Episode 109, February 1, 2025 - Jean Shepherd Marathon, Part 3 - Airchecks

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Welcome to airchecks. Here is more of the Jane Shepherd
Marathon on WR in New York City from June twenty fifth,
nineteen sixty. The recording begins with Dwight West reading the
war news, Grand Prix Auto Racing, fishing, air Races, dance Marathons.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
Is twelve noon, Saturday, June twenty fifth. This is Light
West in the WOR newsroom with fifteen minutes of the
latest news. First to look at the weather. Sunny and
breezy this afternoon, with low humidity high in the comfortable seventies.
Present temperature just off times square is seventy one degrees,
and there are light puffy clouds in the sky. I'll

(01:09):
have the complete weather forecast for you at the conclusion
of this broadcast. Today marks the tenth anniversary of the
Korean War. The Communists observed it with a new demand
that US troops leave South Korea as well as other
parts of Asia. North Korea, supported by the Communist World,
made its demand for a US pullout in radio broadcasts

(01:31):
and the press, and at a meeting with UN Command
representatives near panmun Jahm where the Korean Truce was signed.
I'll have more news for you after this message. Oh,

(03:42):
there's plenty of evidence to make the point. It's h oh.
You think you think it's as simple as all that. Huh.
Let me tell you. I was just listening to Dwight
Weast and he said that the great Race at Lamont
is now underway with the famous standing start. Does that

(04:03):
mean anything to you? The standing start at Leamont, what
it actually entails? What it is. I'll tell you what
the standing start at Lahmont is. All the cars are
lined up with the noses of them. Now, this has
not started like any other ordinary race. The Indianapolis race,
of course, is started with let's say, I believe it's

(04:26):
eleven rows, eleven rows of three cars each, thirty three cars,
and they're strung out across the track in a great
long line, and all the motors are started and the
cars take off that way. But this is a different
kind of a race, the Lamont, the twenty four hour
Grand Prix, which is one of the most famous and
probably the most honored race of all the races all

(04:50):
over the world. But the standing start at Lamont is
a spectacular thing to see. All the cars are parked,
you know what they call angle park in the States,
with the noses into the curb. Well, all the cars
are parked along the track in a long line. I
believe it's yes, it's a double line, that's right, one,

(05:10):
not double riddy. But they're parked across the street from
each other. They're parked along both curves of the racetrack
with the noses angled in toward the outer rim of
the track, and the cars are stopped. The motors are
not going, and they're all parked that way, and then
the drivers at a signal, run across the track. The
race officially starts when the drivers begin to run, not

(05:33):
when the cars begin to run. So they shoot off
a gun. All the drivers run across the track and
they jump in the cars and they step on the starter.
They back up and they drive away. Now, the reason
they do this is because all these automobiles are supposedly
stock cars in one way or another. They have to
have starters, they have to have lights, they have to
have a reverse gear. You know, there's no reverse gear

(05:54):
on the Indianapolis cars. They're pushed backwards. So the reason
that they have these cars back up is to prove
that they all have reverse gears. They can do this
maneuver and they can be started by the driver. Well,
one of the funniest things that I have ever known,
one of the one of the saddest, and I think
one of the most significant of course I have. I

(06:14):
have a sneaking suspicion that almost anything that man embarks
on there is a touch of sadness connected with it. Anyway,
is there's the inbuilt sliver of well, frustration, the the
the dream never quite comes up to the reality. Well,
a friend of mine was entering a car, one of

(06:35):
the wildest stories I've ever seen, in connection with one
of the great Grand Prix races. And this guy had
a little racing car called a Bandini, was an Italian car,
and it was a very expensive piece of equipment. And
he had been he'd been racing it fairly successfully throughout
many of the Midwestern tracks and some of the Southern tracks,

(06:55):
and it was all sports car racing. You know, which
is which has replaced Polo incident. Sports car racing has
become what Polo used to be maybe fifty years ago.
And all the young blades, the guys who have plenty
of dough, who have absolutely no ambition, but who have glands,
find themselves find themselves racing in sports car races. Now

(07:18):
there's a whole collection of these guys who go from
track to track and it's become a sport which most
of the people who began sports car racing, that is,
it was begun right after the war. Again, of course,
sports car racing is an old, old thing. By the way,
this is not going to be a program about sports
car racing. I'll tell you one thing though, that happened

(07:40):
is one of the wildest, funniest pictures I've ever seen
of human failure. The fantastic frustration that this friend of
mine got a hold of a Bandini race car and
it's a very expensive piece of equipment, highly tuned. It
stands there and even when the motor is turned off
of this car quivers slightly. It quivers and you could

(08:01):
you could just feel that the high bred tension in it.
You know, it's it's a car that is always standing
with its knees flexed, ready ready to leap. Oh, it's
a fantastic piece of equipment. You sit in this car
and immediately you feel as though you're you're four four
feet taller, and you're you're just you know, you're just
there's a there's a sense of power that flows through
your body, which of course is purely an illusion. But nevertheless,

(08:25):
by the way, this is one of the reasons why
so many guys get killed every year driving their their
ordinary homegrown automobiles along turnpikes. Is this false sense of
power and this false sense of security which the motor
gives a man. Very few guys, very few little guys
do I know, who really frankly admit that they buy

(08:46):
big cars because big cars make them feel like big men,
which is which is really the case. I have this
little little friend who looks like Jigs or something, who
every two years goes out and buys and he makes
hardly any money. He's one of these guys who just
barely scrapes along, but every two years he goes out
and buys himself a fantastic automobile, always used and always

(09:08):
at least thirty feet long, tremendous car. And he is
the only guy I ever know, I've ever known who
looks me right in the eyes, says, I find that
little car, that old four hundred horse power car, because
it makes me feel big big. That's it, big big.
And he gets into traffic and he bumps people, and

(09:29):
he tears up, he tears as red as the red.
What is his name again, Oh, it doesn't make any difference,
But the point being that the car is a is
a kind of an extension of the personality, and racing,
of course is takes it one or two steps further.
And this friend of mine was a wealthy type who

(09:51):
was used to getting everything he wanted, always did. He
had nothing to do but race cars every second or
third weekend. And so he got a hold of a Bend,
which is a sleek machine, beautiful machine, and he trained
the car. He had a mechanic that went with it.
He had a trailer that went with the mechanic and
the car. He had three girls who wore red coveralls,

(10:13):
who went with the entire entourage. It was the whole bit,
you know. He made sports illustrated, He made sports car illustrated.
He made rodent track all of them. And he was
always pictured sitting there with his white helmet, well you know,
buckling the thing underneath his chin, ready to take off
in another big one. Well I saw him one time
take off in the biggest race of his career, and
it was a beautiful, fantastic They was right out of

(10:36):
Laurel and Hardy. They had trained the car, they had
tuned it now for about four months for this big,
this big international Grand Prix. Now to drive in an international,
you say, is is the equivalent of driving in a
in a sort of a continuous stream of Kentucky Derby's.
It's a very difficult thing to get into the big

(10:56):
international Grand Prix. And he finally made his first international,
and I was there to see him, and the Bandini
was parked down there the Angle parking. They had the
business of the standing start and everyone is all the
drivers are wearing their clean coveralls and wearing their white helmets,
and Sports Illustrated was there and had taken the pictures
and everybody was ready to go. And there's a there

(11:19):
is also, incidentally, an international crowd that sort of sort
of gathers around all these Grand Prix. They travel from
Grand Prix to Grand Prix. It's a very social, very
special in group. It has nothing to do really with
the racing. It has well, there's it. I guess must
be pretty much the same as the same crowd that

(11:40):
followed the Polo, the Polo bombs and the end. A
few years afterwards, the tennis bombs. But the tennis thing
has kind of slipped into limbo. It slipped out somewhere
around the mid nineteen thirties. And of course it's still
a big international event, but it is not followed with

(12:00):
the same degree of social social coloring that it used
to be followed with. And now we have the big
international racing and all sorts of people racing these things,
and among them the very very rich, also the very titled.
Both of them race in these events. Well, here was
a Grand Prix that was being raced, and my friend

(12:22):
was down there and he was representing America in the
whole shebang, only American driver in it. They fired the
cannon and he ran across the track, and of course
I'm cheering him on. Everybody else is cheering him. All
the international the bevy of international beauties, are all of
them looking like Brigid Bardo. Incidentally, he goes tearing across

(12:42):
the track. He jumps in his car, grabs a hold
of the starter lever, and which incidentally was a pool
type which came out of the dash, the kind you
pull out. He grabs a hold of it, pulls it
right out by the roots. Ah. He pulls it out.
All the other cars are backing out and nears his car,
so he rushes in the Incidentally, one of the rules
of the Grand Prix is that no one, no mechanic

(13:03):
is allowed to touch a car from the time it starts.
That the cars have to be completely serviced by the driver.
You see, if the car stops somewhere after twenty eight
thousand laps and a light burns out, you got to
get out and fix it yourself. And so Chuck jumps
out of the car. In the meantime, all the Ferraris
and all the Aston Martins and all the a Barths

(13:24):
are pulling out around him. There's a tremendous roar, and
the smoke is and he's pulled the thing out by
the roots. So he jumps out of the car, falls down,
hits his head on the concrete with his white helmet,
gets up and he gets around the front. He pushes
the car out on the track. He finally gets it
turned around and he puts it in gear and begins
to push it. Suddenly the car started and he was
out of it. He's running alongside of it. This is

(13:47):
exactly what happened. He's running alongside of it, and the
car is going like a demon. He's running and he
jumps out and he's hanging on the back of it
with one hand on the steering, with his feet hanging
over the fantail. The car makes one complete lapline, and
finally they're trying to wave him off the track. The
yellow flags are up and the green flags are down,
and the purple flags are flashing, and he's running along

(14:08):
with one foot hanging. He looked like he was driving
a scooter and the ferraris are going past him. Finally,
he just sort of falls off sideways and the car
goes into the innfield and he just sits there on
his death twenty six thousand dollars worth of equipment. What
a beautiful sight. It was one of the I mean,

(14:32):
it just made me feel kind of warm all over.
I don't mind all the fancy trailers with the chrome wheels.
I guess it's because it's Saturday. You know. I'm sitting
here and I'm listening to Dwight Weese talk about that,
and I realized that very few people among the great

(14:56):
massive people really know what all of this grumb Prix
stuff is about. Incidentally, speaking of the Grand Prix. I
noticed a very beautiful report by a writer for the
New York Times, the only paper in town, and I
don't have a contract with the New York Times, but
the only paper in town that covers these things constantly

(15:18):
and adequately is the New York Times. And I noticed
a couple of days ago, right after the Grand Prix
of Belgium, there was a beautiful write up and I
don't remember who the name of the writer was, which
is this is a terrible mission that he wrote up
the Grand Prix of Belgium. And he talked about the
new cars opposing the old cars, and the dangers that

(15:41):
have grown out of the Grand Prix of today as
opposed to the earlier, older Grand Prix. Well, very interesting
thing about it, as even as a kid, I was
very very fascinated by automobile racing. And in fact, almost
every kid who grows up in Indiana, in one way
or another, becomes involved in, not not really involved in,

(16:03):
but interested in the whole business of racing. Speaking of
the race, going to the going to the quick or
maybe the dead. This is w R A M and FM,
New York speaking of races.

