Born To Be a Newspaper Man
by Martin J. McGowan Jr.
Media Memories
My memory of the first radio in our house at about age six was of a large, dark box about two feet wide and a foot tall. It had a dark wood case and a bakelite face containing several knobs. I couldn't imagine how that device could pull signals out of the air. I never learned how to operate it and we didn't have it long.
The next radio was an Atwater Kent table radio. It was a real six-sided table with a radio under the top. One side dropped down revealing the tuning knobs. We probably had this model because my uncle, John McGowan, was a traveling salesman for the firm.
That radio lasted a long time until one day when I was in high school my Dad went down to the O. B. Carlson & Son Hardware, put down a $100 bill and purchased a Philco radio. This was a console that sat on the floor and had a reclining front where the speaker was mounted. This was the first model that contained short wave radio.
It was fascinating to hear foreign languages coming from distant places on short wave. I tried to hear as many stations as possible and mailed my reception reports to them, hoping to get a confirmation card from the station.
This led eventually to my becoming an amateur radio operator.
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