I've had a lot of e-mail from old time radio fans since I started this column, and I've enjoyed it all, and all the people, from the senior citizens who remember gathering round the Philco in '42 to the 16 year olds who stumbled onto Jack Benny on their local station's OTR night. Being nosey by nature, I always ask the younger ones why they like OTR, and you'd be surprised at the wide range of answers I get. I've heard everything from "because TV sucks" to "I outgrew collecting baseball cards." One college girl even told me she liked it because it kept her mind off sex, since the shows didn't go there and Ally McBeal certainly did. "Hey," she said, "I've got homework to do."

One of the most poignant e-mails I've received was from a man in his 40s who had lost both his parents to cancer. They were both big collectors of old shows on tape, and now those tapes, and subsequently the shows themselves, are his contact with them. He prefers to remember the laughter, when everyone was happy and healthy and they'd listen to Phil Harris and Alice Faye together, or any number of comedies, for that was the family forte.

I think that was the e-mail I most related to. My parents are alive and well. Knock wood. But my father and I had a very rough go of it as I was growing up and we really didn't have much in common. He liked to hunt, I yelled "RUN, BAMBI! RUN!" He had a crew cut, I had longer hair than my sister and still do to this day. You get the idea. But there was one thing that really clicked, and it was hearing my dad and his parents telling the stories of the radio days. It was magical and mesmerizing, and in any case a better time than I was living in. When I'd hear the tapes I'd close my eyes and let myself be transported back to the day of the broadcast. I still allow myself that eccentricity. When I listen to newscasts from the World War II era, I still listen with fresh ears, despite having studied the era to the tiniest minutia, so I can get some idea of what it felt like to be living at that time. My dad gave me that. We have a few other bonding topics, but this one isn't like football or baseball or Shelby Mustangs: this one is about a place in time, beliefs, faiths, attitudes, and... apple pie, I guess.

Every year I stress about what to get my father for Christmas. Probably because it usually never seems to bring more than a blink before the next package is opened, and I feel like I let him down. But that's for the next session on the shrink's couch. This is about a Christmas miracle. This is about this Christmas.

I've been trying for over a year to figure out a way to make my dad's notebook computer play MP3s. If I could do that, I could supply him with endless OTR, which would definitely please him. But that computer is old and was a bad purchase in the first place. It just can't be done on that machine. So without a thought in my head -- which, by the way, is my usual and most comfortable state -- I walked into the local computer store and bought a CD wallet and a box of 80 minute blanks. It was 20 days until Christmas and I decided, then and there, that I would make as many audio OTR CDs as that wallet would hold, which was 24.

Little side note: Did you know that it's not all that easy to fill an 80 minute CD with OTR? The average program was 30 minutes. Three of those is 90 minutes. BZZZZT! Ah, but some of the serials were only 14 minutes. Great! Got 6 minutes left. No problem. Put an old song and a few old commercials in there and you've got a great OTR CD. Spread 'em out and it's a comfortable listen from start to finish. But the problem then is that serials usually run for 10 or 15 episodes before they have a conclusion. Ha! Good luck there. I started looking for short programs that weren't serials. The Bickersons is a good bet, and there's Easy Aces, too. Also, a lot of the half hour shows have been butchered by well-meaning people who figured we didn't want to hear the vintage commercials, thereby bringing the time down to 22 or 23 minutes, which fits with your two 30s. In the case of The Jack Benny Show, many episodes have had Dennis Day's songs cut from them. Now, I can't say I like that kind of singing. In fact, it gets on my nerves. But it was in the show, so leave it. But they didn't. At any rate, By day 10 I was getting good at finding ways of making things fit.

Truth is... in the end, I didn't like putting only three things on one of Dad's CDs. I liked to try to get five. A typical CD might have a three minute promo for a movie, Groucho Marx's game show You Bet Your Life, an Andrews Sisters song, Tales Of The Texas Rangers and a boxing match. My philosophy became "pack it!" Make it so he can pop a CD in and get a lot out of it. And that's what I did, all the way through CD # 24.

And I was burning CD #24 at 2 AM on Christmas Eve. This turned out to be one of the most time consuming projects I'd ever tackled. You wouldn't think it would be, but you'd be wrong, gringo. With all the CDs burned, two separate lists made in the computer (one referenced by disc number, one alphabetically by show), and each disc tucked neatly into the sporty looking CD wallet, the package was wrapped and I began my yearly worrying process that replaces sleeping on Christmas Eve.

Turns out I should have slept like a baby. He loved the present and went through those lists, which I'd printed out and put in the inside cover pockets of the CD wallet, and now, two months later, nearly every time I see him he's listening to one of those CDs. Talk about your successful Christmas gifts! I'd never really had one of those before. It feels good. But more importantly, it really did something for him. There's something different about him when he's listening to those shows or talking about them. There's just a little bit of a kid that comes out. A bit of joy.

So anyway, guess what he's getting for his birthday, which is this month. I know, I know, a LOT of work, but worth every second of it because it makes him happy, it brings us together, and you know what? I can't think of a better reason for having a huge collection of radio shows than to share them with your dad, can you?

(C) 2001 - DJ Johnson