Speaker 3 (16:16):
Do you don ever hear sticks on a base fiddle.
Well lend an ear.

Speaker 2 (16:24):
Be.

Speaker 4 (16:24):
Crisper must be icily light, icy lighte with true lave
of flavor, precisely right, recisally right, dively.

Speaker 5 (16:38):
Golden, crystally clear.

Speaker 2 (16:40):
But criscream pressure, Chris pressure, Valentine Valentine.

Speaker 3 (16:47):
Gear, the crisp kind of light with true locker flavor.
That's Valentine beer. No wonder, it's the largest selling beer
in the East.

Speaker 2 (17:03):
Got your get your time. Well, I'm not going to

(17:27):
talk anymore about Grand Prix racing except to say that
probably the most interesting of all the Grand Prix racing occurred. Hey,
why is it that hardly anybody do any of you?
Am I the only one who remembers this? I mean,
this is just a it's just a passing question that
probably has nothing to do with reality. But am I

(17:49):
the only one who remembers pylon racing? I'm talking about
aircraft racing. When I was a kid, I was I
must have been about six or seven or eight years old.
My father was a nut for going wherever there was
a crowd assembled. He was the greatest crowd man in
the history of the Middle West. And incidentally, the Middle

(18:09):
West is a boorn just it's just a is an
area where crowds just naturally grow. For any and any
any small reason, a crowd will will gather. Is there
hardly anything to do. If you've if you've ever done
any shallow water fishing in a shallow water lake, you
recognize that one of the things that fish are constantly

(18:32):
doing is just to look for something to pass the
time of day, hiding. There is hiding anything more bored
than a fish living in a fresh water shallow lake.
And all you have to do is to take maybe
a piece of bread and drop it down into shallow
water that's clear. You know, you can see down through
there to the bottom, and even if you don't get

(18:52):
any bites, you will find thousands of fish will come
just to look. They just come to look. If you
ever watch fish do this, it's interest to realize that
many times when a fisherman is sitting in a boat
and he's getting no bites and they're not hitting, that
he is being observed, or at least his worm is
being observed, or by a million fish, and they all

(19:12):
just sort of sit around there and look, and they
just observed. They got nothing to do. Well, this is
the way the Midwest is it's like a big, shallow,
lukewarm clear water lake, and everybody starts standing around, first
on one foot and then the other. Television was made
for him, believe me. I mean they stand first on
one foot and then on the other foot. And then

(19:34):
every three or four weeks somebody announces that there will
be a strawberry social next Sunday at the church, and
of course then this gives you three more weeks of
interest to live by. You work hard at that, and
then after the strawberry social, everyone stands around again. You
say it's a continuing action. Well, my old man was
always in the forefront of any crowd that formed. And

(19:54):
I can tell you about some fantastic crowds that occurred
in the Midwest over absolutely nothing. Nothing. It was just nothing.
It would be as if somebody had dropped a bread
crumb in this fish bowl and they all gathered. It
was just nothing, and one of the things that used
to gather the people. Of course, it was always the
weekend that the crowds really did gather on. And I

(20:16):
can remember as a child, one succession of crowds after
the other, one succession of boiled over radiators after the
next millions of radiators boiling over great long lines of people,
guys walking up and down through the lines selling good
humor bars. And the whole thing had just covered over
with a thin coating of yellowish, brownish grayish dust. And

(20:39):
what was that? Yes, of course, you're right, it wasn't
good humor. It was Eskimo pies. He's right, we have
a we have a historian leaping, that's right, Eskimo pies.
And this long line extending into the distance, and the
the the idea, of course, was there's a kind of

(21:01):
breaking of the boredom. You know, life is in a
way long, a long process of finding something to do,
of finding something to do, all of this business of
cutting out paper dolls, and all this tremendous, this file
cabinet system we have here, and all of this this
great business. If you ever stopped to think of all
the business of mankind, all of the trivia, all of it,

(21:24):
including all the great making of automobiles, all the fantastic
operations that go on, what is it all about anyway?
I mean, really, you know, you eat, you sleep, and
you die. This is about the extent of it, you know.
And when all of it is sloughed away, but all
the rest of it, as George Aide put at one time,
George Aide said that that fun is the few moments,

(21:47):
the little moments that you can forget that you're growing
old and are about to die. And there's much truth
to this, you see, So the whole business is going on.
Of course, in the Midwest, you will reminded much more
constantly of mortality than you are in the great city,
the urban, the big urban complex. There. There's hardly even

(22:07):
ground around here to remind you that you are living
on the earth, that you are really part of something
that has to do with nature. But on the on
that big Midwestern plain, no, it's not at all like this.
And so the people are constantly looking for something to do,
and there is hardly anything really to do here. On
the Eastern seaboard. We have we have we have the

(22:29):
ocean or one thing. And don't don't ever discount the ocean. Uh,
the ocean, even if you don't go to it is
always out there. It has influenced the entire life of
the whole Eastern the whole Eastern state complex. Of course,
there's no ocean in the Midwest. There there are only
those lakes out there, and those lakes are far and
few between, and here it is. It's just a large

(22:53):
flat piece of ground and the sun comes down and
there's hardly anything that happens. And once in a while,
why that? Why by the drive in theater? Do you
know that? I have seen people in the Midwest sitting
in a drive in theater when there is no show
being shown. They just drive out there and sit and
look through their windshield and they take the speaker and
they hang it on the side of their car and

(23:14):
they just sit and they bring their lunch. I have
seen people drive for forty miles with their lunch just
to watch the steel mill work, just to watch it
over there in the distance. You just see little lights going.
Once in a while, you see flames in the sky.
They sit there and eat their lunch and for four
hours and find it. They get back in the car
and they drive back out to the drive back out

(23:36):
to the house. And this is the constant search. Well,
my old man was always in the forefront of the
great crowds that happen. And I can remember as a
kid one time going to a thing in a big airports. Incidentally,
that was another thing. You know, people used to drive
to just sit and watch airplanes. No more, no less,

(23:57):
just watch airplanes. And we would go to the airport
and sit there and the planes would come in and
the planes would go off, And every time they would
go in and go off, there would be comments by
all the spectators who were standing around watching. They would
they would comment as to whether boy look at that
cowboy and the guy would go up very steeply. Everyone
would comment on whether he whether all this this whole

(24:18):
business of just watching things was so very important. My
grandmother spent thirty years of her life sitting on the
front porch watching cars. That's all she did was watch
cars go by. And she did not know one car
from the other. That's the sad fact of it. She
never once ever learned anything about cars. I used to
sit there and say, hey, Grandma, there goes an Essex. See.

(24:39):
She'd just look, that's oh, that's I don't know those
people and they would go past. She had no interest
at all in the cars, but she watched more cars,
probably than any than any turnpipe guard of today watches.
He just sat and looked at him. But I remember
one time being taken into a into the car and

(24:59):
we drive. We drove all the way on out to
the outskirts of Chicago, out to the municipal Airport. I
remember the word. They were always talking about going out
to the municipal airport. And out of the municipal airport
they were having the air races. Well, of course this
drew fantastic crous It is unimaginable how many people gathered
in the Midwestern States for a thing like the air races.

(25:21):
They came from every city of well, it was just tremendous.
And the roads, of course were not like they are now,
so you had billions of cars all lined up. It
would start at six o'clock in the morning, just to
driving until finally everyone would arrive. And it's about maybe
two in the afternoon when the air races would begin.

(25:42):
There's a tremendous sea of people and right in the
middle of it, and get this, right in the middle
of the sea of people was a field. And on
this field there were three pylon. There were three pylons.
There were just a pylon maybe seventy five feet tall,
painted red and white, and it's sort of a triangular, tall, thin,

(26:04):
pyramidal shaped thing sitting right out there on the field
there with three of them in a triangular pattern, one two, three,
And right down there at the base of one of
the pylons were four or five, maybe as many as
six or seven tiny airplanes, we itsy bitsy airplanes. And
over near the edge of the fielder was a hangar

(26:25):
with a whole crowd of other little airplanes. And these
were airplanes like you've never seen in your life. I
don't think anybody has ever seen anything like it. Since
these were airplanes that were so wild, so fierce, that
they could hardly fly if the motors were turned off.
They felt a powl like a rock right down to
the ground. It would be as if you took an
airplane motor, just a motor, and you attached two tiny

(26:48):
wings to it, you sat on the top of it,
and you turned it on, and the motor got so
wild and ran along the field and it just jumped
right up in the air and went ah, flew around
in circles. Well, that's the kind of airplane these guys flew.
They had wingspans of about maybe twelve to fifteen feet.
Can you imagine that, little tiny wings? Yeah, you could

(27:09):
put one of these in your living room. And they
had great, big fat motors on them, and these guys
would sit in the back of them, and they were wild.
Of course, no parachutes, because what good does it do.
You're flying at fifty feet and flying at two hundred
and fifty miles an hour, maybe two hundred miles an hour,
at fifty feet off the ground, And this is what
they would do. They would not race against time. They

(27:30):
would race against one another, as I recall it. And
the airplanes were red and green and purple and all colors,
with big wide stripes, white stripes and green stripes down
the side. Some of them were high wings, some of
them were low wing, some of them were egg shaped,
others were shaped like needles. And almost all of these
airplanes were built by the guys who flew them, which

(27:51):
made it even more intriguing. You didn't go down to
the Piper Cub company and buy one of these planes.
These were racing aircraft. And when a race would begin,
this was the way it would start. And my old
man is right down there in the crowd. Well, I'll
tell you this, mad This made the Roman made the
Roman orgies look like kid stuff. It made it made
that business of the lions look like a Bobbsey Twin

(28:13):
picnic actually, and the crowd would be just packed cheek
by john, all of them knocking down the good Humor
bars and the Eskimo pies, all of them standing there
eating rainbow ice cream cones, drinking drinking beer and sweating
it out. The sun is beating down. They're all covered
with a coating of dust, and no one is sitting.
You couldn't possibly sit. And this is the way the

(28:35):
thing would happen. The temperature stands at one hundred and
thirty seven degrees, which is what it always was during
one of these great gathering of Midwestern people, like a great, great,
great school of sunfish, all gathered down to look at
the worm. Millions of them would come from Ohio, from Indiana,
from Kentucky, from Michigan, from all of the Midwestern states, Iowa.

