Early Radio
--by Ben Henneke

The true pain of old age is having no one left with whom you can share memories.

For example, someone unguardedly asked me about early day radio. I began to wave my arms and wax lyrical about radio drama, which led to 'sound effects,' which led to a mention of the old tin aspirin box. Early Day Radio was put to one side, what was a tin aspirin box?

It was a narrow, tin container, with a hinged top, bright in the Bayer colors of yellow and white, in which a dozen aspirin were laid flat. It was so designed that it nestled snuggly in your lower vest pocket.

Tin Aspirin Box was put to one side, what kind of vest had pockets?

It was the kind of vest that made the last third of a man's three piece suit. It had wonderful pockets in which you could carry your Eversharp retractable pencil, your Parker Fountain Pen, and your pocket watch. Before you buttoned up your vest, you would run your watch chain through the button hole of choice and display on your manly chest such items as fobs and keys, with the watch itself nestling in a pocket different from but usually opposite the one holding the tin aspirin box.

Vests are not totally unknown today. The British and some American manufacturers speak of the knitted or woven undershirt as a “vest.” But that's confusing because the Brits also call them singlets, that is, they call them singlets when they're not calling them doublets. All this name calling arose when long underwear became declasse, and BVDs did not sweep the ensuing style revolution.

The Brits never talked of vests with pockets; they called that article of clothing a waistcoat. Let me rephrase that. They spelled it waistcoat but called it weskit. Photographs of early day radio programs show male performers stripped down to their shirt sleeves yet wearing the vest or weskit in order to have a place to hold the tin aspirin box.

It was a much used and highly respected sound effect maker.

Tulsa had two pioneers of sound effects. Raymond Kelly and Bob Stone. (As I said at the beginning of this feruilleton, the pain of old age is that there is no one with whom to check one's reminiscences. Who can I call to validate my memory? I think Kelly was with NBC. Bob Stone, the elder brother of a high school buddy, Billy Stone, became nationally famous for conceiving the idea of dropping a cantaloupe onto the sound table when the script called for the sound of a human skull being crushed.

Any effect could be achieved if you could get the microphone pickup to relate to the other sounds made by the announcer and cast. An aspirin box filled with buckshot violently jerked right next to the mike sounded like waves breaking on a rocky shore, the same tin drummed with your fingers could sound like a horse running over a metal bridge. Opening the tin box could be made to sound like prying open a metal chest, snapping it shut sounded like cocking a bolt-fired weapon.

Oh, and you could swallow some of the aspirin, if you couldn't think of ways to create other sound effects the script called for.

You used the watch chain and its keys for the metallic clanking of the prisoner walking in irons; rice falling on a pillow could simulate raindrops; a wind machine --- but all that so many years ago, who remembers Orson Wells?

As I said, there's no one left to share memories of Fibber McGee and Molly; Fred Allen and Senator Claghorn.

I still have a vest, but the aspirin box?