Do you remember in the early days of television when some shows were only fifteen minutes long and were advertised as such? If you're a Baby Boomer, you probably remember. These programs (such as an evening news broadcast, for example) were right there in the TV listings.
I guess that's why the small ad for Channel 5 above, on a page from the Feb. 5, 1954 Lorain Journal caught my eye. "Tonight at 7:45," it notes, "don't miss Perry Como on WEWS, Channel 5. Throughout the week, you can enjoy the nation's favorite shows over CBS television. For all the best entertainment in television, see the Cleveland listings in your paper every day." A small note at the bottom of the ad points out that the station is 'now brighter, clearer' thanks to a 'new tower, greater power.'
Here's a better look at the photo of the talented Mr. Como.
What's interesting is that WEWS-TV Channel 5 (the first TV station in Ohio) was at the time a CBS affiliate. For many of us TV viewers, it's hard to imagine Channel 5 as a CBS station, much like it was to accept WJW-TV Channel 8 (a longtime CBS station) becoming a Fox station in the 1990s.
Speaking of Perry Como, did you know about his Lorain connection? Back on this post, I wrote about how the city was the scene of his first appearance before a large audience – which is pretty neat.
Anyway, the WEWS ad suggests that the reader sneak a peek at the Cleveland TV listings. Here they are from that day.
There are plenty of national and local names. For the kiddies, there was Pinky Lee; Howdy Doody; Mr. Wizard. Locally, Dorothy Fuldheim was doing the news at WEWS.
For entertainment, there was Life of Riley, starring William Bendix.
There was alsoTopper, the comedy about the fun-loving (but deceased) young couple could only be seen by Cosmo Topper. The show was still in re-runs in the 1960s, because I remember we used to watch it.
Here's a photo of the cast. But the way, the St. Bernard was a ghost too.
It's always difficult to try and explain to someone in their 20s how we were just as happy when we were kids to have only 3 or 4 television stations as they are now, with hundreds of viewing choices. TV was a communal experience back then, and you could actually talk about a show the next day knowing that that the other person probably watched it too.
Now, with streaming, we're all TV moguls, doing our own programming. (Except for me, of course, still watching whatever GRIT-TV and the new Western channel OUTLAW are showing, even if it's the 10,000th showing of McClintock!.
From Journal's weekly Latin News column – May 22, 1976
Did you know that for a time in the 1970s, Lorain was a hotbed of local salsa bands and other Latino musical groups?
I had a ringside seat for some of it, because during my junior and senior years at Admiral King High School, I was a trombonist in a Lorain-based salsa band.
It started when our old trumpet teacher Alex Visci called our house. One of his former students, Tony Delgado, had started a salsa band, Orquesta Charambo, and was looking to add another trombonist.
Would I be interested in sitting in at a band practice, asked Mr. Visci?
Since I was already in a polka band, I wasn't particularly interested in joining a Puerto Rican band. But Mom convinced me to at least go to one practice as a favor to Mr. Visci.
I was a little anxious when I entered the rehearsal, which was in the basement of a house on Lorain's east side. Almost everyone there was Puerto Rican, and I didn’t understand a single word that was being said. But I was quickly put at ease by Tony. Dominic, the other trombonist (and the only other white guy in the band) also went out of his way to make me feel comfortable with a steady stream of funny remarks. In fact, all of the band members – including Anibal (piano) and brothers Elmer (on bass) and Ivan Arocho (on trumpet) – made me feel welcome.
At my first practice, we ran through a few tunes in a way that became the standard procedure. Tony would pass out the music that he arranged. Then he would play a record of the tune, over and over again. By listening to it several times, everyone was able to learn their parts, including those band members who couldn't read music.
Here's one of the first salsa tunes I played at that practice: El Que Se Fe, performed by Roberto Roena y su Apollo Sound.
I quickly learned that salsa tunes had a definite structure. There was an intro, a main melody line and a series of repeated choruses separated by the singer’s improvised verses. There might also be a bridge and key change to another melody line, which was broken up by horn solos and more improvised verses by the singer. Whether to keep repeating a section or move on was communicated by hand gestures by the singer or the leader, such as an arm extended in the air. So you had to pay attention.
If I had any thoughts of just going to that first practice and then never going again, the idea was quickly abandoned. At that first practice, I discovered that I loved the catchy melodies, the bold horn parts and the sound of the percussion instruments: the timbales, conga drums, cowbell, etc. Thus I was very pleased when I was invited to join the band.
When Tony found out that I was an art student at Admiral King, he had me do a drawing of the band for one side of our business card.
