I regard it as a blessing that gives me some perspective remembering a time before both the Internet and cell phones. But my late father remembered a time befo

I regard it as a blessing that gives me some perspective remembering a time before both the Internet and cell phones. But my late father remembered a time before radio. He was four when WWJ launched in Detroit. But when he was six a second station WJR came on the air and his father brought home a radio. It was a source of endless fascination to the entire family whether they were listening to their beloved Detroit Tigers, a concert or the news. Before radio there was no concept of news in real time. People had both a morning and an evening newspaper if they were news junkies. But radio could broadcast news as it happened. Then there was television. My father was leaving a sales call in Ann Arbor and spied a crowd gathered around a storefront. As he got closer there was a TV in the window and there were the Detroit Tigers playing the Milwaukee Brewers. He told me it was radio with pictures. He couldn't afford a television but when I was born a few years later they went out and purchased a TV so that I could grow up with it just like they grew up with radio. Just like the Internet they had such high hopes for the medium, more high brow than radio but it wasn't to be.