly couple sitting close to their radio listening to the political rally our hero was participating in. That scene has an element of truth in it. That was what we did – sit near the radio listening to the dramas being presented that evening. You knew better than to utter a word while the story line played out. Do you get the picture?

There were all sorts of dramas. Soap Operas started about ten o'clock in the morning. Housewives addicted to them hurriedly got their chores out of the way so they could settle down and concentrate on the story. Listening to the radio during the day was also a good time to do your ironing (an all day job), darn socks or snap beans, whatever needed to be done. I was never a “soaps” fan. I tried to watch “Our Gal Sunday” back then, but the story line about this sweet young lass in that harsh West Virginia mining town left me cold. I knew a woman who took the phone off the hook, locked the door and had one ear glued to the radio during the hour from one to two. Everything stopped for her when her soap was on. Now that's addiction!

Those soaps ran until about three o'clock in the afternoon. Then another kind of drama took hold. Have you ever heard of “Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy” or “Sky King.” They were adventure stories aimed at the afterschool pre-teen crowd. It took something really interesting to pull my brothers and me away from them. You know how kids are, coming home from school hungry as a bear. We fixed a slice of bread with butter and sugar or an apple, if we had one. Then settled in to watch our version of the soaps until supper time. Remember, this was before the era of television.

The Lone Ranger and Tonto held my imagination. With a “Hi Ho Silver, Away!,” together we rode down the trail after the bad guys. A silver bullet was his signature when at the end of the episode, someone asked, “Who was that masked stranger.” The William Tell Overture never sounded so good.

After the six o'clock news, adult dramas held sway. Adult dramas had a different meaning back then. There was never a swear word or questionable situation in any of those story lines. The Hallmark Playhouse was the top of the genre, surrounded by other dramas that followed a specific theme. I listened to Inner Sanctum for a while until one episode about rats in a lighthouse scared me silly. That was it.

All these dramas had one requirement – to visualize the episode in your “mind's eye.” You saw the story through your own imagination, not through that of some director in a far away city. When Sky King rushed to his bi-plane with his young friends to save the world, I could feel the wind on my face, hear the roar of the motor and felt the excitement as we took off into the wild blue yonder. I was with them. The suspense had grabbed me. It was amazing. Those old radio dramas held my interest right up to the end. Not like today. I might watch a program on television, lose interest part way through and flip channels looking for something else. I miss the melodramas of yesteryear. Green Hornet, where are you?