Many of our gigs were at Gargus Hall on Route 254, where huge holiday dances and fund raisers were held. Many other local bands often shared the bill with us on these jobs, including Latin Explosion and Trio Puerto Rico. We would also back up nationally known performers (such as Bobby Rodriguez) or share the bill with them and take turns performing.
From Journal's weekly Latin News column – Nov. 20, 1976
Here are a few more samples of the music we played. These YouTube videos feature the original artists, but since Tony made his arrangements from these recordings (minus any saxophone parts) to me it sounds like Charambo performing. Hopefully you can get a taste of why I loved this music so much. You could hear it on WLRO on the weekends during special Latin programming segments.
We also played some novelty songs, like this one from Bobby Rodriguez, who as I mentioned, we backed up at one dance. Sunday Kind of Love is an old standard from the 1940s, and one of the few tunes we played with English lyrics.
For some variety, we also played hits like Santana's "Oye Como Va" and "Low Rider" by War.
I also remember going into the Rebman recording studio (which was in a house next to the bowling alley on Oberlin Avenue) and recording a demo tape for the band. It was all very exciting.
Although my time as a member of Orquesta Charambo was brief, it made my senior year of high school very memorable. Wherever there were cities with large concentrations of Puerto Ricans, there were bookings, and we would travel there to perform, sometimes renting an RV for the trip. Besides many gigs in Lorain and Cleveland, we went on road trips to Detroit, Youngstown, and Rochester, New York. It was fun and exciting and often we were treated like minor celebrities.
We were paid well too. I remember making a hundred bucks on some of these out-of-state gigs.
Looking back, I'm surprised that my parents allowed me to go on these overnight gigs, seeing that I was only 17 or 18. But they had complete confidence in Tony, who kept an eye out for those of us that were still in high school and made sure we were always safe and out of trouble.
From Journal – May 28, 1977
Besides the music, I became very fond of Puerto Rican culture, especially the food (pastelitos, alcapurrias, etc.) served at the dances. I also came to appreciate just how beautiful Latino women are. The language barrier was a problem, though; at one dance, I tried to talk to one particularly cute young lady – only to learn that the reason she could only giggle and smile was because she didn't speak a word of English! (Maybe I should have taken Spanish instead of French all those years.)
But in the fall of 1977, I was heading off to college and my secret life as a member of a salsa band was drawing to a close. The band gave me a generous gift towards my college expenses, and I was sad to have to quit. I did get one last opportunity to perform with them during my freshman year when they played at Ohio State for a Hispanic function at the Ohio Union.
I would rejoin Lorain's Latin music scene after college with another band. But that's another story.
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Charambo carried on well into the early 1980s, becoming more and more popular and performing alongside even bigger name acts out of New York. By the time the band was winding down, it was generally advertised and accepted as the best salsa band in Ohio.
Dec. 17, 1977 Journal ad
From Journal of July 28, 1978
From Journal of July 20, 1979
Today, a few members of Charambo are still performing! Former Charambo leader Tony Delgado and bass guitarist Elmer Arocho are members of the popular Latin City Soul (of which Elmer is the band director). Click here to visit the band's website.
Did you know that Lincoln's Birthday has never been a U. S. Federal Government holiday? It's easy to assume that it was, until being mashed together with the birthday of the Father of Our Country to form Presidents Day. Nope, Honest Abe never had his own federal holiday.
And the Old Rail Splitter still doesn't. The 'third Monday in February' federal holiday that many states refer to as Presidents Day is officially called Washington's Birthday by the U. S. Government. (This website has a good explanation of the whole thing.)
Sorry, Abe. You might get a mention in the news on your actual birthday – February 12 – if you're lucky. And one hundred years ago today you did, on the front page of the Lorain Journal (shown above). It was a legal holiday in Lorain back then.
Front and center is our martyred President. What's interesting is that the Lincoln Memorial (shown behind him) had only been dedicated two years earlier. So it was relatively new at that point.
Here's a postcard from 1927 showing the still-new monument.
As for the rest of that front page, there are plenty of interesting stories: the saga of the three gunmen who robbed the store in Lorain a few days earlier and then fled to Brownhelm, where they divided the loot amongst themselves at the farmhouse of Henry Standen; the discovery of a body in the ruins of an apartment in Cleveland that had burned down; the gruesome discovery of body parts in a carload of cinders in a railcar at Weirton Junction, W. Virginia; the opening of the lid of King Tut's tomb; and the promotion of Helen Steiner to the state chairmanship of the Women's Public Information bureau of the National Electric Light association.
