Second-hand Second Hand Rose

[Scott Swanson]

On Sat, 4 Mar 2000, Roger Shuy wrote:

> I remember The Baby Snooks and Daddy show too; listened to it often when I
> was a boy, sometimes with my radio under the covers so that my parents
> would think I was asleep after my bedtime. Older people (like me) have
> told me that they played the same trick on their parents.

Just curious, and completely off-topic, but in pre-transistor days wasn't
the common household radio at least the size of a toaster? I am also
curious as to approximately when the radio became inexpensive enough that
youngsters would have one of their own in their bedroom? My father's
stories of listening to radio seem to always feature the family sitting
around a large set in the living room. (My grandfather always liked to
tell the story of the first radio in this small Montana community - the
proud owners invited several guests in to their home in order to show it
off. The assemblage were quite impressed to hear a signal from a Chicago
station. One man stated wisely: "Imagine it coming all that way; and
against the wind, too!")