Old Time Kid Radio

Reviewing my youthful radio listening preferences forces me to admit that I was a weird kid. The Lone Ranger, touted by historians as the greatest of all the kid shows, didn't do much for me. Of the WXYZ shows, I liked the Ranger's great nephew, Britt Reid of the Daily Sentinel lots better. As The Green Hornet, he beat the cops at catching the bad guys with his Black Beauty vehicle that sounded like an overgrown bumble bee. I found crime fighting through investigative journalism far more appealing than catching bad guys with guns and horses in the Old West. Mike Axford's phony Irish accent when he spoke of "The Green Hairnut" was pretty funny. And there was Miss Case. Did she and Reid have a thing going? There was Kato, the Hornet's Japanese valet. Like some other radio characters, he had to change his ethnicity or disappear from the show, so he became a Filipino. Those were strange times. I'm glad I was there to experience it.