THE INFAMOUS ELECTRIC RADIO MIKE CAPER

 

James J. Yellen

 

 

            Harry Von Zell, Graham MacNamee, Harlow Wilcox. Do you remember these names? I do. But I had almost forgotten them until one day recently when they were brought back to my mind while browsing through a small used book and magazine store. As I was glancing over a stack of old movie fan magazines, I found something that brought back memories. It was a May 1944 copy of RADIO STARS magazine.

 

        I picked up the ancient periodical and eagerly flipped through the pages until my eye was attracted to an advertisement on the inside back cover. "Glamour...Romance! BIG MONEY! Broadcasting offers you these and more." It was an advertisement for the WALTER WINCHELL SCHOOL OF BROADCASTING.

 

        "Do YOU want to have YOUR voice brought into hundreds of thousands of homes all over the land? Out of obscure places are coming the future Don Wilsons, George Ansbros, Bill Sterns, and Floyd Gibbonses...WHY NOT BE AMONG THEM?"

 

        No one can know better then I, that certain indescribable satisfaction that a person feels when he hears his own voice magically emitting from the speaker of the radio. That's right. I once shared the airwaves with those illustrious radio personalities.

 

        I mulled over my checkered youth and fondly remembered that early summer afternoon when it had all started. It was an era of cautious optimism. World War II had been raging on for more than two years. People were growing tired of the fighting and were eager for it to end. Just a few short weeks ago Eisenhower's armies had secretly crossed the English Channel and were now making a mad dash toward Paris. The war was practically won and it was swell to be an American. My father brought home a copy of the New York Daily News everyday, and everyday the headlines announced new Allied victories: U-BOATS SUNK BY CONVOY!…YANK FLIERS DOWN 77 JAP PLANES IN BIGGEST PACIFIC AIR FIGHT!…YANKS SMASH NAZI BOMBERS!

 

An end to the hostilities seemed to be at hand, and the men of power in the Washington added to the optimism by lifting the rationing restrictions on canned goods and meats. In barbershops and taverns across the land men formed betting pools to determine who could most closely guess the exact date of the final armistice Even my pious and non-gambling Uncle Ralph was consumed by the euphoric optimism and allowed my father to egg him into wagering that the whole thing would be over by Labor Day. The people wanted to believe that the war would be over in just a matter of weeks.

 

        For me it was the beginning of the long hot summer between freshman and sophomore years in high school, and I was spending the afternoon with friends at the soda fountain of Seymour's Sweete Shoppe slurping a cherry coke and perusing the latest issue of Wonder Woman Comics, my favorite reading matter. One of the magazine's premiere features, besides the daring escapades of the curvaceous super hero, was the advertisement that regularly appeared on the middle page. Each month the same Chicago mail order house would take a full-page ad that described in detail a myriad of "Unusual Novelties and Fun Makers' which they offered for sale.

 

        Each month I would drool over these ads and the goodies that they offered. "Midget Spy Camera...Less then half the size of regular cigarette package!" or a "Hypnotic Whirling Coin...Put others at your command!" Boy, what I could do to Audrey Marschalk with that! Sometimes they featured a book of "1000 Snappy Stories" or a fountain pen in the shape of a ladies leg, "Puts a kick in writing." Any normal fourteen-year-old boy would be proud to own any of these.

 

        But this particular month their lead item was something special, a novelty that they had tempted me with many times before. This was not the first time that they were dangling this irresistible little item in front of me. I read the ad.

 

        TALK, SING, PLAY, through your radio! Laugh, crack jokes from another room and your voice will be reproduced through the radio. Imitate Bob Hope or Bing Crosby. Excellent training in elocution or broadcast announcing...or for "Amateur Hour" practice! Table model ELECTRIC RADIO MIKE. $1.50.

 

        "Boy, I wish I had one of these.” I sighed wistfully.

 

        Boz, next to me at the soda fountain grunted, "Huh?" He was deep into his Betty Grable period and was busy ogling her photo in a HOLLYWOOD STARS magazine. There was just no getting through to him since he read somewhere that his beloved Betty slept "in the raw!"

 

        "I said it would be real neat to have one of these.” I repeated.

 

        "One of what?" Duke asked, looking up from his chocolate soda.

 

        "One of these here radio mikes." I answered sliding the magazine over the counter top to him. I watched his eyes widen as he read the ad.

 

        "Yea! It would be keen. In the wintertime when it's snowing you could hook it up and announce that there'll be no school!" Duke considered his primary purpose on Earth to be to think of new ways of getting out of going to school.