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I appreciate the well-wishes and concerned comments last week when I took time off from the blog. It's very frustrating to practice healthy habits at home and at work, be current on all recommended shots and vaccines – and then still get sick anyway! I'm nostalgic for the days when being sick meant it was either a cold, the flu or (worst case) pneumonia. Nowadays, it's almost always some sort of infection where you have to wait for it to go away. And I've got a lot of waiting to do.
But even though Mom's been gone for almost a year now, I'm still taking her advice and opened up a jar of the favorite Brady remedy (below).
I'll be taking a few days off the blog this week while I recover from the coldflu whatever this is. I haven't been sick during winter for years, so I guess I was overdue. I'm spending most of my time sleeping.
In the meantime, here's a link to a past post in which I reminisced about being 'sick in the 60s.'
Well, we're back in the 1950s again. Above is the front page of the Lorain Journal from Feb. 5, 1954 – seventy years ago today.
The headline refers to the legality of the generous raises approved by Lorain City Council in December 1953. A member of the state auditor's department contended that the raises were being paid illegally, due a law that "prevents elected and fixed term appointive officials from receiving pay boosts during their terms of office."
Elsewhere on the page, there's a great photo of the old No. 6 fire station at 31st and Palm Avenue being torn down. The photo caption notes that it was "the oldest fire house in the city."
There's an update on the "Dirty Dollar" contest in which a gambling operator had given two Journal reporters $550 to suppress their story. A Journal reader added a 'clean' one dollar to the kitty, and other readers passed along their suggestions as to what to do with the stash.
And as usual, there are a variety of interesting tidbits of both national and international origin. One that caught my attention was the small blurb about Walter E. Devine, who collected autographs of U. S. governors and was making a cross country trip on his bicycle to achieve this objective. A year later, he was in the home stretch (see photo below from the Tennessean of April 9, 1955).
Here's wishing you a Happy Groundhog Day! It's a nice little bit of fun and whimsy to break up the bleak winter. It's achieved greater prominence in the news in recent decades because of the popular 1993 movie (one of my favorites).
Here on the blog, I've done so many posts about it that it has earned its own label. (Consider visiting some of my old posts for that authentic 'Groundhog Day' deja vu experience! I've also featured so many vintage groundhog postcards that it's a challenge to find a new one each year.
Anyway, I like to see how the holiday played out in the Lorain Journal over the years. Sometimes the paper ignored it, other years it's front page news.
Groundhog Day 1934 included this great front page photo.
Apparently that isn't specifically Punxsutawney Phil in the photo. The article notes, "The groundhog's decision depends on what part of the map he chose to pop out of his hole.
"So far as Lorain is concerned, there were no shadows, the sun being covered by thick clouds throughout the day."
Ten years later on Groundhog Day 1944, the LorainJournal gave Phil's wartime forecast front page coverage.
Fast forward another decade to Groundhog Day 1954, and the Lorain Journal didn't bother to mention Phil by name. But the forecast was the same: six more weeks of winter.
But by the time of Groundhog Day 1964, Punxsutawney Phil was back in the limelight in the Journal's coverage – and with the same forecast.
It's hard to believe it's February already! That means tomorrow is Groundhog Day – which is nice, because it's a ready-made blog topic for me!
But in the meantime, let's see what was going on in Lorain seventy years ago today. Above is the front page of the February 1, 1954 Lorain Journal.
The headline YANK JET DOWNS MIG IN AIR BATTLE seems pretty ominous. A formation of Russian-built MIG-15s attacked an American reconnaissance plane off the coast of Korea. But the whole thing was downplayed by the State Department.
In actuality, the really big story for Lorain on the front page was the price of coffee (a favorite topic on this blog). With prices for the "South American brew" rising anywhere from two to seven cents a pound, Lorainites were naturally upset. But they were still buying, although some decided to switch to tea.
In a related story, a used car dealer in Jacksonville, Florida was running an ad selling a pound of coffee for $600 – and throwing in a free automobile with each purchase!
(Sorry, but I'd pay whatever I have to in order to get my coffee. It's the high point of my day. (That will give you an idea of my day). I look forward to a cup when I get up, when I get to work and as a treat during the day. But don't get the idea that I'm addicted to it.)
Elsewhere on the 1954 page: the Journal's Dirty Dollars Contest, in which newspaper readers were invited to submit ideas for what to do with $550 given by a gambling operator to two Journal newsmen; the crash of a U. S. Air Force courier plane off the coast of Japan; a terrible rail disaster in Korea; a tragedy in Sheffield Lake; a maniac slasher loose in Montreal; and an interesting item from London in which a woman could net a cool one-half million bucks just by changing her name,