(28:57):
They had all gathered to stand in this great big
field and watch. And at two o'clock the big cannon
would get off, boom like that, and these guys would
rush out from the from the hangars, maybe eight or
nine guys would rush out around the airplanes, guys wearing
white coveralls, red coveralls, and green coveralls with helmets and
goggles and did they There was never anything look more

(29:19):
romantic than these guys. Let me tell you, they were
fascinating characters. They would get in the planes and their
mechanics and they barnstormed. They would travel around the country
and teams of two and three guys, and each team
would own an airplane and two of them would fly,
and usually one was the mechanic and often he would
double as a flyer if one of the other two

(29:40):
guys were sleeping off a hangover or something. They were
really they were really barnstormers. And so the guys, by
the way, you know where the term barnstorming comes from.
Barnstorming comes from the fact that the guys would travel
around the country and they would rent a barn to
put their plane in, and they would do they would
do the aerial stunts, they would do their parachute jumping

(30:02):
and all that on a Sunday in a barnyard, in
a barnyard lot, and they would use the barn as
a hangar. And so it came to be known as
barn storming. And they really were just traveling gypsy airplane pilots.
But of course the racing crew was a completely different
crew because they had to have very special equipment, very
expensive equipment, and it was very tough, tight competition. They

(30:26):
don't allow this kind of racing any longer. Incidentally, now,
this could all very well be a figment of my imagination,
and probably is, but I will describe to you what
my imagination saw. It seems hardly possible that this could happen. Well,
at two o'clock, the cannon would go off, and all
these guys would run out, and they would get in
their airplanes, maybe five or six of them, maybe as

(30:47):
many as eight or nine would race together in one clump,
and they would all start their motors. And if you've
ever seen a crowd of little airplanes start their motors
on a field that's nothing but dust in the first place,
you've never really seen this. This is a very good
insight into hell. And the motors are roaring, and this
great crowd of dust is floating back on the people,

(31:08):
and millions and millions of Eskimo pie wrappers and Eskimo
pie sticks and hats and stuff are flying through the
air with the great wash of the props. And then
one by one they'd take off and the way. They
would take off like no airplane you've ever seen, because
again this was on grass. It was not on concrete runways.
It was on grass and on dust. These planes would

(31:30):
run along the ground for oh very short distance actually,
with their motors wide open, and they would jump off
the ground about five or six times. Because they had
such a short wingspan, they could not take the long run,
that gradual take off that were used to seeing. They
would go they would hop along the ground a run.
On the fourth or fifth hop, the guy would just

(31:51):
gun it all the way and he would stay up
out of sheer willpower. He'd go down. He'd tear along
the ground and he would just It was fentas I'll
tell you. It was frightening to see. And they would
be about fifty or sixty feet off the ground and
they had the most angry, rotten snarl. They would just
go wow. They would go like that. They're just terrible
sounding airplanes, And one by one they would jump off

(32:13):
the ground until there was a whole field of these
little planes flying around like so many flies, like so
many blue backflies, and they're all buzzing in this angry roar,
and all of them maybe fifty to seventy five feet.
They could get no altitude at all on these planes.
They could get nothing but speed. And the only thing
they did have actually was that they were not touching

(32:34):
the ground. And these guys would sit in these airplanes
and they're roaring around the field at about maybe two
hundred two hundred and twenty miles an hour and had
a fantastic formation. They would fly maybe six or seven
feet from each other. Oh are they're going? Until finally
they all approached the pylon that the starting pilon, which

(32:55):
was a different color than the rest. It was green,
the others were red and white. And they would all
approach the pilon. And by the way, they had to
fly lower than the pylon. If they flew above the pylon,
they were out. They were considered to have not made
a turn properly. And they all had to fly lower
than the pilon. And the pylon was a big wooden
structure about seventy five feet tall. And so the planes

(33:17):
are all flying lettl low to the ground. And in
one mob. They did not fly against time. They flew
against one another. And they would all approach this pylon
full out, all of them. They're ready to start, so
they're raw, and the boom it would go. Oh. They
would all go around the pylon, and some guys would
go high, some guys would go low, other guys would

(33:38):
fly wide. Other guys would cling to the turn, and
all of them would approach the turn, and they would
all converge on the next pylon, just like going through
a funnel, Just like you know what going through a funnel.
They were. They would go around and everybody is screaming madly,
and then they'd make about three or four of these turns,
and of course, inevitably it would happen. You'd see this

(33:59):
great cloud of dust over on the fire turn. Oh, boom,
some guy hits the dirt. Boom boom, boom boom. His
plane would roll over about thirty five times. It would
be a great shout and a great, a great spurt
of flame, and the planes would seem to go even
faster than when they would see they'd see one of
their fallen comrades. They would be encouraged by this. They

(34:20):
would step on the gas even more. Oh, and then
a plane would go maybe after fifteen or twenty terms,
one of them would go into the crowd. Four hundred
people killed, and one great swath just right through the crowd.
No one would say anything, just a great cheer would
go up, and more racing would go on. Chas this
was all part of the universal death wish that was

(34:41):
so much, so much floating down over the great landscape
in the Midwest. Does anybody remember this kind of racing?
This would go on all afternoon, and between between races,
little wagons would go out and pick up the pieces.
The little airplanes would be brought back, little piece of
of green wing. And by the way, these airplanes were

(35:03):
nothing but frame. They had no they had no uh well,
they had no protection at all because they were all
built for lightness. They were built out of canvas, they
were built out of aluminum, little aluminum pipes, and this
great big motor hanging up in the front. You know
who one of the most famous of all the races
in that crowd was. I remember seeing him race. I

(35:25):
saw him race, of course he was. He was a
famous name. It would be like going to see somebody
like oh Rathman or one of the great drivers, the
Indianapolis drivers of Now he was a very famous man
and one of the most famous races of all of them.
Of that time was a guy named Doolittle. Jimmy Doolittle
raced in this fanatic a wild screaming racing. Another one

(35:47):
was a guy named Oh, he was very famous Roscoe Turner.
Does anyone know the name of Roscoe Turner? I will
award the brass figuligy with bronze oak leaf palm if
you can't tell me see what Roscoe Turner's insignia was.
What was it that Roscoe Turner often flew with? That
that was kind of his his trademark. I will award

(36:10):
the brass pig the gey with bronze oak leaf palm
any to any Saturday member of the vast throng who
can the great crowd that's about to converge, Who can
tell me what Roscoe turned Now? Why do I remember this?
I must have been seven. I'll tell you why I
do remember it. Though. We were on the field one
day when Roscoe Turner arrived, and Roscoe Turner always piloted

(36:33):
a plane that was painted pure gold. His planes were
always gold colored gilt planes. And Roscoe Turner came out
on the field wearing a pair of high water breeches,
the riding pants, you know, the high high whipcord trousers,
and he had a gold he had a gold satin
jacket and a gold helmet on, and he wore these

(36:55):
great big goggles. Yeah. Oh, it was a spectacular and
he had with him as he walked across the field
his famous trademark. And I remember as a kid, I
almost passed out from pure excitement. Was so fantastic to
see anyway, this kind of racing. And interesting to note

(37:15):
that this has hardly been even recorded, that I have
not read any books on it. I have never seen
anything said about it. It just as though it passed
without even so much as a without even so much
as speaking of aircraft we have with us today, Luf
hansa fire cry from this sort of thing. Incidentally, I

(37:36):
would like to point out, though, something very important, and
that is that these men driving their racing aircraft, and
all of them, since they were free wheelers and barnstormers,
all of these guys contributed tremendously to aviation as we
know it today because these men built their own aircraft.
As a matter of fact, there was one aircraft which
was called the really Well it was the most death

(37:59):
dealing aircraft. I think that's ever been ever been piloted
in America. This thing, this thing dealt out death from
the bottom of the pack constantly. And it was I
will award you, Russ, I will award you the brass
figligee if you can identify that aircraft, and I'll give
you a few que a few little clues. This was
one of the great racing aircraft of that period. It

(38:21):
became in later versions of it. The US Air Force
copied it, and in later versions it became a fighter plane,
a pursuit plane. And this plane was a famous racing plane.
It killed about a dozen pilots. It was. It was
the hottest little aircraft that ever flew in the pylon
racing world. And I will give you a clue. It

(38:44):
was milk bottle shaped. This little airplane was shaped sort
of like a milk bottle, if you can imagine a
little pint bottle, a little steiny bottle, a little short,
fat airplane with little short wings and a great big tail.
And it was. It was a real killer. And this
this lane was one of the most famous planes of
that period of that of that racing world. Now I

(39:05):
don't want, I don't want these elderly gentlemen to write
and say, now, now, mister Shepherd, obviously he must remain,
he must be No. I was a little kid, but
I remember this as vividly as if it were branded
on my brain, because my father was always taking me
to these things, and naturally it was. It was such
a wildly exciting thing that I could you couldn't possibly
forget it. But this kind of racing just disappeared. And

(39:29):
this is a program not about racing, so don't get excited.
It's about it's about man's dreams. Because this whole business,
this whole kind of racing, this whole thing, had to
do with an attempt on the part of whatever it is. Yes,
that is right, that is right. Somebody recognized that Roscoe

