The Philco Model 41-295

Meet the Philco Model 41-295 console radio. It used 11 tubes and received AM as well as shortwave from 2.3 to 7 mc, 9 to 12 mc and 13.5 to 18 mc. It had eight pushbuttons; seven for preset AM stations and one for off-on control. It operated on 115 volts, AC only. The cabinet was a wood veneer and it stood 36 inches tall. The original price was $100. Adjusted for inflation, that would be $1,538.98 in today’s money.

I stumbled across one of these on Ebay this afternoon. The seller wants $125, noting it’s non-functioning and useful as a “parts” radio for someone restoring a 41-295.

These pictures brought back a flood of memories for me. My parents, who were married in April of 1939, had one of these radios. Since this model was made in 1940 for the 1941 market, it’s entirely possible my parents listened to broadcasts about the Pearl Harbor attack on their Philco.

My dad was a Ford guy and he favored Philco electronics because Philco was owned by Ford. Our first television, purchased just before Christmas of 1953, was a Philco table model.

I spent hours in front of our Philco console radio in the late 1940s and early ‘50s. Much of the time, it was tuned to WBAA (AM, of course. This was years before FM broadcasting), the Purdue University station in West Lafayette, Ind. We lived about 20 miles east of West Lafayette in Delphi.

One of the highlights of my day came at 5 p.m. when the Storytime Special came on the air and I got to hear a story read by the “Story Lady,” a Purdue coed, probably a radio or communications major.

I remember listening to WBAA afternoon jazz programming and wondering why they played so much stuff by the Art Van Damme Quintet. Maybe it was because he was a Dutchman from Michigan and there was, and is, a large Dutch Reformed community in Lafayette. Van Damme was considered the father of the jazz accordion.

Saturday nights, WLS in Chicago carried the National Barn Dance. One of the acts was Captain Stubby and his Buccaneers. Captain Stubby’s real name was Tom Fouts and he grew up with my mom in eastern Carroll County.

I had a little oak rocking chair, decorated on the back with a decal of a penguin, and I sat and rocked while I listened to Hopalong Cassidy, the Lone Ranger, the Green Hornet and lots of other programs that you can hear today on the Old Time Radio channel on SiriusXM satellite radio. (I still have the rocking chair. It sits in a corner of our living room and is the repository for dog toys. Every now and then I allow a visiting child to sit in it.)