'Imagine,' its 1948 on a Friday night at 8' o'clock. The family is gathered around a large mahogany wood console radio in their small but cozy living room and through the often static-crackling radio speaker the announcer begins:
"There he goes into that drugstore. He's stepping on the scales.
Weight 239 pounds. Fortune danger! Who is it? THE FAT MAN!"
Let the individual imaginations kick in as the radio detective mystery tale unfolds as it so many of those radio classics in pre-television days.
The large movie screen of early years also required much the same of it's audience.......'imagination.' We all knew that Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr were involved in a torrid romance on that ship in "An Affair to Remember." You just knew it. Years later, we need not use any imagination as the bare butts and boobs told us about a "Fatal Attraction."
I personally blame 'PAC Man.' In May of 1980, the Japanese unleashed 'the mouth' that hurried through a video game maze eating little yellow dots while attempting to avoid the ghosts. If we can 'see' this drama what a great idea to 'see' the bullet entering the forehead and blood flowing from a dying man. Wow...we even hold the controls in our own hands...we become PAC-Man. We get to destroy over and over and over. Terrific fun with no need for imagination.
There has always been something magical about calling on one's imagination. On a rainy day in 1948, I took my homemade 'spinner baseball game' to our screened-in back porch. My bubble gum cards were laid-out with the Brooklyn 'Dodgers' lineup on one side and my St. Louis 'Cardinals' lineup on the other side. As the rain pelted down keeping me from the sandlot, I found a wonderful fantasy escape. At any moment, I was 'The Man,' 'The Duke,' Hodges, Moore or Mr. Shortstop, Marty Marion. And always, I was the hyper-over-the-top broadcaster, Harry Carey...Holy Cow! What an imagination.
(Touch)
Just My Imagination
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