"… across the miles in the oil fields of Texas...you make
your little Red School house and your folks of Renfro Valley so real to us…”
Monday night listeners who wrote lived in such places as Onro, Wisconsin; Lonedell, Missouri; Rubio, Iowa; Sapulpa, Oklahoma; Haviland, Kansas; Hyatville, Wyoming; Las Vegas, New Mexico; Odessa, Texas; Shreveport, Louisiana; Carmi, Illinois; Brazil, Indiana; White Cottage, Ohio; Dehue, West Virginia; Baxter, Kentucky; Copper Hill, Tennessee; Dudley, Georgia; Powderly, Alabama; and Thousand Islands, New York.
Many were hearing from John Lair and Renfro Valley for the first time. Men and women typed as well as hand-wrote letters and cards. The households represented included children and teenagers as well as the middle-aged and elderly.
They wrote about the music heard, and Lair’s descriptions of Renfro Valley, However, once in a while the underlying human urge to know and be known was given direct expression.
Vernon, Texas
March 17, 1941
“If only radio entertainers could know the people
whom they broadcast to, there wouldn’t need to be any
letters trying to tell what is in the writer’s heart.”
Many reinforced their aural impressions with photos in the fifty-page Renfro Valley Keepsake they could purchase for fifty cents through the mail.
Many others simply trusted to the authenticity of what they heard.
Belton, Texas
February,12, 1941
"While I'm waiting for the time to pass so I can go milk old Jersy, I just happen to think I have been planning to write you good folks... Sincerity stands out so plainly in every word you have to say... And the larger part of your entire program is so true to nature."
One of the few who were actually present on a Monday night, came away impressed that there was more than the usual radio artifice at work in Lair’s depiction of “residents of a real community, together in a actual, old log school house in the hills of old Kintucky...”
New Haven, Indiana
February 28, 1941
“Never shall I forget that delightful half hour we spent one evening in the old school… I think I experienced some of the feeling Rip Van Winkle did when he suddenly came upon that strangely dressed company playing nine-pins…the scene, the music, the voices were of another age.
We saw within a dimly-lighted room many people gathered around, some sitting on boards and remnants of old school seats, some standing or leaning against the walls.
At a rough unpainted desk near the back sat big soft-voiced John Lair... genial, friendly, who made the announcements and kept up a humorous, whimsical patter between numbers in the vernacular of the mountaineer. ....In front a few feet from Mr. Lair stood a microphone, above it hung a single light bulb and below was placed a store box on which the short people stand.”
Overall, Lair’s descriptions of what listeners couldn't see, hear, or smell conveyed personal warmth, physical detail, mood, and perhaps even color.
His words depicting Renfro Valley’s seasonal dynamics could well be what moved two wistful Texans:
Odessa, Texas
March 18th, 1941
"Out here across the miles in the oil fields of Texas...you make your little Red School house and your folks of Renfro Valley so real to us that we may be coming to Kentucky just to get back to happiness and contentment."
Weatherford, Texas
January 14, 1941
“…I have hopes of sometime getting time out and drive out there to Renfro Valley and spend a few hours and feel then just as I do when listening to your program.”
