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Old time radio

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Anonymous-0

Well-known Member
Back before ve had telivision I listened to the radio a lot.
How many of yo'all remember the announcement 640 1240 Conelrad?
And vhat symbol on the dial did they use?
I axed a lot of people and they didn't remember. But I did.
 
No never heard of it either. What is it; call letters?

There is a show available streaming on the web Sunday at 7:00 EST on WAMU. It begins with Johnny Dollar, Dragnet and Gunsmoke. From there to 11:00 it varies depending on the host wishes, maybe; Ozzi and Harriet, Fibber McGee and Mollie, Our Miss Brooks, Mystery and any other show from the 30-40-50's. beats the junk on TV.
 

I remember Conelrad - radio dials had little triangles with the letters CD inside at those frequencies. Those were to be used to broadcast emergency information in case of Russian attack.
 
Yeah, I remember it well. Seems like they always broke into the broadcast right in the middle of the one song you really wanted to hear.

And the joke that always went with it:

"This has been a test of the emergency broadcast system. This is not a real alert. Had it been a real alert, you'd all be dead by now."
 
CD = Civil Defense. It was a big deal in the late 1950's thru the 1960's after the Russians also developed nuclear weapons and then intercontinental missiles. Many downtown brick buildings had the yellow CD signs near their front entrances, designating them as nuclear bomb shelters.
 
I was able to experience an actual broadcast of the system in 1989 I was near Santa Cruz when the big SF quake hit us. It wasn't long until they went to the CD system to keep us informed of what was happening. They kept talking about a woman who was killed when a bridge went down my wife was supposed to be crossing this bridge at about the same time. I spent a lot of time worrying about this until she drove in from the north she had drive miles around to get back to where I was.
Yes the system really works it kept us up to date on everything that was happening for several days. That was a real mess believe me you couldn't get around with Oregon plates as you were considered a non local.
Walt
 
Wow, you're really dredging up some old memories! Don't forget Gene Autry, Jack Benny, Amos 'n Andy, FBI in Peace and War, Corliss Archer and a few others on the weekend lineup that I can't recall now. I used to listen to these shows on Saturday and Sunday evenings while doing the evening milking in the dairy. Still have the radio, but it pre-dated the ones that have the CD symbols on the dial.
 
Here's a transister radio from the late 60s showing the two Civil Defense tuning locations. It's just two small triangles, not as prominent as on earlier radios.
a142035.jpg
 
"This is a test of the Conelrad Emergency Network. This is only a test. If this were an actual emergency, you would be directed to tune to an emergency frequency for your area. I repeat, this is only a test."

(Or something pretty close to that.)

Tom in TN
 
You forgot the Green Hornet and Kato, Straight Arrow and his horse Commanche, Sky King, Penny and the Bluebird; The Shadow, The Lone Ranger, Gunsmoke.
 
We still have a now abandoned brick power plant building that was re fabed as an auto parts store.
This store / building had the big yellow and blach civil defense site sign on a wall near the main door.

Part of the old power plant was concrete rooms several stories below ground. In one room was stacked large olive green food canisters, about the size of a 30 gallon garbage can. Some of the canisters had little packs of saltine crackers in celophane packages. Other canisters were filled with what I can best discribe as steel beer cans full of drinking water.

The place had been abandoned and vandilized for years. I have wondered if those canisters of CD crackers and water are still down there.
 
I didn't know that. Interesting.

I was born in 1960 and used to go with my father over to see Grandpa and Grandma in South Bend as a small child before Dad died. So one Saturday Dad is in their kitchen talking to Grandma, so I go into the living room and there big old black and white TV is off, and there was Grandpa sitting back on a sofa with his eyes closed with a ball game sounding from a radio setting on a table.

"Watcha doin Grandpa?"

"I'm watchin the Cubs game kid" he said with a smile, never once opening his eyes.

It went right over my head until many years later when I grew up. Since then, I've sat back, closed the eyes and watched many a Blackhawks hockey game on the radio.

"He shoots! He scores! HAWKS WIN!!! HAWKS WIN!!! HAWKS WIN!!!". Some of the best hockey games I've ever been to have been on the radio. Thanks Grandpa.

Mark
 
Jon:

I still have about a dozen of those Civil Defense water ration cans (full, unopened). The water is just as good today as it was 60 years ago (De-ionized Water).

Doc
 
I'd forgotten about the triangles on the radio dial. I think cars built in the sixties still had them. The theory was that soviet bombers would home in on broadcast frequencies, so by making all the stations broadcast at low power on the same frequencies, the bombers would get lost and miss their targets. It was a silly idea, even then. Of course, back in the fifties aircraft relied heavily on automatic direction finders which homed in on AM broadcast stations.
 
I don't think younger people today can grasp the 50's-70's and the Cold War. Shelter drills in schools, CD shelters, TV shows showing what to do in a nuclear war, MAD. I was pretty sure I was going to die in a fireball from a Rooshun nuke taking out whatever base I was on.

Odd, now I worry far more about my gov't doing me harm than a foreign one. This is progress?
 
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