In 1947 my grandmother, Virginia Stumbough, a writer with a
degree in journalism, was living in Evanston, Illinois with her husband and
children. She wrote this 15-minute infomercial for the Evanston Council of
Social Services for broadcast on June 24: “Y-Teens”, advertising the local Sheman
Avenue YWCA’s summer day camp aimed at eighth grade girls looking for something
to do and a chance to mix with older girls before entering high school in the Fall. The name of the station isn’t written on the label
of this Recordio disc, but Kindly Professor Internet suggests it was WEAW-FM
105.1.
Did Mom catch you listening to Perry Como’s “Chi-Baba
Chi-Baba” and blurt out the oh-so-inevitable “What’s that racket”? Are you too young to get a driver’s
license? Is it still too cold to swim? Never fear! The YWCA’s “Y-Teens”
summer program is perfect for the girl with time on her hands this Summer. Tour
a candy factory! Tour a harp factory! Eat lunch at Hull House! Shop the Maxwell
Street markets! Visit Riverview Park! Do some knitting! And learn to cook
fudge without ruining the pan! It’s charming and brutally expositional, presenting a particular
challenge for the one of the child actors in this mostly school-age voice cast
who slogs through one word-cluster at a time with poignant determination.
NOTE TO WOULD-BE ARCHIVISTS: Records from the DIY era of
home recording by definition meet very few of the criteria of
professionally-produced discs, such as a generous amount of silent lead-in at
the beginning and end of a side. This record has, on either side, no lead-ins
whatsoever. There’s the edge of the record, and one nanometer later there’s “Y-Teens”.
So that little bit of sound information at the beginning that you usually have
no trouble hearing on other records here is hidden so close to the abyss that you’d need superhuman aim to put the needle down at precisely the
right time and space. In cases like this, if you have a turntable with reverse
drive, one solution is to put the needle down near the beginning, play it in
reverse, and let it play until the needle runs off the record; then reverse
that audio digitally. If you use this method, BE SURE to carefully hold the height lever in place so that the needle won't land on the slipmat when it runs off the edge of the record. And put another another, bigger record – or a mirror – underneath your record just in case. In completely unrelated news, an Ortofon OM 78 phono cartridge costs
about $100. (You bet I screamed. LOUD.)
10" record audio (side 1 + 2 combined)
