When I was a kid growing up in Walker County, it was a different time. Nobody had air conditioning.
On hot summer nights, if you were fortunate enough to have a window fan, you might have to reverse its direction to get rid of the smell of “ cotton poison,” the insecticide used to fight boll weevils . We didn’t think much about what it might do to us. We understood that boll weevils were demonic creatures sent to ruin the lives of farmers and their families. That was explained to us by the late great Brook Benton over AM radio, probably station WVOK, all the way from Birmingham.
The man who influenced hundreds of thousands of people, Mr. Joe Rumore, played it regularly. If you had a telephone, you answered it , “Joe Rumore!,” in hope of winning a color TV . He never commented on politics but did play a Christmas record every July 3rd for all the people who might drink and drive, speed, etc., and be killed over the holiday through carelessness, since they would not be around for Christmas. It was quite sobering.
He had a Sunday morning program of gospel music for people who couldn’t make it to church. He talked about his wife and kids, using their real names and nobody was concerned for their safety.
If you bought products that sponsored his show, you could send in box tops or labels and get fabulous gifts like autographed pictures of Elvis, lipstick autographed by Elvis, and on and on. All good , decent people used Golden Eagle syrup and bought station wagons from Bob Arnold Ford, just like Joe.
If you wrote to him, he’d announce your name over the radio, making you almost famous for a minute. Everyone knew he was a Catholic, but he could talk to the Baptists and Methodists as if the truth transcended denominations. Don’t get me wrong, he was never preachy. He came across as an ordinary guy who liked people and cared about their every day lives. If he ever did anything bad, I don’t want to know about it.
In his heyday, in the 1950s, he might have been governor if he’d run. He definitely had the attention of a good sized chunk of Alabama. Probably nothing has ever left me more stunned than a few years ago, when I met a young person who had married one of Joe Rumore’s grandchildren and had no idea of the fame and respect associated with the name Rumore. I was saddened to think that the good works of a man could be so quickly forgotten , but more saddened that the values of that era are lost to us.
I loved Tina Turner but I disagreed with her- we do need another hero. We need another Joe Rumore.
The Community Curmudgeon will share a rant every other week via The Community Journal. Please behave or something you do could become the basis for one of his/her rants.
