Green Radio, Marilla Kitchen, c1961

I had decided not to post this picture of myself, out of recoil from vanity or embarrassment; take your pick. But then some intriguing results from G&C Readership Research prompted a change of policy in this instance. Thank you for your responses, Readership Critique Team.

Wintertime is on us in Marilla, probably in 1961.  Through the kitchen window we see snow on the roof of the front porch, with bare branches of the big old cherry tree etching through the grey sky.

Indoors all is cozy, especially for whoever just made himself the whiskey sour sitting on that tray there on the cupboard. The Maraschino cherry is already in it.  Behind the tray we see the little jar of those revolting Maraschino cherries, as well as a big glass jar of something white:  powdered sugar for whiskey sours? Vitamins?  Either way, the signs point to Dad, our EJZ, as photographer.

Alors, au téléphone c'est moi, JZ, looking maybe 7 years old, which is how I date this photo.  The white blobs on my headband are ballerinas in tutus.  No doubt I am talking with cousins Deb and Sharon. 

But the important thing is the radio.

That Zenith radio was big and solid and green. It had vaccuum tubes. It was sturdy and long-lived, even though not particularly fancy, i.e. in having no short-wave band reception.  Marty and Julie worshipped this radio, as it told us when snow days were declared and we did not have to go to school. The light-colored things on either side are holy pictures, which I do not recall specifically. Still, we kids could have stuck them on there to pray for snow days!  Who knows? We were real bon vivants that way.

Below is a picture from the interwebs of a radio of the same make and model. In Marilla that dial, that big metal ring with frequency numbers, was always shiny bright.  In the photo above, I am fiddling with the handle, which is the only use the handle ever got. That radio never went anywhere.

A mere couple of years after this, men made transistor radios. Uncle Tom, our Tom Kontak, had a beautiful small red one, early on; I remember him showing it to us and we being very impressed with the coolness. Tom's was a bit like the one below, except that the dial was black and there were parallel lines of red plastic, instead of that array of holes in the plastic.  Right, Tom? Amazing, the useless things I remember.

In closing, I can only say Hello to you from 1962! You should be so cool!