(39:49):
Turner carried during many of his races, he carried either
one or two, sometimes two, he carried one or two
lion cubs with him on a leash. And now I
will award you the real brass veg lagie if you
can tell me what company sponsored Roscoe Turner. And he
had the companies insignia painted on the side of his

(40:12):
plane in great, big green paint, great green swatches of paint.
Who was it who sponsored Roscoe Turner. I mean, why
do I remember this trivia? Will I'll have to Why
do I remember this ridiculous stuff? What is wrong with me?
Can anyone tell me why? I remember Roscoe Turner and

(40:33):
his Lion cubs and what was painted on the side
of his airplane. I remember it and I could hardly read,
but there it was. I remembered. I can still see
he flew. At one time he flew a Lockheed Vega.
Do any remember the Lockheed Vega beautiful airplane? And the
Lockheed Vega was also flown by Lindberg and his wife
Anne Marrow when they flew around the world. They had

(40:55):
a Lockheed Vega. A quick note, they were flying a
Lockheed Oreon. It was a whole series of Lockheed Vega,
Lockheed Orion, Lockheed Serious aircraft where they were naming them
after after stars. And the Lockheed Vega was the plane
that at one time was flown by Roscoe Turner, and
I remember they. I believe it was a Lockheed Serious

(41:16):
that Lindbergh and his wife flew around the world, and
he wrote a very fine book about that flight, which
is of no imprise, I suppose. But this was a
floatplane and as a child, I was given a model
of this airplane by an uncle of mine, my bootlegger uncle,
who was the only one in the family who had money,

(41:37):
which incidentally kind of made me wonder about this thing
that they were always telling me down at school about
how if you went straight and how if honesty is
the best policy. The only uncle that I had at
that period was an uncle who wore gray spats and
dealt an illicit liquor that came from came from Canada
somewhere at the Kentucky Hills. But this uncle, for one

(41:58):
one Christmas gift, gave me a big cast iron model
of the Lockheed Serius that had been flown by Lindberg
and his wife. And it was painted red and black.
But this is all Why do I remember this trivia?
Speaking of trivia we have with us we had, and
speaking of aircraft we have with a luft Hanset today.
And I would like to recommend that if you are

(42:21):
planning to make a European trip, if you really want
to fly on a magnificent aircraft, I would suggest that
you try one of the big one of the big
looft Hanse DC seven O sevens, a magnificent aircraft. Incidentally,
they have a very special seven oh seven that is
flown by luft Hanse. It's a seven oh seven that
was of course made by the Boeing Aircraft Corporation, but

(42:43):
the interior, the interior of the plane was made in France.
It was built in France. It uses Rolls Royce engines.
The particular seven oh sevens that are flown by the
luft Tons pilots are seven oh seven Rolls Royce engines,
big beautiful you should you know, have you ever seen

(43:04):
those Rolls Royce jet engines with the big Rolls Royce
label hanging out there. It's very impressive. And the interior
of the plane was designed in Germany. It's a very
very international aircraft, but a beautiful, beautiful example of international
flying equipment. But this is Luftonse And if you're planning

(43:26):
a trip to Europe in the next seven or eight months,
I would suggest you try luft Hanse. I might point
out that it's difficult these days to get a ticket
on one of the Luftons international flights, but if you
are planning a flight, it would be worth trying to
get on Luftons that they have become so sought after
as an airline that in less than five years. Luftons

(43:49):
began business in nineteen fifty six, that is their post
war business. You know that Luftanse is the oldest, is
the oldest commercial airlines in the world, was flying right
after World War One as a commercial airline, and it's
I saw a history of the Luftansa airline even as
a kid. You know, the Luftansa airline was a very

(44:11):
romantic thing. They used to fly the big yunkers, the
big yunker trimotors with the with the corrugated flat sides,
you remember those those Ford and later Ford built them
in the United States under a license by yunkers Folker.
The Folker designed very beautiful aircraft. You know that some
of those Folker planes that were that were built by

(44:34):
Ford in Detroit are still being flown in South America.
Some of those planes are are thirty five years old
and are still working regularly. The romance of the aircraft,
I've never I've never outlived it. You know, when I
was a kid, No kid wanted to be a television
star or a movie actor. The thing that all kids
wanted to be boys wanted to be air airplane pilots

(44:58):
and girls wanted to be nurses. Those were the two
most glamorous professions that existed. But we would like to
point out again louft Tansa is on deck, and if
you are planning a trip, we would suggest to do
it via luftanse an international flight. But you know that
the whole romance of this thing has has kind of disappeared.

(45:20):
Speaking of disappearances, here I go.

Speaker 1 (45:23):
This is from July second, nineteen sixty the July fourth
weekend Old Wallace Bery Movies Druids at Stonehenge. We are
being inundated by a wave of creeping meatballism. Shep asks
all listeners who are using a portable radio to wave
a white handkerchief or towel in the air. Shep refers
to Dell Charbat as a human pipe organ. He awards
a brass phigmagy and recalls his mother's rump sprung shaneil bathrobe.

(45:46):
Shep plays when the bloom is on the stage on
his nose flute riding buses in New York, A good show.

Speaker 2 (46:32):
I'll be loving you always with love It's true always,
Lord heard it? Ye lie not heard ye? Lie? Heard who?

Speaker 6 (46:53):
Lord?

Speaker 2 (46:55):
Who? Lord? And so sings the solitary soul of man, Lord,
Lord lot of Lah, keeping himself company as he trods
his solitary way along the yellow brick roads to oblivion.

Speaker 7 (47:17):
WI maad, Lord, hurready, Lord already, dude.

Speaker 2 (47:30):
Do you realize that there are many people whose entire
year pivots around this weekend? This is a fact. No.
If you could imagine the world as a kind of
punching bag, a punching bag that hits back, and I
might point out a punching bag that inevitably wins, it's

(47:53):
juiced with poor, poor, simple and very weak and ineffectual mankind.
If you imagine the world as a juicing bag, a
kind of a globular pear shaped juicing bag, there are
too many people, many evidences to prove that the world
is attached to this particular day. This is the day

(48:17):
that it hangs to the ceiling by. This is the
day upon which it pivots. Not the day, really, but
this whole weekend. For example, there was well, the boss
here before he left Friday, looked into my poor old
rubble filled office and said, this is I understand the

(48:38):
mystical weekend for you. Well, what I mean is that
this is the epitome of summer that after July fourth,
it's all downhill. I mean, isn't it sad when you
think about it? That I'm walking along Fifth Avenue and
I go into a store and I said, well, I

(48:58):
want to I want a bathing suit. The guy says, well,
we don't have anymore bathing suits. And I said, well,
it isn't even July yet. He says, we are laying
in our spring clothing. And it's getting to the point
now where a man can live his entire life in
about twelve and a half minutes. I mean, by the
great department store planning method. And I said, look, look

(49:23):
there's a summer shower out there. Man, there are garlands
of roses in everyone's hair. It says not for long.
They're living in a fool's paradise. And I couldn't do
anything but take my charge of plate and go back
out onto Fifth Avenue with that hot steaming that that

(49:44):
primeval rain that came beating down. I walked four or
five more stores, and I went into another one and
the guy says, no, no, we are already laying in
next summer's clothing, and we're not ready to unveil them yet,
and so already the plans are being made. I have
no doubt. I really I think. I suspect very strongly

(50:08):
that this is man's bid for immortality. Hello, Hello, Hello,
here we go. I suspect that this is one of
man's ways of ensuring that he will make it that
he will be around. I really believe it. I believe.
I believe that the more we plan into the future,
the more secure we feel about being in the future.

(50:30):
That I'm quite positive that there must be some place somewhere,
somebody who's working out a set of blueprints at a
drawing board in some fantasy office, a drawing board that
is laying out some plans for the year two thousand,
and they're seriously working on it, and nobody in the office, No,

(50:52):
nobody really seriously thinks he won't be there, nor seriously
thinks he will be there. But it's a kind of bid,
you know. All up and down the street, everyone is
bidding for fall. Already, all up and down the street,
they are living well into well into midwinter, up and
down the great clothing marts, every place should go that
they're already living this time. I'll be loving you always

(51:18):
with love. It's true always. And a kid wrote me
a letter. He says, Shepherd, I was listening to your
program and I was caught under your spell. And then
five minutes after your show was over, I walked out
into the sunshine, and I realized that the world isn't
the way you say it is. That's right, son, you
are absolutely right. The world isn't the way anybody says

(51:40):
it is for everybody, And therein lies the rub. The
world is not the way it is to each one
of us. I have no idea what the world is
to you, and I'm sure you have no real idea
what the world is to me. That these billions of
eyes that are constantly looking over this long, spreading green globe,

(52:03):
there's no correlating, there's no integrating, there is no U.
What is the other? Teachers College, there were three words
that were very important in teachers college. Correlation, integration, and
to correlate, to integrate, to evaluate. That's it the three

(52:24):
catch for of the sociologists. Correlate, integrate, and evaluate. And
how are you doing at evaluation? These days? I'll be
loving you. Oh it's it's July weekend, and you know
I'm coming I'm coming along Seventh Avenue not more than
fifteen twenty minutes ago, and I can feel that electric

(52:46):
tension in the air, that wonderful dream white quality that
is in the air that says a kind of go.
You know, it hangs as a deep fog over everyone,
and some walk right through it and never know that
it's there. Others just breathe it in and breathe it out,

(53:07):
just in and out, in and out. But it's always there,
in a speaking, always there. Last night I was near
a TV set and I was watching an old movie
on the late late, late late movie, I mean the
real late movies, and it was a movie of World

(53:27):
War two starring Wallace Bery. Did you see that well?
Did you also see the changing attitudes? The attitude? I
wonder Here's what I wondered when I watched that picture.
This picture was shot right in the middle of World
War Two, and it was shot about the Japanese War.

(53:49):
It was about a It was about a sergeant who
was a marine sergeant in the Philippines and he was
he was talking. Of course, the whole thing was about
the coming war. It was supposedly taking place just before
Pearl Harbor and the old marine was retiring from the
Marine service, And what fascinated me was the things that

(54:13):
were being said, the attitudes towards all such things as
peace and passivism and brotherly love and all this this,
all the all the dream things that we as man
constantly trot out every five minutes, whenever it happens to
be whenever it happens to be well, let's say convenient.

