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 the Korean War. The news forecast that was just before Uncle Willy almost always had war casualty news 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.

This is a Kodak Brownie from that era, mine was a knockoff, but looked about the same. Fixed aperture, fixed focus, fixed shutter speed. it was super simple.

In 2025 a camera exactly like mine was used as a prop in a CAST Theater play. I asked to borrow it and they loaned it to me so I could photograph it.

This got me started in photography. It was pretty incapable. Monochrome only, fixed focus, fixed shutter speed and fixed aperture. I really wanted an upgrade.

For Christmas 1959 a got an Argus C3 Matchmatic 35 mm rangefinder camera with a light meter and flash.

In the early 2020’s I was in Houston Camera Exchange and spotted an Argus C3 Matchmatic. They would not lend it to me but they sold it to me with a promise to buy it back at the same price.

The Argus was a much more capable camera. 35 mm color film Kodachrome and EktaChroma were my go to films. With variable shutter, aperture and focus, the camera took great photos and kept me going for several years - The cost of film and developing kept me from being more prolific.