Subject: [removed] Digest V2004 #233
From: <[removed]@[removed]>
Date: 7/16/2004 9:20 PM
To: <[removed]@[removed];

------------------------------


                            The Old-Time Radio Digest!
                              Volume 2004 : Issue 233
                         A Part of the [removed]!
                             [removed]
                                 ISSN: 1533-9289


                                 Today's Topics:

  Re: VOA near Cincinnati               [ "MICHAEL BIEL" <mbiel@[removed]; ]
  Newbie                                [ "[removed]" <dmf273@[removed] ]
  Onion skin and dropping pages         [ "B. J. Watkins" <kinseyfan@hotmail. ]
  7-17 births/deaths                    [ Ron Sayles <bogusotr@[removed]; ]
  Fibber McGee & Molly                  [ "William Schell" <bschell@[removed] ]
  Carbon copies and computers           [ Rick Keating <pkeating89@[removed]; ]
  MP3 Players                           [ "Gil Miller" <ghmiller@[removed] ]

------------------------------

Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2004 22:51:20 -0400
From: "MICHAEL BIEL" <mbiel@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Re: VOA near Cincinnati

It was great hearing about the plans for the Voice of America WLWO
transmitter site north of Cincinnati.  I was grieved a few years back when
they started dismantling it, and I am glad to find that part of it is still
there and to hear the great plans for a museum.

Well, I have my own story about that transmitter site, but actually that
story goes back further to another VOA transmitter site, WBOU in Bound
Brook, New Jersey.   I grew up about 30 miles from Bound Brook but it
wasn't until one day around 1962 that I found myself in passing thru Bound
Brook with my father driving.  Apparently we had some time to kill, so he
started asking people if they knew how to get to the VOA transmitter.
Finally someone said that we probably meant the RCA site down by the river,
and he gave us directions out to there.  We came to this sign with the old
RCA logo that said that this was a government facility operated by RCA, but
said nothing about VOA or WBOU.  There was a narrow tree-lined road, and we
started down it.  I had a portable short wave receiver with me, and sure
enough, there were plenty of overloaded VOA signals easily heard without an
antenna.  In about half a mile we could see a clearing at the end of the
road, and when we got there it was a huge grass  field with towers and
interlaced antennas all over the place.  There also were huge NO
TRESPASSING signs.  We figured if we stuck our head out past the last trees
into the field that it would trigger a volley of crossfire from all kinds
of machine guns and missiles.  This was the "duck and cover" cold war era,
remember.  So we didn't venture into the field, nor could we see any kind
of transmitter building.  It probably was hidden away somewhere in that
forest that completely surrounded the field.  We looked for just a minute,
then turned back down the road.

No machine guns.

Whew.

So it was a great surprise when in the late 70s I first drove by WLWO.  It
was out there in the open, right alongside a major interstate highway only
a few miles outside of a major city.  It was a huge field with many towers
and interlaced antennas, but it was not hidden down a half-mile road in the
middle of a forest.  I still was wary of stopping and taking pictures, but
a few years later I was driving down from Chicago to Cincinnati with a
friend of mine from England, a retired BBC announcer, Joe Pengelly.  I
pointed the site out to him and he said in his Perfect BBC Voice, "Let's
swing around and take a closer look."  As we drove around the next exit and
started back North (the site is to the East of the highway, so is on the
Northbound side)  I told him my WBOU story.  But he convinced me it would
be OK to look around and take pictures.  After all, this is a free country,
and surely the Commies knew all about these transmitter sites and where
they are and what they looked like.  So we pulled over, and I started
taking some videotape and we both took some still pictures when I sensed
that there were some whirling lights pulling up behind my car!!!

Cheese it, Joe!  It's the cops!

I suppose if it happened at the present time, we would have been on our way
to Guantanamo, but all the cop was interested in was whether we were having
car trouble.

Whew.

Cut to about 15 years after that.  It is the mid-1990s, the cold war is
over, and I am in Moscow, Russia.  I've been touring thru the new radio and
TV stations and record companies for the past month, and was even
interviewed on what was Radio Moscow, now called The Voice of Russia
International.  It is the last full day of my trip, and we had an
appointment to visit the local FM station which has a morning and afternoon
drive time program in English.  It is way out on the outskirts of the city,
not too far from where we've heard the nude beach is.  The bus drops us off
about a mile from the station (which is the opposite  direction from the
beach.  Drat.)  But as we approach we see all sorts of antenna towers
sticking up above the forest.  It is not just one station.  There are
rumors that this had been a jamming transmitter site during the cold war,
but the manager of the station insists that it had originally been a
foreign language international station.  That is possible, because there
had been a station called "Radio Peace and Progress" during the 70s and 80s
that never listed their street address in the World Radio Handbook.   We
tour the studio building, and then the morning DJ asks us if we would like
to go out and see the transmitter.