(54:35):
You know, it's to me, it seems like we we
live a great deal of our lives in a in
a kind of a dream state where what we think
we are is not at all what we are. That
as a matter of fact, it's it's often been said
that you know, when you hear the return to normalcy,

(54:57):
when you hear about normal living, well, you ought to
really seriously ask a question once of yourself. Do you
think normal living is peaceful living or wartime living? Now
that's a serious question. Do you think it is more? Hello? Hello? Hello,
what's the matter there? And now I'm cut off? Down? Hello? Hello, hello, hello,

(55:19):
hello hello, Well okay, I'm cut off now? Hello. Hello,
there we go? Hello Hello Hello there I got to
have them. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. You know, I work
my way. You work yours. But it's a it's a
very interesting thing to me to see that in some
cases people were much more at I'm afraid, at their

(55:47):
normal level of living during war than they are during peace.
There is a great unrest that exists during peace. And
let me tell you there are some fantastic signs. And
I'm going to say it right here, even though it's
Saturday morning, that if you look at the paper very carefully,
the little items, not the big items, the little items,
there is a profound unrest that is running through the

(56:11):
world that is not I don't know. I don't know
whether it's good or bad, or whether it's whether who knows.
You See, you cannot cast forward into history. For example,
it was unheard of for maybe eighteen thousand years for
a group of high school seniors to boo their principle

(56:32):
when they were graduating from from high school. Now, now
this is this is an interesting s This is an
interesting thing.

Speaker 7 (56:40):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (56:41):
It seems to me that there is rampant in the air,
a kind of uncontrolled rebellion. Now I don't mean, I
don't mean, uh see, I'm I'm not I'm certainly not
for antie. Let's say, for for conformism. I'm on fifteen

(57:01):
thousand levels. I'm against conformism of any kind. But on
the other hand, we cannot confuse nonconformism with anarchism. That's
another thing entirely, and it's fascinating to me to see
that on all sides, every way you look, all sides,
there is a little there is developing a kind of

(57:22):
fuse that seems to be already lighted. That all it takes,
I think, and I suspect this, all it will take
one day among the youth of today. I'm talking about
the very youthful youth of today. All it will take
will be some guy to leap up who has quote
a plan and the next thing, you know, we are

(57:45):
nelly by the door, and particularly if more things, more
pressures are exerted on America from outside our borders, all
it will take will be some guy. Because this is
the same sort of anarchism that was breaking out all
over Germany in the very early nineteen twenties among the
very young people. A kind of wat's march and no

(58:08):
one knows where to march, A kind of what's get angry?
You know, it's it's it's very important to be angry today.
If you're not angry, you're just nowhere, you know. And
and it's it's a kind of anger that burns like
a flame that has no direction at all, just burns,
a kind of a kind of profound unrest with life,

(58:31):
just a kind of a kind of disgruntlement. I mean,
how long has it been, sind you really been gruntled? Man?
I mean, you can honestly say, shit, I feel awful.
This is wonder I'm really gruntled today. It's it's been
a long time. And I'm sitting there watching that old
Wallace Beery movie, and I realize, you see that there

(58:54):
was a peculiar kind of exaltation and dedication and involvement
that people hardly ever have during peacetime, sadly enough, sadly
and realistically enough. And the interesting changes the attitudes towards
other races that came off from this picture. Now, this
is what I wondered. I wondered, how many people who

(59:15):
never lived through the war, who don't really remember World
War Two, what they thought of that, or did they
just sit and look and not even observed that there
was a change. And even the people who had lived
through the war, as they sat and watched that. What
do they do? Just sit and look at it like
a kind of a wartime western with galloping with the

(59:38):
hero Speaking of heroes, this is w o R Radio,
your station for news, Grand Union praise. That's a spectacular
display of July fourth holiday foods featuring hold brileys and fires,
fresh dress and ready to cook.

Speaker 8 (59:52):
The Grand Union price a low low twenty nine cents
a pound, Only twenty nine cents a pound.

Speaker 2 (59:57):
And you save stamps too.

Speaker 8 (59:59):
Save cash on all your July fought food needs at
New York, New Jersey, Grand, Junior and Sunrise Supermarkets.

Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
You are June the seven ten on your radio dial
w R seven ten and w o R FF in
New York. Here once again is Jeene Shepherd. Are you
aware of the fact that there is a near Vana
Street in Great Neck, Long Island. I would suggest you
look up the word near Vanna. It's a good word.

(01:00:27):
But on the subject of good words, and since this
is Saturday, you know there is no question but what
it is quite true? Do you have another thing for
us in there? Let's let's clear up the decks here.
That's my baby, No, sir, don't mean maybe I think
someday they're going to find us. They're going to find

(01:00:50):
all of us buried there, with our shards around us,
with our kitchen middens right there next to us, our
portable transistorized kitchen midteness is do you have a drip
dry life? Is it washable? Is it? Is it? I'm sorry,

(01:01:13):
I mean I didn't want to get too close to you,
to your problems out there. Just hang it up, but
especially of being hung up every way to look it's
I saw a beautiful vignette. You know, as far as
vignettes are concerned, I think you can tell a lot
about the well, let's say, the the actual animal. All

(01:01:37):
I try to do is to is to see what
it's about, you know, is to try to feel it,
to try to to try to live it as much
as possible. We're only here, all of us, for just
a short time, and as we as we struggle our
way through this miasmic fog that we ourselves have created.
I some people grab at as many things as they

(01:02:00):
can and taste them and walk their way struggling towards
the same abyss and other guys put little blinders around
their eyes, grab a hold of the first thing that
they discover when they first begin to discover, and hold
on to it for dear life, all of their life,
figuring this is the only way it can be, and
there is no There is no only way. There are

(01:02:22):
billions and billions of ways, just as there are billions
of billions of people in some ways that have never
even been touched yet. Speaking of touching the thing that
I saw, Now this has to be brought out as
a kind of an example of the normal state of man.
You can take Who was it who once said that
any thirty second period in the life of every man

(01:02:45):
could be taken as the history of all mankind? Well,
let me show you this picture. I am standing in
the rain on sixth Avenue. If there's anything I really dig,
it's sixth Avenue in the rain. I mean it smells
like old shoe letter, old cigar butts, old litter bugs,
old records, and old buildings and everything, just everything, all

(01:03:09):
old and rainy. Let me tell you another thing. There
is no street that smells more like Rome in the
rain than sixth Avenue. I stood inside the great vast
arched dome of the entrance way to the railroad station
in Rome. About what is it? Five months ago. Now
I stood there, it was February or March, and I

(01:03:31):
stood in the entrance way and there was a driving rain,
just crashing down, a tremendous driving rain, and looking out
over the trees. The trees are almost always green in Rome.
I've never been in Rome when they weren't. And the
old rain is coming down, and I'm standing there with
about five thousand battalions, and we're all jostling one against
the other, waiting for the rain to cool off. And

(01:03:51):
the crowd waiting for a rain to stop in Rome
as exactly as a crowd waiting for a rain to
stop in the doorways along sixth Avenue and smells exactly alike.
There is no difference at all, none whatsoever, if you
know a sixth Avenue. And so I'm standing there in
the entrance way to the railroad station. The old rain
is coming down, and once in a while a girl

(01:04:13):
comes in there is maybe out of every head. Has
it occurred to you that it seems that when you're
walking down the street that the average ratio of women
to men is about one woman to every three men
every three men. Why is this? It just seems to
be it? Has it occurred to you this, of course
it's quite obviously not true. But you see more men

(01:04:34):
around and you see women, and wherever there's a crowd,
there seems to be more men. So there were a
lot of men standing in the entrance way there, and
there were maybe twenty five or thirty women, and almost
all of them were really women, women, you know, they
were there were beautiful chicks. Well, you know how it is.
Were the crowd of men is, first of all, they're

(01:04:56):
standing there looking up at the sky. Well, then they
got tired of looking at gray clouds. Then they watched
the rain for a while bang down on the streets.
Then they got tired of that, and then they began
to look at the women, and the whole crowd begins
to sort of miller on. The women are graduating their way,
and one by one they dart out into the rain.
They're gonna chance it out there instead of being here,

(01:05:18):
and so it just went on and on. When the
rain is coming down and i'm and i'm there is
is a kind of there's a kind of oh in
a sense of kind of togetherness that develops because of rain,
and at the same time a kind of a parkness
and So I'm standing on sixth Avenue up from the
forty some place in the rain. The rain was coming down.

(01:05:38):
It was Thursday, just coming down, a nice kind of soft, easy,
warm drizzle, you know, the kind where people you feel
like you should have brought an umbrella, and yet you didn't.
And it doesn't make any difference in your sports herty
It's just it's pleasant, you know. And a guy is
wandering across the street, absolutely oblivious of the traffic, a
man type. He just kind of wandering in the middle

(01:06:00):
of the block. You're sort of wandering across the street
on sixth Avenue, and all the traffic, as you know
Sixth Avenue traffic moves in puffs because of the lights
and so on, it moves in clumps. Well. As he's wandering,
he's just about to where I am. He's coming across
the street. He's about maybe twenty feet from the curb,

(01:06:20):
and he's still just wandering along there, and the rain
is coming down, and a puff of traffic caught up
with him, and a cab has to stop because he's
walking across the street. A cab just sort of slows
up and stops, and suddenly the cab driver stuck his
head on the wind says all right, got a stretcher,
bob for crying out loutre catch all right, walk and

(01:06:41):
the guy looks up. He's a right talking like walking
across the street. And the next thing I know, these
two guys are hollering it out there, and the cab
has stopped and the man has stopped too, and both
of them are hollering one at the eye where I am, Yeah,
a lot of town help. And it goes on and

(01:07:03):
on like that for about maybe three minutes. I'm just
watching this thing develop and suddenly the guy, the guy
who was walking across the street, looks at his watch
in the middle of howering he's high by our crumby
cab driver and the cab drivers hi idiot jump And
he takes a look at his watch, and he suddenly

(01:07:25):
stops right in the middle of his most by two
portive phrase which I cannot describe to any of you,
since there are obviously women and children listening at this hour.
Right in the middle of it all, he looks at
his watch and he suddenly stops, and he hollers at
the cab driver, hey, you going to east, and the
cab driver says yeah, and with that the guy jumps
in the back of the cab and they both go off,

