Radio - Uncle Willy - First Camera

Strange title? Yep.

We did not have a TV set when we first moved to Idylwood. We did have a radio and I listened to Big John and Sparky and to The Uncle Willy Club. I did not listen to the Ovaltine series.

It is interesting that this period of radio listening was during her Korean War. The news forecast that was just before Uncle Willy almost always had war casualty mews and the number of Migs shot down by the USAF.

Big John and Sparky involved a ventriloquist and his puppet. Pretty easy to pull off on radio, right? I think it was also simulcast on TV at the time so the ventriloquism had to work.

Uncle Willys Club was a local show where the host had local kids in the studio. In 1955 or so I won the Uncle Willy jackpot of prizes. I was pumped! Among the things in the jackpot were a ball point pen - this was a new invention at that time, a dozen eskimo pie ice cream bars and a black and white 120 film camera.