“You would wear yourself down winding it up”

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

“I don’t know when I got my first radio, but Daddy had one of the first radios there was in Ceres. It was about as big as television is now. They have the soap operas on the TV now. Then they had “Amos and Andy” on the radio. They came on in the afternoon. You set down and listened to “Amos and Andy” just like the soap operas are now.”

Mallie Tibbs
b. 1918
Ceres, VA

“We got our first radio before we moved to Bastian. We lived down there in Cussin Hollow, we had one down there in Marco. It was in the CCC camp and he got Mommy a radio, it was run by batteries because we didn’t have electricity. I listened to string music, and the Grand Ole Opry, Jean Autry, Roy Rogers, Amos and Andy. Amos and Andy was the funny show we’d listen to on the radio. And lets see, Little Orphan Annie, that’s just about it.”

Edna Sarver
b. 1922
Chatham Hill, VA

“I got my first radio and it was a talk machine that you had to wind up, then it would run down and it wasn’t much of nothing. You would wear yourself down winding it up.”

Thelma Akers
b. 1927
Rocky Gap, VA

“I guess I was about twelve years old, when we got our first radio. Mother got a little tiny one when we first got electricity. See, we had kerosene lamps, and when I was about twelve and we moved up Wolf Creek, they put lights up there. And that’s when we got our first little radio. We listened to it a lot! We’d take it to bed with us, and listen to the Grand Ole Opry. One of my favorite shows was The Squeaking Door. There was a lot of daytime programs to listen to in the summertime. Electricity changed our lives. We were thrilled about it.”

Georgia Havens
b. 1928
Suiter, VA

Source: The Stories of the People of Bland County [VA], Bland County History Archives

History Brief: Radio in the 1920s