A Side of Clyde
Don't know if you noticed, but they had a survey of Web surfers and found that 6 percent of the users suffer from some addictive form of compulsive behavior.
The questionnaire asked if participants surfed the Internet to escape their problems. Their problems, the researchers said, mostly centered on gambling, stock trading, sex and obsessive surfing.
Every generation looks for a new entertainment medium, and when I grew up it was the radio.
Radio had an enormous social and economic impact on America in the first half of this century. Like the computer today, the appetite for radio sets was enormous. In 1922, fewer than 60,000 families owned a radio. By 1930, that number had grown to more than 13 million.
The golden age of radio began in the early 1930s and ended when it became overshadowed with a new form of entertainment called television in the 1950s.
During the 1920s-1940s when I grew up, radio provided a time for family togetherness, as millions of families gathered around the radio each night to listen to their favorite entertainers and the news of the day.
My earliest memories of radio were spent with my grandmother listening to soap operas. I became familiar with the names and theme songs of "Lorenzo Jones," "One Man's Family," "Mary Noble" and "Backstage Wife."
Panic struck our house on Oct. 30, 1938, when the radio announced, "the Martians have landed and are destroying everything in sight." News reports from Grovers Mill, New Jersey, confirmed people were fleeing their homes in fear of their lives. Then Orson Wells explained his farce. The incident proved the tremendous power radio had over people's lives.
There were needy people in the 1930s and 1940s, and they would wind up on "Queen for a Day" with Jack Bailey. A widow, whose children were starving and living in a shack, would be thrilled to win a week's vacation in Hawaii and maybe three rooms of carpet from the Looms of Mohawk.
As soon as school was over, children's shows started and you always raced home to sit by the radio and listen to the cliffhangers. You would sit spellbound, looking at the radio and waiting for the announcer to shout, "Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Superman!"
I was a member of Captain Midnight's "Secret Squadron" and like every other boy in America, I was a fan of "Jack Armstrong, All American Boy." It was sponsored by Wheaties, so my grandmother had to buy Wheaties every week, because you saved boxtops to send in for prizes.
At night everyone would sit by the radio to hear the first notes of the "William Tell Overture." Then the announcer, in his big voice, would say, "A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty Hi Ho, Silver - it's The Lone Ranger!"
As good as radio was, prime time at night was better with "Fibber McGee and Molly," "Mr. District Attorney," "Your Hit Parade," and many others.
Now I'm on the Internet, too, but I occasionally turn on the radio, hoping, just one more time, to hear Red Skelton and Clem Kadiddlehopper, Willy Lump-Lump and Bolivar Shagnasty.
Clyde Noel is a longtime contributor to the Town Crier.