It was fun playing pretend radio announcer.

We used a reel-to-reel tape recorder, the kind with large one-hour tapes that came in four-inch reels. We'd pretend to be radio announcers and have weather forecasts, news, and music.

Of course we would have to do mock interviews so we would spend time thinking about what we would say. During the recording sessions it was hard to keep from laughing. Often we would have to re-record an interview or newscast because we would break up laughing in the middle of it. And, being mischievous and all, I would try to make our friends laugh during their sessions. This resulted in punching and wild chases, as my friends would try to get even with me about my pranks.

We would spend all day recording a session and then have fun listening to the playback. I remember I really liked the "William Tell Overture" and "The Battle of New Orleans". New Orleans went something like:

"Oh we fired our guns till the British stopped a comin', there wasn't quite as many as there was a while ago. We fired our guns and the British kept a runnin', down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. They ran thru the brambles, they ran through the briers, they ran through the places where the rabbits couldn't go. They ran so fast that the hounds couldn't catch em, down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. Oh, we fired our cannons till the barrels melted down, then we grabbed an alligator just to fire another round. We filled his head with cannon balls and powdered his behind, and when we lit that powder off that Gator lost his mind!"

I also remember a song called "Johnny Yuma"-- "Johnny Yuma, was a rebel..."

Perhaps we were interested in this because the father of one of the neighbor friends, Peter Edgar, worked at a local radio station. I remember being at his house and seeing the daily schedule sheets that the radio station used to organize their day.

It's funny how the songs we played stick in my mind today. And I remember how those recordings somehow were not as interesting to my parents as they were to those of us who spent the hours making them. It's too bad we didn't have copies of them today. It would be wonderful to hear those high-pitched voices and the laughter from the past!