(01:07:49):
which I thought was a magnificent moment. It is a
pure there is a capsule of thumbnail history of all
of mankind that as long as one guy is interfering
with another guy the film, this fight is bound to ensue,
and it will ensue just as long as that, just
as long as neither one of them needs something from
the other guy, and the instant that he needs something

(01:08:11):
from the other guy, then it's all peaches and cream.
All peaches and cream, they write, And I was wondering.
The only thing that bugged me for an hour after
that these guys were really shouting at each other was
what were they saying to each other in the cab
as they went east off of sixth Avenue. Well, I
can warrant you it was great stuff, I'll bet, because

(01:08:33):
you see, there's nothing that brings guys closer together than
a good fist fight. As an example of that, nobody
loved the Japanese more than we did immediately after the war,
and on and on and on it goes. You see,
nothing brings people closer together. And I might say that
the same things that made that fist fight occur are
always within people. Don't think for a minute that they

(01:08:54):
go away. You know, we had this beautiful feeling among ourselves.
This is one of the great illusions of mankind, and
it is that he is a perfectible creature, like say,
a portable typewriter can be perfected, that next year's model
is better than last year's model. That somehow, all we've
got to do is get a book that says how

(01:09:16):
to clear up the problem, how to fix how to
fix your conscience, to make how to make your mind
work correctly, and we'll be all right. That we are perfectable,
just like an animal we are, or not like an
animal at all, like a like a machine, and we
are not at all. As history has proven that every
five minutes another war breaks out, and this has gone

(01:09:38):
on for as long as there has been recordable history,
and it always goes on wherever two people get in
the way, one with the other, and it's a very
pleasurable thing for them. When some guys, some guys talk
about a fight they had for fifteen years, and that's
the only moment that they ever talk about, is the
fight they had. Other guys who were in the war
talk about the war for the rest of their lives.

(01:10:00):
It is the only thing that happened that was important
to them. And it goes on and on and on
and on this way. And these two guys are in
that cab, and I'm saying obviously when they first got
in it was like the truce has been declared. I mean,
peace suddenly has come over the world. And the two
of them are now sitting in the same cab only
because the cab driver wanted this guy's money and this

(01:10:22):
guy wanted the cab driver's cab, and so the two
of them are going along. It's just like immediately after
the war, the Japanese loved us because they needed us.
We were riding in the same cab and it was
okay as long as as long as there were no
other cabs around, you know. And this I just wonder

(01:10:44):
about what's going on, for example, down in Cuba. Now
this is another example of it. And it goes, it
goes back and forth, back and forth. I can remember
endless Oh who knows, you know, it'll always twist and turn.
Are you aware of the fact that if there is
a Nirvana Street in Great Neck Long Island. Speaking of Nirvana,

(01:11:06):
we have with us loof Conse and if you're planning
to fly the Coop, we would like to recommend that
you fly it via Luftnse. Luftonsa Airlinines goes direct to
Central or Middle Europa, and unfortunately, I don't think you'll
be able to get a ticket on one of the planes.
I was talking to one of the boys over at

(01:11:27):
Luftons and he says, they're pretty well booked up all
the way through the summer. This is blue. I'm out
of the sun. I'll never forget the cartoon, A beautiful
Speaking of cartoons, there is something that is beginning to
sneak around in our land, and that is that the
very young are showing almost a frightening political awareness. Now

(01:11:53):
I'm not talking about a political knowledge. That's not the
same thing. I am speaking of political awareness. Confused the two.
They are very much aware of politics. And did you
see Whitney Darrow Junior's cartoon in uh in the New
Yorker the past week. It shows a breakfast scene, obviously

(01:12:13):
in Westport or someplace, a typical scene out there, and
the two of them, the father and the mother, are
sitting opposite each other at breakfast, and there's two little kids.
There's a little daughter and there's a son. The son
looks like he's about ten, say, and the father is
looking at the son with a look of vague irritation
and amusement on his face. He's got the New York

(01:12:33):
Times propped up before him, and the kid is sitting
there with that with with a with a kind of
with a kind of aggressive smirk on his face. And
the father says to him, just what makes you think
that Nixon hasn't got a chance. And let me tell you,
I'll put I'll put four dollars right down here on

(01:12:55):
this desk that the kid knows more about it than
the old man. And I I can tell you this
by the letters that I get that more sixteen and
seventeen year olders know more about the whole philosophy, the fumbling,
the good parts of the bad part. Incidentally, I'll tell
you one of the things that bothers me about the
so called the so so called sitcomic school of humor

(01:13:19):
is that it goes back to an old Western concept
of good and bad, all good and all bad that
mort Saul could never admit. There might be something good
about Ike, or he would be dead. He could never
admit that there was something bad about the hero side.
You see, whereas as a matter of the actual fact,

(01:13:39):
there is no such thing as a There isn't even
a remote good or bad. There is not even there
is not even the approach to a good or bad
in the solidity form that the billion shades of gray
in between are the only things that actually work. And
that's the problem about it, you said. The thing that
bothers me very much. But deep down in the soul

(01:14:02):
of many a sixteen year older beats the heart of
a kid with political awareness. And I can tell you this.
What frightens me, not frightens me, but amuses me and
at the same time amazes me, is that I know
that when I was sixteen, I had very little political awareness,
very little at all. The only thing I knew was
that was that my old man was going to vote Democrat,

(01:14:25):
and I didn't know what a Democrat was one way
or the other. I just accept that it was good,
but my old man was going to vote it. On
the other hand, my mother was a Republican, and the
two yearsed to have fantastic arguments just like when I
was a kid. My mother started out by being a
Cub fan and my father was a White Sox fan.
One was from the south side, one was from the
north side. The north side was Republican and Cubs. The

(01:14:47):
south side was the White Sox and the Democrats, and
they were all apart, you say, the whole thing. And
that's all I knew about it. I didn't know of
any of the rest of it, but I can see it.
It was slowly beginning to develop. And I don't know
what the next five or six years are going to bring,
And I can tell you this, whatever they bring, there
are going to be vast surprises in store for a

(01:15:09):
lot of people. Tremendous surprises. You don't go back in history.
You know. The great illusion that many people feel is
the non illusion. That's the kind of a dream thing,
is that everybody who is behaving a certain way that
seems to be not explainable to them are in the
end going to come around and live the way they

(01:15:30):
live because that's the right way. That There are many
adult people who are making the great mistake that says
quote that the beats one day are all going to
cut this jazz out. It's just that they're immature. They're
all going to come back and live in Westport, which
is what they want. Anyway, I say no, I say no. Indeed,

(01:15:52):
I also say that once a person has tasted of
this sickly sweet elixir of life, you cannot go back
to living in a straight line and living by the
time payment plan. You just can't do it. You cannot,
you cannot. You really can't go back and bind your
life with privet hedges cut in the shapes of Santa Claus.

(01:16:16):
You just can't do it. And so these two guys
are riding along going east, fist fighting it out, you know,
speaking of fist fights. Well, I have a feeling that
it would be it would be. Did you need that
little article speaking of fist fights and what the true
nature of man is? Did you read the little article

(01:16:38):
that came out? I think it was in of all things, Well,
it was a I believe it was a UPI release,
and I picked it up in a New Jersey newspaper
and it was one of the saddest and at the
same time one of the most touching kind kind of articles.
It's it's in a sense it again it's a capsule.

(01:17:02):
It's a capsule of all the history of man, that
we have a feeling that anything that went before us
was both at the same time admirable and sadly lacking.
You know, people will laugh at pictures of people walking
down the street in a nineteen five setting. This seems
funny to them. These people haven't been civilized, they haven't

(01:17:26):
made it yet. You see that. The hell I'm not funny,
I talk about it all lah. They'll laugh. At the
same time, there's a kind of nostalgia for it, but
it's always a little condescension towards the past. That a
man who lived in the year let's say, four twenty two,
obviously it wasn't as hip as a guy who lives
in the year nineteen sixty. He hadn't broken through. Yet.

(01:17:47):
We always have the illusion that we have broken through.
You see that we are living in the modern time.
Man has arrived. Well, of course, in nineteen ninety five,
they will be looking back to nineteen sixty as the
archae It just has to be that way. Listed this
little item, this kind of puts it all. It's sad,

(01:18:07):
it's it's funny, it's all the rest of it. It's
all of us. It comes from England, from of all places, Stonehenge.
You know where is it Stonehenge? And you know what
is it? Stonehenge is about. Do you know of the Druids?
I would suggest you look up the word druid and Stonehenge.
It was the first day of summer and the Druids

(01:18:30):
kept looking at their wristwatches, hoping the sun would come
up like thunder. At four forty two am. It didn't.
It was just a pale, gray blur through the early
morning mists that covered the antics of the two thousand spectators,
who frolicked and necked in the grass and hollered at

(01:18:51):
the Druids. The eleven Druids marched solemnly through their ancient
ceremony before the age old stones own Henge, and blew
their historic five foot horn. They chanted their chance, but
no sun. The more athletic of the spectators made their
way to the top of the house high circle of

(01:19:13):
stones that form a spectacular ruin whose origin is lost
in ancient history. You should not be up there, said
the chief Druid, doctor Robert mac gregor Reid. His bearded
male and lipstickless females of the revived Order of ancient
Druids nodded in solemn agreement. The crowd laughed, and some

(01:19:36):
turned up their portable radios louder so that they could
hear the Floyd Patterson Ingamar Johansson fight better. Many in
the crowd were equipped with portable radios just for the occasion.
This is wretched. Mac gregor Reid said, I have never
seen stone Henge so badly treated. Isn't that sad? The

(01:20:00):
last of the Druids come to celebrate their ancient, serious,
solemn religious rites. Remember that's religious, and millions of whether
you believe it or not, it is, and millions of
people sitting up, thousands of them necking in the grass,
eating good humor bars, listening to portable radios and hooting
at them as they go through their poorest sad rites.

