Then and Now--V: Before TV

We didn't get a TV set until 1956 or 7, as I remember it.  I can remember the advent of the TV was a big thing.  We visited my aunt and uncle to see it--the program was Friday Night Fights.  Boxing was really big back then.  The series of fights between Carmen Basilio and Sugar Ray Robinson (the original "sugar ray") was legendary. The succession of the heavyweight title from Marciano through Archie Moore to Floyd Patterson and then Ingmar Johannson I'm sure made the front pages of the local newspaper, maybe not the Times.

Until we got the TV radio and games were our evening entertainment.  For a few years my sister, dad and I would play cut-throat pinochle.  Or we'd play crokinole.  I don't know whether the nation was paying more attention to radio programs or TV programs.  We'd listen to the Shadow, the Goldburgs, Sergeant King of the Mounties, Lone Ranger in the afternoon, mom would listen to Queen for a Day, later we'd listen to One Man's Family, a long running soap..  Gunsmoke was one favorite and Our Miss  Brooks  another.  Amos 'n Andy was on Saturdays, IIRC and I remember it, but it wasn't a family regular--I'm not sure why, perhaps my parents or sister found it objectionable.  I'm not sure; perhaps I remember some strain surrounding it but it might be my imagination.

The Texaco Saturday opera broadcast from the Met was a standard for my sister, not for the rest of us.

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