Radio - "If it's broke, ya fix it."

The conversation about television often drifted towards radio, and vice versa. For Joanne and Vernon, these two things were often tied together and the transition to television from radio was not abrupt. Joanne's brother was the first in her family to buy a radio, he bought it to listen to ball games. Joanne never listened to it, but she recalls her brother forgoing chores to listen to the game. The radio was battery powered, and to recharge the battery it had to be taken to the service station, a place something like this:



 Throughout the interview, I began to catch on that the service station was where just about everything happened in small Midwest towns, but more on that later.
Joanne and Vernon's parents soon had great need of the radio - they used it for news on the war.  Vernon remembers very clearly his parents listening for updates on the draft because his dad was just under 45, the cutoff age. Eventually, he received a letter clearing him from duty. Joanne's father received a similar letter letting him know he would probably have to go to war, but he never had to go.
I was interested to know if they remembered anything about the early car radios, specifically those of the exploding variety. Unfortunately, they did not remember these instances. Vernon did remember his dad buying a new car in 1948 that did not have a radio. His dad bought a radio for the car, however, for $300 - the car was $1300.
Later in Joanne's childhood, she remembers listening to programs on the family radio. They both started listing the shows they liked, which included Fibber McGee and Molly and Inner Sanctum (at this part they mentioned "the door squeaking" and started laughing - I'm not sure why), although Inner Sanctum was on at 9pm on Wednesdays and they usually couldn't stay up that late.
 
 For both of them, their radio was located on the kitchen table in the dining room. The commercials they remember are for Clapper Girl baking powder and for Norton salt, which makes me wonder if advertisements of the time were aimed at housewives, since they were generally the ones who spent the most time at home and did the shopping.
When I asked if they ever dealt with the radio breaking, Vernon adamantly insisted that they did, but that they did not just buy a new one. "The problem," he said, "is with people today just buying a new one every time something breaks. When I was young, we fixed it."
Joanne and Vernon got their own combination radio, record player, and television set in 1959, several years after getting married, which factored in greatly to their experiences with sound recordings.