(01:20:23):
I can see it now, two thousand years from now,
when the last of our churches has crumbled into ruins,
and there's much evidence to prove that they are. And
I mean in the real sense. I'm not talking about
in the sense of there is more action today that
doesn't mean anything. Oh, No, two thousand years from now,

(01:20:45):
when the last of the last of the great Christian
religionists go into their go into their poor churches, and
thousands of people stand around with their portable television sets
watching the latest take off flight from Mars and cheer
and hoot and holler and eat their electronic good humor

(01:21:06):
bars as they watch. It's much, you know, it's it's
Grab a hold of bit like an old softball and
you can throw it fast underhanded. Swish yes, time and
tide o e plur machunum in hawk a curricular conk
in the sque special luck time, Oh passes in thy

(01:21:27):
wounding wounding tearing way. Pause, but a moment and weep
o'er mean so quoth so speaks the tiny man. Sit
up straight out there, will you? I could see somebody
sitting in the beach there in the Jones Jones beach.

(01:21:47):
You know, he's lying there on his on his cop
and the sun is looking weakly down. Oh. Incidentally, this
is another form of druidism. I might point out. This great,
this great drive towards outdoor living, the Alfresco life that
we're driving toward, just another form of it. Hey, listen,
speaking of this, there is no question but what we

(01:22:08):
are a tiny, tiny, tiny embattled minority here There's no
question about it that ninety seven point of all portable
radios tuned in today, all automobile radios tuned in are
either listening to the beginnings of a ballgame, or they're
listening to the sound of rock and roll, or they're

(01:22:30):
listening to somebody playing a bac quartet. Hardly anyone is
listening to the mind of man in all of its inanity,
all of its silliness, all of its idiotcy, all of
its trapedness, all of us wonder all of its glory,
all of its poorest, sad pitchedness, into the dark sea
of oblivion. Hardly anyone. I'll tell you what, let's do.

(01:22:51):
Let's do something right now. I've been saving up for this.
We are this is now July thirty. Tomorrow is the
big day, you see. He is the third of the fourth.
This is the second, all right, this is the fourth
of July weekend. Nevertheless, it's all one big package. It's
it's a single ball of wax and and all of

(01:23:13):
the city has moved out. There are just a few
of us trapped here in town, not trapped at all,
but because we want to be I want to be
here during this during this fiasco, and those of you
out there, way out there, in the darkness, you feel
just no matter how how big the beach is, no
matter how how clean and wind swept the beach houses are,

(01:23:36):
no matter how wind swept and eroded the chicks are
in their new last text bathing suits. The point is
that we still have this sensation of fighting against the inevitable.
There's no question about we are being inundated by a
wave of creeping meatballism that, believe me, the size of
which the world will never comprehend. It's creeping in on

(01:23:58):
all sides. Have you read the latest that editorial is
about Castro? Have you seen it? It's breaking out on
all sides everywhere you go. Who wants to drop by
and shoot around the gulf in the middle of it all?
But it's slowly beginning to edge up. Now. I would
like to do this. I want everybody, let's let's somehow,

(01:24:20):
let's we've got to make We've got to make contact,
if but for a moment. I don't mean real contact,
because real contact in a way always proves to be disappointing.
I would like to suggest that wherever you are, wherever
you are now, if you're on a beach, no matter
where you are. If you're on a beach and you're
listening to a portable radio, no matter where you are,

(01:24:43):
if you're riding in a car, no matter where you are,
take a white handkerchief or a white towel and wave
it in the air. Just just get up and wave
it in the air, you know, and signal down the
beach to the guy. You'll see another guy four miles down.
Wave and you'll know that he's with you. Wave it
the air, one, wave it out of your car. Just
just get up and do it now now, and all

(01:25:05):
the people in between, all the meat balls, will wonder
just whereof and where if it goes? Be the first
new neighborhood. I belive you, Oh al Radio, your solution
for you. Here's one minute of quiet jazz with the
compliments of Shafer beer. Hang home for the holidays.

Speaker 8 (01:25:22):
How do you do, Radies and gentlemen, I'm James McCarthy
ready with up to the minute reports from all over
the world.

Speaker 2 (01:25:27):
Now the news, Well America.

Speaker 8 (01:25:31):
After almost a full week without taking a vacation, President
Eisenhower took advantage of a break in the weather today
and played golf While the Congress decided on the alternative
work flowing into heavy schedule, the Senate as well as
the House, dug it in.

Speaker 2 (01:25:45):
Its heels into what promised to be the last.

Speaker 8 (01:25:47):
Long and continuous session before recessing for the political conventions.

Speaker 2 (01:25:51):
The key measure facing consideration.

Speaker 8 (01:25:53):
In both houses before they take a five or six
week convention break is the bill to give Ike authority
to crack down on pidel Castro by cutting show her
imports from Cuba.

Speaker 2 (01:26:02):
There's a side note to this story.

Speaker 8 (01:26:04):
Before the Senate session began, Democratic Leader Lyndon Johnson warned
his fellow legislators to be prepared for one of the
busiest and longest days of the congressional year.

Speaker 2 (01:26:13):
I'll late at least until the wee hours of the morning.
More news in a moment, Reach for.

Speaker 9 (01:26:20):
Apartment, Swing to the right when the music stops, Give
her a light.

Speaker 10 (01:26:25):
Hell has found the.

Speaker 7 (01:26:28):
Locks, the.

Speaker 8 (01:26:29):
Locks, the flavor, I will locks, the favors found the
secret locks.

Speaker 10 (01:26:36):
The favor enough filter.

Speaker 2 (01:26:38):
Take your rest.

Speaker 9 (01:26:48):
In today's telling them fine tobaccos can be blended.

Speaker 2 (01:26:52):
Blended, blended, blend not to suit a filter, but to
suit your taste.

Speaker 9 (01:27:00):
So through the miracle tip pure white inside, pure white outside,
you get taste, more taste, more taste by far.

Speaker 2 (01:27:08):
Tells the secrets the favor to reach for flavor, reach
for l and m.

Speaker 8 (01:27:23):
The British Lion seems to be taking the glamor away
from Uncle Sam's eagle today, as the British Foreign Office
decides it's time for somebody to take a stand against
the girded bad boy of the Caribbean. Definite retaliation against
the Cuban government for the confiscation of the Anglo Dutch
shell oil refinery in Nevada was the order of the day,
but they'd better make their move quick. According to our

(01:27:44):
latest reports, as heard now from Robert Perez in Havana,
there are increasing rumors.

Speaker 6 (01:27:49):
In Havana that the Cuban government may sign a military
defense stating.

Speaker 2 (01:27:54):
With the Soviet Unions.

Speaker 6 (01:27:55):
This ruver is not believes too unlikely by Vecino servers,
who point out that such a packed Masid revolutionary leaders
that needed moral support in their campaigns to face the Americans.

Speaker 3 (01:28:06):
Fifties in the hemisphere.

Speaker 6 (01:28:08):
Further, it is reminded that these same leaders has been
roomined the people foreign invasion by the United States ever.

Speaker 2 (01:28:14):
Since coming to power. Eighteen months ago.

Speaker 6 (01:28:17):
But the pack fifty signed by any of several persons
in footing Raoul Castro presently staring behind the Aaron Kirchens,
or a fifty signed by Fidelcastra himself when he visits
Moscow in an air future Christs, Romatas and Hanana, And
now that's the James McCarthy in Washington.

Speaker 8 (01:28:38):
In other news, the vastair see search is underway for
that American reconnaissance plane missing on a photographic flight near
Soviet territory. Air Force officials in Germany have issued a
rather roundabout statement that it's highly unlikely that the plane under.

Speaker 2 (01:28:50):
The Soviet Union.

Speaker 8 (01:28:52):
Then they quickly added, of course, anything can happen. The
plane's last reported position was at a point between Norway
Pittsburg and Island and Russia's up Aninsula, which juts into
the Arctic Ocean. All shipping in the area has been
alerted to be on the lookout for six men possibly
floating in a dinghy. That's the news, James McCarthy reporting,

(01:29:13):
Look high, Look low only PEPSI. Here's one minute of
quiet jazz with the compliments of Schafer Beer. I wish
you had one of those voices. It's hello, Hello, There
we go jim to hello Hello. Just set it back
there for a second, just just where he's talking there.

(01:29:35):
I hold it there, jesuit the guy, yeah, just the man,
hold it, hold hold, hold hold on.

Speaker 2 (01:29:58):
Who stop it? Hold it ho just to put your
hand on there you go. Now listen, where do they breathe?
These guys who have these voices that sound like their
caro syrup being poured out of a bucket in mid January,
rich and deep, I can't can't you just see some

(01:30:18):
guy knocks at the door, you know, and he's he's
you open the door and you say, why Charlie, it's
certainly good to see you. Shaeffer keeps coming on. Get
all the pleasure of the first beer, every beer throw you.
Wouldn't you have a little don't you? Don't you feel
a little a little afraid of these human pipe organs?

(01:30:41):
I think speaking of human pipe organs, how long has
it been since you've heard Dell Charbett? What? What? What
announcer do you know? Think of it? This is no wonder.
A whole generation of people grew up feeling vaguely inferior
to the guys whose voices came out of the loud
speakers all over the nation. Westbrook, Van Voories, Dell Sharpott.

(01:31:04):
Who is the guy who used to go good? Do
you remember who did that? You often remember good? He
used to just make a deep rich It was a
vox humanna, a vibrant human tone that somehow was tapped

(01:31:25):
right down to the very to the very root core
of the earth itself. Do you remember that? I'll see
what kind of an American you are? You know, there
are millions of a little American things. Don't worry about
the cris That's nothing to worry about. There are millions
of little American things which only an American knows. When

(01:31:46):
I was in Holland, I found that the Dutch had
about five hundred little things that they would use to
detect underground German agents. I'm in from Germany who were
not Dutch, but who were pretending to be Dutch, who
were living the life of Dutch, And they had all

(01:32:07):
kinds of little things. They little references they would make,
and suddenly a guy would a guy would would tick
himself off. You could spot immediately what he was, and
he would quietly disappear one night and be found in
a ditch just because of that one slip. Now, I'll
give you an American proof, there are millions. If I

(01:32:28):
were to try to detect an American, I wouldn't ask
him things about history, because Americans don't know history. I
would not say to him who was the general on
the British side at Bunker Hill, because ninety percent of
them wouldn't know. If I were to say to you
who wrote the leather Stocking tales, most people wouldn't know.