 

        The mention of no school had awakened Boz from his fantasies of Betty Grable and he snatched the comic book right out of Duke's grasp, "Let me see."

 

        "Wow!" He exclaimed after his mind had grasped the significance of what we had been discussing. "We could even put on our own radio shows."

 

        We all agreed that that was a truly awesome idea. "But where am I going to get a dollar and a half?" I grumbled.

 

        "That's three months allowance for me" Noted Boz dejectedly.

 

        That's when I was struck by a truly inspired thought. "What if we all chipped in? That's only fifty cents each. I've got sixty-five cents that I was saving for a new catcher's mitt, but this is better. What about you guys?"

 

        "Yea. We could form a radio club." Boz interjected. "My stupid sister owes me seventy five cents that she borrowed to buy a new lipstick for the Junior Prom. I'll get it from her if I have to break her stupid neck."

 

        The enthusiasm of the moment gripped us and we each went our separate ways to gather the loot.

 

        Twenty minutes later we met as agreed, on the stoop of Kirk's Drugstore, to pool our resources. All tolled we had $1.93, more then enough. We bought a money order from Doc Kirk, wrote out the order form, and walked the eight blocks to the post office to mail it. We didn't want to trust our precious letter to an ordinary street corner mailbox.

 

        There is nothing more frustrating than the hours spent idly between the point in time when a great idea is first conceived and the time when it is finally brought to fruition. For us, those hours turned into days, and the days dragged into weeks as we anxiously waited for our Electric Radio Mike to arrive. Each morning I eagerly waited for our mailman, and I was disappointed daily for more than a month.

 

        We waited and waited while we indolently frittered away the summer by playing Monopoly on Chuck’s front porch, or bowling at Budnicki’s Bowling Alley on Van Houten Avenue, or by just hanging out on the street corner talking about girls. Once a week we took a bus to downtown Passaic where we saw all the feel-good war movies and cheered our heroes of the silver screen like Humphrey Bogart in “Action in the North Atlantic” and Tyrone Power in “Crash Dive” and Robert Taylor in “Bataan.”

 

        Finally, almost six weeks later, with the long promising summer already on the wane, a pregnant brown envelope with that mystical Chicago return address arrived. I excitedly carried the small bundle into the house and ripped and tore at the wrappings. Finally it was revealed in all its glory. It was beautiful! An orb of shiny black enamel attached to the ends of two eight-foot rubber coated copper wires, and a small set of instructions on tissue thin paper. I fondled it affectionately, running my fingertips over its cool, smooth surface. My scalp tingled with excitement.

 

        I catapulted myself out of the house to tell my partners. They were ecstatic, and none of us could wait to hook the thing up and try it out. We decided to go to Boz's house since in both my home and Duke's our mothers would have their ears glued to the radio in order to hear the latest episode of their favorite afternoon soap opera, MARY NOBLE: BACKSTAGE WIFE. At Boz's house we would have the whole place to ourselves. His mother worked during the day at the nearby packaging plant putting lids on pill bottles for our boys overseas, his older brother was working as a pinsetter at Budnicki’s Bowling Alley, and his father worked a double shift at the propeller plant. Normally Mr. Boswell would have been home in the afternoon sleeping and resting so he could go back to work, but for the past week he had been spending most of his off-hours down at Teddy’s Tavern with my father and the rest of their car pool celebrating President Roosevelt's lift of the whiskey distilling ban.

 

        The Boswell family’s Philco console radio stood in the corner of their parlor, and following the instructions that came with our wonderful electric radio mike, we were able to hook it up. The gadget worked perfectly and the fact that the wires were long enough to allow the performer to hide in the next room added to the illusion that the voice was actually emanating from the radio. After a few minutes of verbal mugging during which we all whistled, sang, cracked jokes, and shouted into the thing, Boz had an idea.

 

        "Let's take turns. Each guy gets five minutes to put on his own show imitating whoever he want to and the other guys listen."

 

        It was a truly brilliant idea, and for thinking of it we let Boz be first. He took the mike and disappeared into the next room. What Duke and I heard came as no surprise.

 

        "Well it isn't Ma Perkins kiddies!'

 

        Boz's admiration for Fred Allen was widely known in our neighborhood. Many times when you called to him, "Hey Boz," you heard back a response in a southern drawl. "Somebody, ah say...somebody knock?"  Or with a heavy Jewish accent, "You were expecting maybe Nat King Cohen?"

 

        Duke and I listened with amusement as Boz ran through his repertoire of Titus Moody, Falstaff Openshaw, and Portland Hoffa, all members of that elite group known as Allen's Alley. We had heard them all a thousand times before, but hearing them come over the radio made them funnier than ever.

