Radio ga ga…

I am sure many of you who are younger have never seen anything like this before…

Nope! It’s not a coffin! Choi! Choi! Ptui!!!! Hahahahahahaha!!!! It’s a radiogram – a radio plus a gramaphone. This one is a Grundig, made in Germany…and I think Sophia‘s family had a Telefunken.

I cannot remember exactly when we bought this one but I do recall we had another one before this…something similar to what kpenyu eventually restored and converted into a writing table. I think it was in the early 60s (or the late 50s)…but what I do remember is the hours I spent sitting beside it listening to the various stations from all over the world, waiting for my favourite songs. I used to write letters to the radio announcers asking them to play my selections on their programmes and dedicate them to my friends here, there and everywhere.

On the top half, there is the radio with the loudspeakers on both sides. Here, you have the buttons for you to choose the bands. These days, I think most radios only have two – FM and AM…

For example, if I wanted to listen to Radio Singapore in those days, I would press the SW2 (shortwave 2) button and tune to 25 MHz using this tuning knob…

Then, to increase the volume and improve the quality of the sound production, that is to adjust the treble, the bass and the balance, I would use these smaller knobs…

Now, the lower half has one compartment with the gramaphone or the record player. That one was already spoilt and in my ignorance at the time, I had got rid of it. The other compartment would be for you to store your records. In those days, we had 45 rpm (revolutions per minute) or 33 1/3 rpm vinyl records. Before that, we even had 78 rpm as well. These were black in colour with grooves and when you put the stylus (needle) on them as they rotated, you would get to hear the songs.

You must not drop the stylus on the records, or you would end up with a repeating groove. I used to copy lyrics of songs e.g. Elvis Presley’s “Are you lonesome tonight?” by listening to the song on the record…and moving the stylus when I wanted to hear some lines again…and when I accidentally dropped the stylus, that would be the end of it!!! LOL!!!

We stayed in wooden houses on stilts then (which definitely was a good idea because we had floods regularly, and the water would not get into the houses, unlike houses today)…and sometimes, we would have “home parties” where everybody would gather at somebody’s house, have drinks (Red Man orange mixed with sugar and tap water) and sandwiches…and dance to the songs played on the gramaphone!!! And imagine how the house would tremble when everyone was doing the A-Go-Go to the tune of “Wooly Bully”!!!! The old folks would come out screaming, “Chu tor lor! Chu tor lor!” (The house is going to collapse!) LOL!!!

Young people had good, clean fun then…and we had dancing at parties on weekends for the sheer enjoyment of it – no liquor, no drugs!!! Those were the days…..