Out on a Limb: Big, old radios brought households together

There are lots of things you no longer have in your living room here in 2023.

A century ago (or even less) you would likely have had a piano. Even the most modest of families couldn’t do without one, and there was always someone in the family who played well.

You also don’t have a big contraption known as a chiffonier. It was akin to a dresser but really large and designed to hold the chinaware, silverware and cloth napkins that it would have taken a visit by King George VI to be brought out.

But the most memorable modern omission, at least to my thinking, is the humongous radio. Is there a home in America today that has a big Silvertone console with its woody-looking body and lighted dial full of bands of numbers that meant the world was yours?

As late as the early 1950s, they were still so common that I suspect some vestigial memory is behind the current fashion for retro tabletop radios. I’ve had one for years.

But, ah, those old consoles really got a workout, especially in the dark days of late autumn and winter.

Do families today sit around and watch the same shows on a single living room 65-inch TV way up on the wall? Do they all laugh at the same jokes, feel chilled by the same crime shows? I doubt that. Programming is too varied, and enormous TVs too readily available. Like much else in modern life, entertainment is fragmented.

That big stand-up radio in the parlor might have been the greatest aid to family togetherness that ever was invented. My memories are of our entire household united in laughter at zany stunts on “Truth or Consequences” or holding our collective breath as “Gangbusters” roared toward its climax.

“Togetherness?” A resounding “yes.” I never saw or heard of any dispute over what to listen to.

Through something like mental telepathy, we knew when it was time for us to gather for “The Great Gildersleeve” or Bishop Sheen.

There were a few ground rules. Parents got preferred seating. If a chair had a matching ottoman, it was for dad. Second biggest was mom’s. Kids got what was left, like maybe the carpet.

There was also an informal ratings system. In my household, you had to be at least in junior high before you could listen to any show involving guys getting strangled or tossed off a dock because they’d offended some gangsters. But those shows came on after 10 p.m., and you wouldn’t hear them anyway.

Of course, there could be smaller radios in bedroom, kitchen or workshop for the benefit of teens getting their song requests played or adults ironing clothes or puttering about in workshops.

But the big console ruled. Just listening to the shows turned you into a master of virtual reality. The layout of “Duffy’s Tavern” was never formally described, but the regular listener somehow knew by the dialogue who was there and sitting where and likely to chime in with a wisecrack.

Following sports really put your imagination to work, especially in boxing, where all you had to go on was the blow-by-blow commentator’s “Jones digs a right to the body and Smith quickly counters with a jab.” Can anyone today “see” a sport like that?

Well, any old consoles left in the USA are probably sitting in hoarders’ attics. Even if you plugged them in, they likely wouldn’t work.

Except maybe in the imaginations of people who knew and loved them.