 

        Duke was next and he was as fanatical a Jack Benny fan as Boz was a Fred Allen fan. This caused many strained moments in our little group. It was bad enough that one of them rooted for the Brooklyn Dodgers and the other for the New York Giants, but to have them also on opposing sides when it came to radio comedians made it at times almost unbearable for a third person to be with them. The feud between Duke and Boz over Allen and Benny rose to such a frenzy sometimes that it made the actual Allen-Benny feud insignificant in comparison.

 

        We listened with delight as Duke did his usual, "Rochester! Now cut that out!"

 

        It soon became my turn at the mike, and I took satisfaction in knowing that my imitation was on a higher plateau culturally. There were many people on the radio whom I enjoyed listening to, but only one whom I had any desire to emulate. My radio idol was Gabriel Heatter, the distinguished newscaster.

 

        I took the microphone and with my two-man audience in the living room I went into a fictitious newscast using my best "Voice of Doom."

 

        "Ahhhhh, there's good new tonight! BULLETIN! It has just been announced by President Roosevelt that the Axis has been brought to its knees. Today in Berlin and Tokyo, Adolph Hitler and Emperor Hirohito surrendered! Victory is ours! THE WAR IS OVER!"

 

        I had barely completed my imaginary broadcast when a tremendous ruckus rose in Boz's kitchen.

 

        "What's that?" I asked.

 

        Boz looked puzzled. "I don't know."

 

        We went to the kitchen and found Mr. Boswell hunched over with his head buried deep in the compartment under the kitchen sink. He was frantically rummaging through the pile of war scraps that Boz's mother, a true patriot, had stored there. Flattened tin cans, potential tank armor; old nylon stockings, future parachutes; empty toothpaste tubes, unshaped bullets; and cans of kitchen fat, glycerin for black powder, all came flying out and crashing to the floor.

 

        Finally he emerged holding what he had apparently been searching for. It was a long wooden spoon and a large oval-shaped galvanized laundry tub. Smiling with satisfaction he spun on his heel and bolted out the door. The faint odor of stale beer lingered behind him. Bounding down the steps, Mr. Boswell bounced from rail to rail in excitement. At the bottom he lost his balance, caromed off the hall wall and tumbled out of the front door onto the stoop. Unhurt, he quickly recovered his strange paraphernalia and ran into the middle of Penobscot Street. As he rhythmically pounded the tub with the business end of the spoon, like a bass drummer in a marching band, he shouted happily, "It's over! It's over! The Japs and Nazis surrendered! The war's over! THE WAR'S OVER!"

 

        For one long, long minute Duke, Boz and I stared at each other in disbelief. We realized that he had heard...and worse, he believed! A choking lump swelled up in my throat and slid down to my stomach where it festered.

 

        "Lets' get out of here before he finds out!" Duke whispered in a quivering voice.

 

        As we hastily unhooked the evil mike from the radio, we could hear the dull BONG-BONG of Mr. Boswell's galvanized drum. He was still shouting, "It's over! The war's over! YIPPEE!"

 

         Then a second voice joined in. "YAHOOOOOO...YAHOOOOOO!" Then a third. Then an auto horn began to blare joyfully.

 

        "Holy cow, it's spreading." I gasped swallowing hard. My knees were shaking and threatened to collapse. For the first time in my life my mouth went dry and I tasted fear.

 

        We dashed down the backstairs, over the rear fence and through several backyards, leaving in our wake a series of yapping mongrels and trampled Victory gardens. We didn't stop until we had put several city blocks between us and Penobscot Street.

 

        Finally we collapsed onto the stoop in front of Seymour's store. We were exhausted and sat silently. Coming from the direction of Boz's house we could now hear the sound of firecrackers exploding, and occasionally a Roman candle would streak over the rooftops and explode.

 

        Boz looked at me. His face was as pale as Moby Dick's underbelly. "He thought that you were really Gabriel Heatter on the radio."

 

        "Y-yea." I stammered. My stomach rumbled as a maelstrom of nausea eddied and swirled deep in my gut.

 

        "Who's going to tell him?" Duke asked.

 

        "He'll find out for himself soon enough." I gasped. The whole world was just a blur to me, like I was viewing it through the bottom of a used Coca Cola bottle.

 

        "How can I go home?" Boz repeated over and over, his head in his hands.

 

        No one had an answer.

 

        "Boy, Herb," Duke said, "You'd make one heck of a radio announcer."