Lights Out!

From 1930s Sears Roebuck catalog
The Fong Family's farm was located near Paseo Padre and Fremont Boulevard. From the late 1920s to the 1950s, they grew vegetables for sale in the local and oversees markets and to the canneries.

 The children went to Niles Elementary School and Washington High School. They experienced our towns as a rural agricultural countryside, hunting and fishing along Alameda Creek.

After "lights out", Joshua Fong listened to the radio in bed with his crystal radio set. Here's what he said about entertainment in the evenings - after a long day at school or working on the farm.



See the insides!
"In the year 1932, we got our first radio --a dome-shaped Philco -- and we enjoyed such programs as Amos in Andy, the Jack Benny Show, One Man’s Family, Henry Aldridge, the Standard Symphony Hour, Kay Kaiser and His Orchestra, Phil Spitalny and His All-Girl Orchestra, Glenn Miller Orchestra. the Hit Parade, and many other wonderful programs. 

 In addition to the radio, I had my own crystal set -- a small thin wire and a rock crystal that picked up radio signals--which I used to listen to while in bed."

 What is a crystal radio? And what would a crystal radio have looked like in 1932? Check out Episode 176 of Engines of Our Ingenuity.








Being farm kids, they were very resourceful.

"Among other enjoyments in those days were games of softball, kick-the-can, basketball on our homemade court, and swimming in our own 'ole swimmin' hole that we created by damming a narrow part of the creek with sandbags and the help of the neighboring farm boys. We built a raft of several abandoned hot water tanks and a diving board using the seat from an old buckboard wagon. 

1925 Model T Ford Truck?
"One day in 1936 while playing along the creek we discovered an abandoned Model T Ford of 1925 vintage. With a team of horses we pulled that old pickup truck out of the creek and brought it home where we cleaned it but, reset the magnetos to provide the spark necessary to make it run, put a salvaged a axle rear transmission and found ourselves with our own car. There were six of us neighborhood farm boys plus a schoolmate we called Bruiser because he was the biggest of us all and played tackle on the high school football team. Five of us including Bruiser piled into that Model T and took it on its first trial run all the way up to Calaveras Dam near Milpitas and back again avoiding the local speed cop the whole way. We had no license for our little Jalopy, so we did not venture much on public roads. The only mishap was a blown front tire when Bruiser decided that he wanted to ride in the front seat. We repaired that tire with the repair kit that we carried and returned home after a trip of nearly 30 miles. 

"I learned to drive when I was 12 years old, and my favorite chore was to deliver cornstalks to the neighboring dairy, where I could unload the Model T by spinning it around the cow corral at full speed until the cornstalks all fell off. Our deal with the dairy people was to trade our cornstalk as feed for the cattle for the raw fresh milk that we all drank in our growing-up years."

So what magic technology was the crystal radio - a wire and rock - that allowed Joshua to listen to these shows. And where were the radio programs broadcast from?

Questions
  • What would Joshua's radio have looked like?
  • What radio stations were around in 1932? How far did KQW broadcast? Would it have reached Centerville? The advertisement above says 25 miles.
  • Here's a 1931 radio script on the codling moth. 
  • George Roeding, Jr. (California Nursery Company, Niles) left several radio scripts behind from 1943. Are there recordings saved?
  • Find Bruiser's photo in the yearbook! Joshua Fong's yearbooks identify him.
Crystal Radio

Radio in the Bay Area
Not a well-known fact, but the first radio broadcast in the US was in San Jose. .

From tech-notes-tv:
"By 1912 [Charles Herrold] invented a mechanical radio called the ark phone using 500 volts DC pilfered from San Jose's electric streetcar line, he proceeded to employ the radio and three ways: first is a direct line radio beaming from the Fairmont hotel in San Francisco to his colleagues in San Jose, second as a long distance signaling device for use by the military (his music actually carried as far away as Bremerton, Washington and San Diego); and third for what Herrold called, and perhaps the first uses of the term, "broadcasting for the people San Jose."

"For several years Herrold was on the air every single Wednesday night for an hour or so. Called "Little Hams Program," the show went out mainly to a audience of crystal radio hobbyists, the radio-era equivalents of today's young computer whizzes. (The home radio, as we know it, had yet to be invented.)"

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