Could Have Been

Every family has their would a, should a, could a been story. Ours is no different.

In the early thirties my maternal grandfathers family moved to Los Angeles from Milwaukee. My great grandfather Herman purchased a storefront on Wilshire Blvd. in a part of town that came to be known as the Miracle Mile.

Herman and his son's Stanley and Arthur (my grandfather) opened a radio sales and repair shop. They worked hard and their business prospered. One day Stanley went to his father and told him about the wondrous new product he had seen. The television. He was very enthusiastic in explaining to Herman and Arthur how the salesman had convinced him the television was the future and the glory days of radio would soon fade. His idea was for them to slowly move out of radio sales and into television. While Arthur agreed and understood that there might be a future in television sales Herman would have none of it. Like a lot of people he felt that television was a passing fad and he was not about to mortgage his families future on a whim. Being the patriarch and owner his vote was all that counted and the family remained in the radio business.

Of course history tells us that television went on to dominate American culture. As so many others had, Herman misread the signs and ended up going out of business.

On a side note, Wilshire Blvd. and the Miracle Mile went on to become some of the highest priced real estate in Southern California. With a little bit of for sight my great grandfather would have been a wealthy man.