Wind powered radio at Ruby Ellen

What radio stations, where did they come from?

Rex: “WLW in Cincinnati and Toronto was one, strong station in Toronto and WLS in Chicago and then there was WMAQ in Chicago, was a strong station and then there was WHO in Des Moines, Iowa. There was a few stations that you could pick up pretty good. Nashville around, that was in the late but before that it seems like Toronto was the only station you could get here, you could pick up Toronto quite plain but it had to have earphones to listen to it, we each had earphones to listen to it so you didn’t go very far from the radio.”

How did you run the radio before the electricity came?

Rex: “This radio we had was a Zenith, it was run by 6 volt car batteries and we had wind charger on the buggy house, on the peak of the buggy house that would charge the battery from the wind, it was called a wind charger, what it really was, was a wind mill and when the wind would blow it would charge the battery so you had two of those. So, while you were using one which would last three days or so, I don’t think it last much more than three days a battery before you had to replace it with the one that had been charging from the wind. So, that’s the way you run it before you had electricity in your house. That worked out pretty good but then we don’t have that wind charger anymore, I wish I did have it. I wish it was on the buggy house yet just to look at but we had a bad storm and it ate itself up, it just, the governor broke on it and it just blew apart, too much wind.

By then we had electricity, so we had a radio then that was run by 110 volts instead of a six volt battery. But, long ago, the one like my uncle had, my mother’s brother, that was a six volt dry cell, just an ordinary dry cell battery and that would last about 3 months I think, it would last quite a while. Course the radio wasn’t played so much either, only at night because only at night could you pick up reception, couldn’t get anything in the day time, those stations that far away with that kind of a radio. So the dry cell, it’s called a dry cell, it would last three months but a regular car radio was used more so they didn’t last so long so all you done was exchange them. Take one out, bring the other one back and start in again.”