[Wondergirl]

I was five years old when I started listening to the radio.

The music was great! A mix of folk and the crooners and jazz -- "The Rat Pack," Louie Armstrong, Tony Bennett, the Kingston Trio, the Beach Boys, Johnny Mathis, Mel Torme (“The Velvet Fog”! ), the Four Freshmen, Nina Simone.

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Then came the rock artists and groups! -- The Beatles, Dave Clark 5, The Rolling Stones, Roy Orbison, Dionne Warwick, Donovan, The Who, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, The Byrds, Jefferson Airplane, Simon & Garfunkel, The Spencer Davies Group, Steppenwolf.

Their songs -- Pretty Woman, And I Love Her, If I Fell, Goldfinger, Paint It Black, Hey Jude. All Along The Watchtower, In My Life (This song is so good! I just cannot stop listening to it!), Light My Fire, The Twist, Wouldn't It Be Nice, My Baby Just Cares For Me, Fun Fun Fun, House Of The Rising Sun, Be My Baby, Crazy, Purple Haze, A Whiter Shade of Pale, White Rabbit.

And let us not forget those one-hit wonders! -- The Syndicate of Sound's Hey Little Girl, The Kingsmen's Louie Louie, Cream's Sunshine Of Your Love, Sam & Dave's Soul Man.

These artists and songs made me feel happy to be alive!

And the games radio stations would have -- “What Is Cooking?” The DJ would give the listener one ingredient at a time, and the listener had to guess what the recipe was. The winner would receive a $100 in free groceries from the local supermarket. Big money back in the '60s!!

Then! There was what one station called “The Last Contest!” -- a very big box hanging in mid-air from a crane at a shopping mall parking lot. And those who shopped or drove by would guess what was in it.

There were morning radio hosts, the ones who made us smile and put on a happier face as we listened to comedy albums — Bill Cosby, Bob Newhart, Jonathan Winters, Stan Freeberg -- that made us laugh.

During my time the radio was a soundbox that you could listen to only indoors. Or open a window and place it facing outside and listen to it while you sunbathed or weeded the flowerbed.

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It was not until in the mid '60s that AM radios were made so small that you could hold one in the palm of your hand. You could take it anywhere!!

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Radio talk shows (call-ins, interviews) were only at night on some stations.

Then FM arrived!! There were only a very few FM stations on the air. They usually played classical music. And most of them were on only at night or did a duplication of AM. It was not until about the early '70s that FM stations went 24/7.

Then! In the late 70's the face of radio changed forever!
We went from a lot of music!
To a lot of talk --
Some good!
Some controversial!

I felt the station owners both local and national turned radio into a wasteland. It was the end of the world for me -- 24-hour news, interview with a Kardashian or some bubble-headed starlet, hip-hop music, programming in a foreign language I can't understand, politics politics politics, Howard Stern with no rules for topic and language.

Have you ever tried cruising down the freeway and listening to your favorite rock and roll music and loving it?

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versus

Listening to talk radio and hoping you do not wreck because someone on the radio said something that made you pound the steering wheel in frustration?

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