Golden Airwaves…

What’s in the name?  Plenty to tell you the truth.  Before there was DVD… before there was VHS… before there was TV… the Radio was King!  The folks then caught up on current affairs, took a break from their hardwork and busy lives by listening to that strange-looking box with dials and diodes and stuff.  And with strange names like Atwater Kent and Setchell-Carlson…

And the shows… they covered all facets of entertainment – action, drama, comedy, children, horror, suspense, detectives, variety shows, game shows, history, sci-fi, westerns, soaps – you name it, they were there!  There were no pictures created for you by the medium.  All the visuals were seen through your minds eye…  whether it’s Lum and Abner dusting off the dust off the cash machine in the Jot ‘Em Down Store in laid-back Arkansas or the masked hero streaking through the cactus-laden land on his trigger-quick steed or the Private-Eye following the knife-wielding hulk in front of him or the Space Hero dodging the deadly rays from the alien ship directly in front of him.  The form, size, look were all created by the listener.  And they were different for the different listeners…. That was the beauty of radio.  The listeners “created” the characters… but the end result was the same – laughter, spine-tingling chills, or just a simple breaking of a smile.

And all of these were brought to the listener through the Golden Airwaves of Yesteryears…

Before you dismiss this as just a mere essay on the topic, please read my personal experience and my introduction to the Golden World of Old-Time Radio…

I actually got into the OTR phenomenon by accident.  About thirteen years ago, I was visiting a friend who was living in a small town in Arkansas, a 45-minute drive from where I used to live.  We had such a good time fishing, barbecuing, jaw-flapping, and stuff that I let the time and the Sun slip by.  It was past midnight when I got into my Monte Carlo to head back home.  The radio portion of my radio-cassette stereo was not working and to make things worse, I did not bring any cassette tapes (this is right before the CD era) to listen to on my lonely ride home in the deserted, dark country roads.  My friend, hearing me griping about the situation, tossed a cassette to me.  It was a cassette on an Old Time Radio show called “House On Cypress Canyon” from the Suspense series.  My gripes climbed a pitch higher and I told him that I did not want to listen to some show from when my Dad was knee-high to a grasshopper.  But he persuaded me to take it along and since I did not have much of a choice anyway, I reluctantly cranked my ignition and inserted the tape into my car stereo as I looked towards the dark road ahead.

Now mind you… this is a well-seasoned but still functional 1978 Monte Carlo I was driving… the size of a little boat… and I had cranked up the volume to keep myself from falling asleep at the wheel.  To tell you the truth, I didn’t have to…  I am still getting the goosebumps as I write this note as I recall the feeling I had listening to “House On Cypress Canyon”.  Without revealing much of the story, let me just say it is about werewolves…  The story, the sound effects, the actors, the loud back speakers, the dark road in front of me made the whole experience chilling.  I recall feeling my heart thumps finally slowing down when the tale finally ended.

Then I flipped to the other side of the tape…

Bad move…

Little did I realize that I was in for the thrill and chill ride all over again!  This time it was a tale named “Four fingers and a thumb” from the Witch’s Tale series.  You guessed it… it is a tale about a severed hand crawling around…  I kept looking into my rearview mirror to check if there is any movement from my backseats!

I actually drove around the town for about 15 minutes before I pulled into my driveway just so I could finish that tale!  I was hooked!  I never, in my wildest imagination, thought that old time radio shows can be that captivating.

Thus started my venture into the wonderful world of OTR collection.  First with horror, suspense, and sci-fi shows and eventually into the other genres.   I have collected tens of thousands of shows from the various genres and series over the years.  And I will be constantly updating this site with my new titles.  The price of the various titles, as you can see, are reasonable.  In order to offset the time, labor, and material costs involved, I had to charge something…

So bookmark the website and visit it often for exciting shows.

By the way…. “House On Cypress Canyon” and “Four Fingers and a Thumb” can be found in my “Best Of Horror” collection under the horror category.  If you really want to get the full intended effect, listen to these horror shows with the speakers behind you….

Enjoy the shows and once again… welcome to the wonderful world of Old-Time Radio!