Radio razz

By Jack Woodford
I have always liked to hang around old Doc Edwards’s radio store in the evenings; not, particularly, because of any great interest in radio, for I have a five tube set of my own with which I can pick up everything from Kahoolawe to Nansen Sound and I could just as well stay at home and try for the Eiffel Tower; but it’s the way old Doc Edwards sells ’em that gets me.
You see, the “Doctor” comes from Edwards’s days as a veterinary surgeon; but old man Edwards was never at heart a veterinary surgeon, he was in reality a horse trader. When horses got to the point where people began to consider saving the last remaining specimens for zoological gardens and historical societies, Doc Edwards turned to radio. And oh, what a radio salesman he is!
To begin with, he won’t have a new set in his store, or, if he does have to stock a few new sets now and then, he invariably marks them “secondhand,” for he hates anything that has a fixed price on it.
Not a set in Doc’s shop has a price tag, and not a set but what he may vary the price from one hundred to one thousand per cent. And I wish you could see him sell them. All he aims to do is to get some cash out of any one who comes in the store, and, leave it to him, he never fails; at least, I never saw him fail except once, the night he had matchmaking in his head.
You see, Doc is a kindly old cuss, and it isn’t so much that he wants to make a whale of a lot of money as that he just naturally enjoys a shrewd bargain. After he’s made one he’s as happy as a lark, whether any more customers come in or not; but, if he makes a bad bargain, the best thing to do is to go home, for Doc won’t be worth talking to for the rest of the evening.
One of Doc’s pet theories is that if you use a real good super-hetrodyne set, on a clear, calm night, sitting in a dark room with all light excluded, there is a way of tuning that permits you to see the whole solar firmament in the mouth of your loud speaker. I’ve always thought that that was a lot of bunk, but—well, we’ll see.