We walk for about five minutes thru all sorts of different types of towers
and wires, and then get to the building where the transmitter for their
particular station is.  There is a pond alongside of the building and she
decides she is going to suggest that the station have a picnic out there in
the upcoming weeks.  She lets me continue to take pictures, and as we take
the long walk back to the studio building, she and my Russian host are
chatting away in Russian and get further and further ahead of me.  I stop
to take one last 35mm slide of a great tower, and as I lower my camera . .
 .
I see a man standing in front of me and I do not recognize him.

He does not recognize me.  Nor has he ever seen someone with several
cameras wandering around this transmitter site.  He starts talking to me in
Russian--which I don't understand--and I shout out to my two accomplices to
come HELP me!

The three of them negotiate in Russian, and somehow, at the end of it all,
I and my film and my videotape are all free to go.   No Gulag this time.

Whew.

Cut to the present.  It is 2004.  We are back in the [removed]  As my BBC friend
had said, this is a free country.  I remember the guidebooks to the
Communist countries back in the 60s thru the 80s telling us not to take
pictures of military installations, railroad stations or bridges.  You can
even compare the maps in those books and see how distorted some of them
were back then compared to how the cities are really laid out.  Now the
maps are correct and the restrictions are off.  But last time I visited my
daughter in Brooklyn a few months ago I noticed a sign as I drove onto the
Verrazano Narrows Bridge that photography of the bridge was prohibited.

Uh oh.

Michael Biel   mbiel@[removed]

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 01:19:45 -0400
From: "[removed]" <dmf273@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Newbie

Hi all,

I'm new to this list and also pretty new to OTR.  My fascination started about ten
weeks ago.  I'm a longtime fan of Virginia O'Brien (the "Deadpan Diva" aka "Miss Red
Hot Frozen Face.")   Via Google I learned that she had made quite a few radio
appearances on "Command Performance."   That led me to [removed]  where I
subscribed to their FTP server and got found lots of "Command Performances" including
many with Virginia O'Brien.

Then I started getting into "Jubilee", the black jazz wartime show.  My cellphone, the
Kyocera 7135, plays MP3's from an SD card.   So now I walk around all day with my
earbuds listening to "Jubilee" shows in an OTR time warp.

I also started getting into the creep shows - Lights Out, Suspense, Inner Sanctum, etc.

And the comedy shows, Amos n Andy, Mel Blanc, My Favorite Husband.

And now I'm pretty well hooked.  My wife and I listen to OTR every night in bed.  The
only problem is we both fall asleep before the episodes end and we ask each other the
next morning - "What happened?"

My wife's grandmother is 90 years old and blind, but sharp as a tack. This weekend we
got her an MP3/CD boombox for her birthday!  And now she's listening to the Jack Benny
Show and Grand Old Opry and loving it!

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 15:33:39 -0400
From: "B. J. Watkins" <kinseyfan@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Onion skin and dropping pages

Michael Biel stated

... because ONLY AN IDIOT would type a script on
onion skin paper!

I asked my friend for more details. Here's what she said:

"When I appeared on a program called "Calling All Children" at CFCF (a
Montreal station) in th 1940s, we used onion skin scripts (because it was
easier for the secretaries to type multiple carbon copies on onion skin,
which was light, on a manual typewriter -- there were no electric
typewriters yet). It was also cheaper. We then pasted the onion skin pages
on shirt cardboards so they would be noiseless and dropped them on the floor
for the same reason as we acted our roles. We saved the cardboards and
re-pasted the next script on them. I believe this was a method that
originated in England.

"When I first began to appear on many programs at CBC, which was Canadian
national radio, in 1948, the scripts were being mimeographed on heavier
paper, usually long "legal-sized" pages, and we no longer dropped them on
the floor, but placed the pages one behind the other, as we do now. I
continued appearing on CBC radio through the early 60s.

"Remember, there were no copy machines or computers in those days.
Mimeographing (duplicating copies on a mimeograph machine) was a big advance
over the manual typewriter."

So that's why onion skin paper was used then, not because "they were
idiots".

