Hi-yo Silver! Away!

You remember that even after we got a TV, we didn't get very many shows. When we wanted a drama or story, we listened to the radio.
My mother had favorite radio shows and she planned her ironing around them. When it was time for "Our Miss Brooks" or "Jack Benny" she would set up the ironing board and plug in the iron. This way she was entertained as she worked.
Sometimes we didn't get very good radio reception. I would sit and hold the radio in a certain way so that the show would come in clearly.
As I got older there were fewer and fewer radio dramas. The shows that had been on radio were now TV shows. My very favorite radio show was one of the ones that turned into a TV show.

But I listened to it on the radio until the last episode in 1956.

For years I knew exactly when The Lone Ranger was going to be on.
I would hold the radio very carefully and listen so closely that I wouldn't even know what was going on around me...
from the first strains of the opening music -




my imagination rode away to the wild west on that magnificent white stallion "Silver" .

I loved the stories about the mysterious masked man and his Indian partner, Tonto.




I loved the deep voice of the announcer at the beginning of the show intoning


“A fiery horse with the speed of light! A cloud of dust and a hearty ‘Hi-Yo, Silver!’ The Lone Ranger!”
I knew what the Lone Ranger and Tonto looked like.

I knew just what the horses, Silver and Scout, looked like too.

I had a Viewmaster reel about the Lone Ranger and that's how I knew what they all looked like.

I had a book about the Lone Ranger so I knew background things, too, like where he got his silver bullets.






Even if we didn't get to see the TV show, I could picture the whole story in my mind.


I knew that at the end of the show someone would say "Who was that masked man?"

and someone else would say "That was the Lone Ranger!"

Then you'd hear him shout "Hi-yo, Silver! Away!" and you'd know that the big white horse was standing up on his hind feet ready to plunge into a wild gallop away.

The music would fade away with the hoof beats and I would be back to my uncomfortable perch on the red metal stool holding the plastic box of the radio. I'd set that radio down to spurt static while I ran away to pretend I was a cowboy hero and the old Red Rocker was a big white horse.