Stay Tuned for an 

Important Announcement

We wondered what  « by proxy » meant when the big

deep voice came on of J. Edgar Hoover to enlist

our aid in fighting crime, racketeers

and enemies of the state, and then Bulldog

Drummond and sirens and shots in the dark, our ears

deep under the blankets, with only a thin orange light

of the tube shining through: Only the Shadow knows,

said Lamont Cranston, sending shivers of delight

up and down our spines, and those cackles and chuckles

that blended through the darkness with Andy, Amos

and the Kingfish himself, until we forgot Sergent

Prescott of the Northwest Mounted Police, yahoo!

through the forests of an unknown northern land

and then Silver and Champion to the south, a posse of

hombres, outlaws and vigilantes clashed and then

as each fifteen minute segment closed with Ovaltine

or Carter’s Little Liver Pills, the Green

Hornet or some other crime-buster rescued

our imagination from itself, and it

was time to click the dial to off and sleep

in another realm of dreams, as only eleven-

year-old children can, unaware this

was the end of infancy, the final show,

tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,

would begin another era, after radio.