Back in the Day: Granny ordered photos of Grand Ole Opry stars
Janie Mae Jones McKinley
Imagine living in a time when a battery-operated radio was considered to be high-tech in the mountains of Western North Carolina.
Music, news, and comedy could be transmitted through the air to my grandparents’ living room on secluded Bear Mountain. They eagerly listened to local stations, and to those powerful enough to be heard at night.
Even with a clothesline-type antenna wire stretched to a post in the cornfield, radios primarily picked up local, daytime frequencies. Most people didn’t understand the effects of the ionosphere’s reflection of radio waves back to earth after the sun went down. So, mountain folks considered nighttime banjo music from distant states to be an added bonus of owning a radio.