Bobby

I felt very American during the war. I played Paul Robeson’s recording of “Ballad for Americans” often, listening closely so I could remember the lyrics... “In ’76 the sky was red/With thunder rumbling overhead.”

There were soap operas on the radio in the daytime for the women, and adventure serials in the late afternoon so boys could listen to Jack Armstrong and Captain Midnight and Hop Harrigan. I never thought much about it then, but girls probably listened too.

But in the evening we all listened to Jack, Doc, and Reggie on I Love a Mystery. We listened to Jack Benny and Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. We listened to the Shadow. All of us. Children, adults. Once a week, the Lux Radio Theater dramatized popular movies with name actors. Lux presents Hollywood. My memory is that Cecil B. DeMille was the host. He talked in elocution English that had no region. The announcer referred to him as Mr. DeMille.

The Fitch Bandwagon... don’t despair, use your head, save your hair, use Fitch Shampoo. Duffy’s Tavern... Archie the manager speaking, Duffy ain’t here. Wistful Vista. Allen’s Alley. The Green Hornet and Cato. Steve Wilson and Loreli Kilbourne of the Illustrated Press... freedom of the press is a flaming sword, use it wisely, hold it high, guard it well.

We all shared the same love songs, by the same singers. Crosby and Sinatra. Dinah Shore and Dick Haymes. Bob Eberly. Helen O’Connell. Vera Lynn. The Ink Spots. Jo Stafford.

We all believed in love.

LIFE magazine appeared every Monday. It was the unifying force of my childhood. Big format. Pictures. Text. LIFE covered everything. Or seemed to. LIFE was there when it happened and it not only told you what happened but explained it, placed it in context. LIFE wrote about sorority parties and medieval princes and labor strikes and Italian peasants and football games in Michigan. It covered the war in China between Chiang and the Communists. It covered hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee. It covered debutante cotillions, managing to get some careful shots of pretty girls getting dressed and making up. It covered the Broadway stage. It had a regular feature called “LIFE Goes to the Movies” that encapsulated a current feature, telling an abbreviated version of the story in pictures and captions. Life presents Hollywood.

LIFE covered the White House and the Congress and big labor and big business. It covered the New York Philharmonic, and life in small Midwestern towns and the urban renewal of Omaha, and proceedings in the British House of Commons, and exploration of the South Pole, all with the measured certainty of an insider. It had access. It was there. It understood.

And always, at the heart of its coverage, shaping every attitude it espoused and certainly every attitude I learned from it, LIFE offered the vision of a robust and pleasant life lived in a bountiful and beautiful land. A fundamental part of that life was marriage, and the clean and happy sex that went along with it. It was the culminating purpose of any boyhood to marry a fresh and bouncy young white woman with good thighs who bathed often and had a great smile... and settle down and never roam and make the San Fernando Valley my home.

I looked forward to LIFE’s arrival each week.

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