Barbara

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 15:33:54 -0400
From: Ron Sayles <bogusotr@[removed];
To: Olde Tyme Radio List <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  7-17 births/deaths

July 17th births

07-17-1889 - Erle Stanley Gardner - Malden, MA - d. 3-11-1970
creator, writer: "Advs. of Christopher London"; "Perry Mason"; "Life in Your
Hands"
07-17-1899 - James Cagney - NYC - d. 3-30-1986
actor: "Arch Oboler's Plays"; "Screen Guild Theatre"
07-17-1902 - Edward Gargan - Brooklyn, NY - d. 2-19-1964
actor: "This Is Your [removed]"; "This Is Our Heritage"
07-17-1905 - William Gargan - Brooklyn, NY - d. 2-17-1979
actor: Martin Kane "Martin Kane, Private Eye"; Barrie Craig "Barrie Craig,
Private Investigator"
07-17-1912 - Art Linkletter - Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada
emcee: "People Are Funny"; "House Party"
07-17-1914 - Eleanor Steber - Wheeling, WV - d. 10-3-1990
singer: "Voice of Firestone"; "[removed] Fox Trappers"
07-17-1915 - Cass Daley - Philadelphia, PA - d. 3-22-1975
comedienne: "New Fitch Bandwagon"; "Cass Daley Show"; "Maxwell House Coffee
Time"
07-17-1916 - Irene Manning - Cincinnati, OH - d. 5-28-2004
singer: Night Club Singer "Mr. Broadway"; "Wehmacht Hour"; "Railroad Hour"
07-17-1917 - Lou Boudreau - Harvey, IL - d. 8-10-2001
sportscaster: Chicago Cubs
07-17-1917 - Phyllis Diller - Lima, OH
comedian: "Special Delivery: Vietnam"
07-17-1920 - Helen Walker - Worchester, MA - d. 3-10-1968
actress: "Proudly We Hail"; "Suspense"; "Harold Lloyd Comedy Theatre"
07-17-1935 - Diahann Carroll - The Bronx, NY
singer: "Army Bandstand"; "Manhattan Melodies"; "Stars for Defense"

July 17th deaths

01-16-1911 - Jay Hanna "Dizzy" Dean - Lucas, AR - d. 7-17-1974
baseball broadcaster: (Baseball Hall of Fame) "Game of the Day"
04-07-1915 - Billie Holliday - Baltimore, MD - d. 7-17-1959
singer: "Artie Shaw Band"
06-14-1895 - Cliff "Ukulele Ike" Edwards - Hannibal, MO - d. 7-17-1971
singer: Jiminy Cricket "Fun and Fancy Free"; "Cliff Edwards, Ukulele Ike"
07-19-1901 - Juano Hernandez - San Juan, Puerto Rico - d. 7-17-1970
actor: Kolu "Jungle Jim"; Lothar "Mandrake the Magician"
--
Ron Sayles
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 16:58:46 -0400
From: "William Schell" <bschell@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Fibber McGee & Molly

I have noticed that on the Fibber McGee and Molly program all characters are
given credit at the beginning of the program including Gail Gordon, Bill
Tompson, Arthur Q. Bryan, Harlow Wilcox, etc. However there is no credit
given Jim and Marian Jordan as Fibber and Molly.  Does anyone know the
reason for this ?
Bill, Magalia, Ca

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2004 18:02:27 -0400
From: Rick Keating <pkeating89@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Carbon copies and computers

It's been pointed out that computers have made the
carbon copy (a duplicate of a document, created with
carbon paper when it's typed, for those too young to
remember when typewriters were ubiquitous) obsolete.
True, because you can always print an extra copy for
your files, or just save the file on disk for future
reference. Carbon paper is still available, but I
doubt very many people use typewriters to create their
documents, and make carbon copies of same.

So, it's probably safe to say the carbon copy is
rarely seen these days. Yet, curiously enough, when
sending an E-Mail to recipient A, you have the option
of sending a copy of it to another (or others). This
option is called "CC." And what does "CC" stand for?

Carbon copy. Yet no carbon paper is used (or any other
kind, until or unless someone chooses to print the
E-Mail.

I find it amusing.

Rick

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2004 00:11:41 -0400
From: "Gil Miller" <ghmiller@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  MP3 Players

Has anyone tried the new iRiver SlimX iMP-550 ?
I have a TDK MOJO which I've had for several years and which I love but it
lacks a true resume and fast forward, so I'm looking to add another player.
Alfmeister [removed] gives rave reviews on the
350 so I imagine this is even better.
like to hear some input.
Cheers.
Gil Miller
Florida

--------------------------------
End of [removed] Digest V2004 Issue #233
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