Saturday Memory
September 13, 2025

Today is my dad’s birthday. He was born in 1913, in West Virginia. One of his outstanding qualities was his sense of humor, He often made fun of himself as a funny hillbilly. His sense of humor infused my childhood with laughter and fun. Here is a memory for today. It was the forties and times were simpler. Out first TV, a 1950 Packard-Bell, came with a record making machine. As fascinating as TV was in the beginning, and what I remember most is wrestling—Wild Red Berry and Gorgeous George and my grandmother throwing her shoe at the new TV because Red was doing bad things to Gorgeous—what occupied us most was the recording machine. My father set up regular Sunday “broadcasts” duly recorded on those 45-rpm sized vinyl disks. He would announce at the beginning that this was “station FART operating on 10,000 kilosquawts.” Everyone in the family became a reporter and we tried to outdo one another in good old Scot’s scatological “funning,” as we called it. I remember when we would all be laughing hysterically, Blackie (our Collie dog) would go running in circles, adding to the mirth, but the cats, all silver Persians which we raised for sale, remained untouched and aloof as is the pride of cats.