One thing I hated as a kid was soggy cereal. The first two or three spoonfuls of cornflakes were okay but then they went limp in the milk and were like eating shreds of soggy paper. My father ate shredded wheat which looked like something you would clean pots and pans with, a Brillo or SOS pad, and I think that is what made him mean.

I stayed with Cheerios and Kix during the summer and Oatmeal or Malt-o-meal in the winter, with bananas. Always bananas. Breakfast was at the kitchen table and we listened to the radio perched on the top of the refrigerator.

I listened, while eating breakfast, to a show I no longer remember the name of, but do remember it broadcast a series of adventures segments titled Little Orley. The daily adventure started my day and then it was off to school.

Being on radio, the verbal adventures of Little Orley allowed my imagination to run on as I listened to the exploits, oft repeated as I believe there were only 12 adventures in all, and each time, even though I may have heard it before, new images were conjured up in my mind of what was transpiring over the air waves.

Little Orley was a five minute adventure relayed to us listeners by Uncle Lumpy. That’s right, Uncle Lumpy, who told us the stories of a backwoods farm boy while accompanied by music and sound effects. I later learned that Lumpy Brannam was a musician with Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians, a well known orchestra in the 1940’s nd 50’s and the whole series of stories were concocted by Brannum as part of their musical presentations over the radio.

As I kid, I didn’t know that and just enjoyed the exploits of a little boy who found a magic bass fiddle, a strange musical haunted house and meeting up with a chicken who blew bubble gum so large it rolled down the farmland fields picking up animals and people and whatever got stuck in its mass until it finally exploded (the gum bubble, not the chicken).

After I had my tonsils out, my father bought me the entire 78rpm, 6 record collection of Little Orley Tales. I was so elated I took them to school to show everyone. Sister Mary Spoilsport made me put them in the rear coat room until after school. When I went back to retrieve them they were gone. I was devastated. I never learned who took my records but realized it had to be during lunch when I ran home to watch the Happy Pirates on TV.

I told my parents and there was a meager attempt, I think, on the part of the school to recover the records and catch the culprit. I sometimes wonder if it were the nuns themselves who took them back to the convent to listen to after evening vespers.

I never forgot Little Orley and, in the 1970’s and 80’s as I set up at the flea markets, I looked around hoping to find a set to replace the one lost. There were none to be found. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I searched around on eBay and found a two record set available and it had the bubble gum and haunted house episodes that I has enjoyed as a kid 50 years earlier. I won the auction for only five dollars and waited anxiously for the package to arrive. Once again I would hear the voice of Uncle Lumpy after half a century of waiting.

As I listened to the stories again, I asked myself what was so special about these dumb vignettes that made me remember them so much. The realization came that it was not the stories but the venue.

It was a time when, for me, life was simple, secure and adventurous. Mom making breakfast, Dad grimacing as he swallowed his shredded wheat, the tall glass of Ovaltine and soggy cereal for me, the smell of fresh baked bread on the kitchen counter and the chirping of birds outside the window as the scent of garden lilacs wafted through the screened kitchen window.

Yeah, it wasn’t about the stories, it was the stage they were presented on. That is the meaning of nostalgia, the part we miss the most. Little Orley just reminded me of those times we shared his adventures together when we were both nine years old.