So, now y'know.....

December Thirty-One, Nineteen Hundred ‘n Fifty-One...
Out with the old, in with the new....just layin’ around waitin’ for ‘fifty-two....
I remember being sick or maybe it was just sickish.....at any rate, I didn’t feel good.. or didn’t feel well, take y’r choice, whatever...it meant that I spent New Years Eve alone... piled up on the sofa...can’t really remember the sofa, what it looked like way back then, but it was against the wall that hid the stairwell....
funny I haven’t tho’t about that house for years.....it was a two-story house across the road from the Post Office...sat below the road so that the second story was level with the roadway.... There were two bedrooms upstairs and an attic space that was used for storage and also where the model railroad was setup on plywood...I had the large room all to myself simply because it had a closet and the brothers three were afraid to sleep in a room with a closet - only reason I had a rooom to myself but I appreciated it...s’funny, but I don’t remember the closet...I kept my clothing in a wardrobe (armoire for those with a taste for things a la francaise) ‘cept if mem’ry serves ‘n it generally does ‘cause it’s my mem’ries anyways....ever’body called ‘em shiffarobes ‘n I ain’t got the slightest idea of the derivation of that p’ticklar term...anyway, it was a nice one with one tall side where y’could hang up stuff that needed hanging ‘n t’other side with a mirror ‘n flat top over drawers....I wish I had it t’day but if I did, I’m sure some one of my children would have appropriated it by now....
Anyway, it was a large room, the living room, with a door leading into the kitchen ‘n the sofa was against the wall that had the door to the stairway ‘n across the room was a gas stove...I c’n remember the front glowing red ‘n the yellow flame almost like a fireplace.....we weren’t all that far away from having heated the previous houses with coal stoves so the gas was a step up...anyway, Mom ‘n Dad ‘n the brothers three had gone to a New Year’s party...don’t remember where it was but South Portsmouth wasn’t very big so it was probably at my Aunt Billie’s house....
I was downstairs on the sofa rather than upstairs in my bedroom ‘cuz the downstairs had ‘the radio’....
Teevee’s were rare back then and most homes had a radio....ours was a Philco floor model with push buttons t’change the stations...one of the buttons was marked ‘television’ (Philco looking to the future, I spoze)... Anyways, I found that I c’d listen to 1952 coming in again’n again on it’s westward march..from Times Square in NY on eastern standard to St. Louis on central standard to the West Coast which is on Mountain standard (go figure)...’n on the West Coast, I found KRAK (which is still in operation t’day) in Sacramento....I was fascinated...I knew, of course, that Sacramento was the capitol of California...
(they taught geography in Kentucky schools even back then) but like most people in the east, I had no concept of what California was really like....(things haven’t changed, California is still a puzzlement to the rest of the world) They had a reporter riding with the police thru the nite, chronicling the local happenings in the city of Sacramento...
That kind of stuff never happened on WPAY out of Cincinnati which are the only call letters that I c’n actually remember from way back when ‘n that ain’t no wonder for it was a very long time ago.....It’s a small thing ‘n I only bring it up at all becuz one of the stocking stuffers I got for Christmas was a copy of Paul Harvey’s “The Rest of the Story.”..... so now y’know.....