Dragnet Days

I've been listening lately to a podcast collection of the police radio series "Dragnet" from the late 1940s to early '50s. Someone said that it provides a social microsm of a time long gone, and I think that's true. I picture my father driving in the wilds of western Nebraska and eastern Wyoming at that time, selling plumbing supplies and bidding on projects, with the radio for company in his car. In his Plymouth, leaving home on Mondays and coming home on Fridays. No TV in his hotel rooms, just radio. How different that must have been.

And the shows are sponsored by Fatima cigarettes, which I had never heard of, though they were apparently around until the 1980s. Pure Madison Avenue drivel, how they taste good and are made of only the finest tobacco, are safe because the tobacco travels a long way through the "extra-long" cigarettes, and "ask your dealer for some, today." And the announcer closes with "It's wise to smoke Fatimas" followed by a sultry female voice saying the same. I wonder if either or both announcers got lung cancer. And while, to their credit, the writers never name a brand, they often have their characters lighting cigarettes.

And just the general social norms of the time, stay-at-home moms and golly-gee teenagers and all the rest. Times long gone, no doubt for the best in many respects.

But I was also struck by a world without cell phones, or even effective radios. The detectives have to call in from time to time to get an idea of how things are going, and when they say they will be arriving "soon" the powers-that-be have to just find other things to do until they arrive. No instant responses, no tracking of progress. There must have actually been time to think. And the ability to hide out for a few moments if one wanted some time alone. Dad could not talk until he got to a phone -- and neither could he be bothered until and unless he bothered to find a phone. Which I know he regularly did, but still . . . . .

How odd it all seems in an era when almost everyplace is online, now.