(01:32:49):
But if I was to come up to you and say,
I'm going to see whether you're a real American, a
real American? What commercial was this from? Good? Huh? Which?
What commercial was that from? I'd say, come on, now,
come on, let me let me hear let me hear that.
And and to the first to the first solitary plotter

(01:33:11):
along the yellow brick American Road towards the Emerald City
of Nirvana, who can identify what commercial that was from?
We will give thee a garland of roses and the
brass pigligy with bronze oak leaf palm for rising above
the vast sea of mediocrity that surrounds all of us.

Speaker 11 (01:33:28):
Good?

Speaker 2 (01:33:31):
Who who? What commercial was that from? Who puts you
on your American matter what? Oh no, no, no, that's right.
The one that you're hearing today is a is a
pale limitation of it. I mean this was done. Yeah,
that's right. Not a single soul out there. What kind
of Americans? Are you? Good? And it was given I'm

(01:33:58):
not sure whether it was given by Ernest Chappell, who
was a tremendous announcer and still is, of course, or
Dell Sharbit. And these commercials were delivered in such a
way that tiny loudspeaker cones rattled for fifteen minutes after
the delivery. All over the United States. I can see

(01:34:18):
many a little old, a little old kitchen radio, just
that speaker cone rattling. When the guy would go, did
anyone did the listener identify it? There you go, there's
an American out there? Put her there, buddy. We'll have
our own convention of real of red blooded one hundred

(01:34:41):
percent Americans as opposed to those watery blooded Americans, you know,
the kind not red blooded at all. I'm not sure
what color their blood is, but I have ideas. Good.
I have a paper here, chairman, point of water point.

(01:35:01):
Now I'll put you on your metal. Speaking of metal,
it's interesting that one person called in. I guess I'm
the only one lost. And peace another thing. Did anybody
call in? Please get in touch with us if you
waved a if you waved a towel or a handkerchief,
and you saw anybody else waving it, I would like

(01:35:22):
to hear an account of it, and please get it
in soon so we can put it on the air.
Did anybody wave a towel? And I want the straight
story here? Did anyone here wave a towel in solitary
solitary isolation out there on the beach, and see way down,
way down the beach somewhere somebody else waving a towel.
I would love to see this crowd get together and

(01:35:43):
form a human pyramid just outside the beach house without
saying a word to one another. Seven thousand people tall,
Life Magazine would descend on a time, magazine would give
a cover space, and not one of us would say
a word. Five six eight thousand people tall, The greatest
human edifice, the greatest monument to humanity ever created. Towel

(01:36:05):
waivers silently gathering on the beach in front of beach
House number three, one upon each other's shoulders until finally stretching, reaching,
veritably touching the eternal clouds and skies of all dreams.
Good druids pray to the sun while the crowd necks.

(01:36:26):
Speaking of that, speaking of necking, I don't know whether
or not this term was ever used in the eastern
area of Good I must admit I'm a foreigner here.
I mean, I'm really a foreigner. I'm from out of
this area. Let's face it, I'm not a real American.
I'm from the Middle West. And there was an expression,

(01:36:47):
I'll never forget it. I'm coming into the kitchen one
day and my mother is standing there next to the
sink in her orange rum sprung chanel bathrobe with the
dried egg on the lapel. And she's standing there and
she's working the old brillo path and the sink is
making that funny noise, and she's looking out over the

(01:37:08):
eternal backyards, the alleys, and the garages of all eternity.
And she's standing there. And I came in home from
school and that's just getting out into twilight, you know,
that kind of soft purple yellowish greenish, kind of grayish
hazy twilight. And I have just come in. I've worked
up a fairly decent sweat, and I throw my fielders

(01:37:31):
mitt down under the kitchen table, and I slide in
and start pitching into my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
And I'm sitting there and my mother's looking out. She
just stands there looking out, and I'm just sitting there eating,
And it's one of those quiet moments when nobody has

(01:37:52):
to say anything to anybody, you know, one of those
living moments, one of those just being moments, those existing moments.
And I'm chewing away at the peanut butter and the jelly. Incidentally,
would you like to see a cookbook that had nothing
but that kind of recipe and a peanut butter and
jelly sandwiches, hot dogs, things, the little trivial food that

(01:38:17):
most of us really grew up on, the people really
live on. Hey, did anybody see anybody else waving a towel?
Not a single It's quite obvious that there were no
towel waivers out there. Come on, get up on your
feet and wave that towel. Man, let them know that
you're here. The point being, of course, is that we
wish somehow, we want to we want to make the

(01:38:38):
rest of the crowd feel that they are somehow that
there is something that they do not understand. You know.
The trouble with the trouble with the baseball, rock and
roll TV crowd is that they honestly feel that they
have their world, they have their world completely mapped out,
which they don't of course. And if if one man
quietly stands up on his on his beach towel, takes

(01:39:01):
his his drawing towumn waves up in the air down
the beach and way down the beach, somebody else gets
up and waves his, and then all up and down
the beach, one or two guys get up one after
the oven wave towels, there would be a profound unrest started.
Or if somebody stuck his hand out the side of
the car wave to wave the handkerchief, and three cars wave.
You mean there's somebody out there has saw a towel

(01:39:23):
wave crying out loud. Let's get him out of the corner.
Oh yeah, hello, yes shepherd here. Yes woo Stafford, Connecticut.
You pulled off on the pave with your your calling

(01:39:43):
from the turnpike. Yes, the Merritt Parkway fifty five cents worth, Yes, sir,
what happened? Yeah, a Connecticut state trooper stopped you because
you were waving your handkerchief out the window. What this

(01:40:12):
is a distress signal in Connecticut? Didn't you tell him
it was a distress signal to you too? That is significant.
Let me tell you. You just sat there with egg
on your face. You told him you had a wet handkerchief.

(01:40:36):
Just keep your mouth shut. Remember, he represents just almost
by definition, the other side. You understand that, don't you. Oh,
I'm sorry wolf, Hey, you know I'll tell you about
that same thing in relationship to the other side if
you got a couple of seconds, I won't run your
bill up any more than I have to. A sad

(01:40:59):
thing happened the other night. There were three Italian street
singers who were not cadging alms, but who were singing
beautifully and softly just off of Washington Square, down in
the village, lending a little bit of color to our
otherwise profoundly colorless city. And people were really enjoying it.
They were just singing and very very well. I heard them.

(01:41:22):
They were beautiful. When suddenly a cop came up, pinched
all three of them, and marched them off mull that over.
You were let off with a warning no handkerchief waving
on Saturday. Good luck man, right of Oh what a story.
Did you hear that a guy way out on Merritt

(01:41:43):
Parkway waved his handkerchief in the air and got stopped
by a cop. We are living in parlous times, let
me tell you. Yeah, isn't that sad? Nobody can move anymore?
Speaking of idiotic moments, did you read that little item
in the paper about this councilman who shall go unnamed,

(01:42:03):
I will not name it. This is for you, Ted.
Listen to this. Did you read that item in the
paper about the councilman who has a car that's twenty
one feet long. It's a gigantic. It's a gigantic thinned monster,
say twenty a twenty one foot long car. So he
drives around and he tries three different garages, and three

(01:42:24):
different garages turn him, turn them away. They say, no,
we don't have enough room for that that monster, that
zeppelin you're driving three different Yeah, this is twenty one
feet long and eighty eighty inches wide. It's a fantastic giant.
So he's driving around and finally, after the third garage
turns them away, which I thank heavens they did. He goes,

(01:42:46):
he goes back to city Hall and passes the law
immediately making it illegal to turn away a car no
matter what size it is. Do you realize some clown
can now build a car the size of the Queen Mary,
and they're going to have to As a matter of fact,
he should have gone back to the city hall and
passed the law against cars that size. These are the
things that are causing the trouble. You take three twenty

(01:43:10):
foot cars and you got sixty feet of floor space
already covered up. Do you realize how many twenty foot
long automobiles it takes to make a fantastic traffic jam
that runs from Yonkers all the way to Staten Island
about five Councilman, you pass the wrong law. How would
you like to get teed off and go back to
the office and pass a law. I mean, what a

(01:43:32):
feeling of power, What a feeling of fantastic speaking of fantastic,
insane power. This is w o R Radio, your station
for news and listen to the critics rave about Alfred
Hitchcock's cycle. Hitchcock has done it again. The Daily News
a real chiller thriller. General American a first rate thriller.

(01:43:53):
The Q Magazine, Keep your attention like us, Snake charm
of the Herald Tribune, stand your hair on end the
New York Post. Remember no one is admitted after the
beginning of Psycho. It's at the Demil and Baronet Theaters.
See your newspaper for showtime. You're tuning to w r
AMM FM in New York. Here once again is Gene Shepherd.

(01:44:14):
Son No sun No Code two hundred x gives you
premium ingredient's regulator price two hundred x.

Speaker 10 (01:44:22):
Get your premium it's a regular price. Two hundred x.
Give your premiums regular price.

Speaker 2 (01:44:28):
Son No son No news so Noko Blend two hundred x.

Speaker 8 (01:44:33):
A new gasoline gives you the ingredients of a high
price premium, yet you pay only regular price.

Speaker 2 (01:44:39):
Many cars get extra power up to thirteen percent more
power after just two tankfolds. Two hundred x.

Speaker 10 (01:44:45):
Give your premium it's a regulator price.

Speaker 2 (01:44:48):
Deu So Noco two hundred x gives extra mileage.

Speaker 8 (01:44:50):
Up to nineteen more miles per tankfold two hundred x
in your premium.

Speaker 10 (01:44:55):
Tradular Time Newsco.

Speaker 8 (01:44:57):
Two hundred x gives you extra engine protection, mean longer
life for your car.

Speaker 2 (01:45:01):
Yes, needs to know.

Speaker 8 (01:45:02):
Go Blend two hundred x gives you extra power, extra
mile age, extra engine protection two.

Speaker 2 (01:45:13):
True hundred x exceptional. Hey, I'll tell you another thing.
I'm good. I've just got to test you as an
American today. I just feel this terrible sense of that
there are a few genuine Americans left. I've got to
test you as an American. I will award the brass
piggy with aluminum palm leaf, because, after all, this is

(01:45:35):
this is much easier, this is not much of an
American to test at all. Listen to this? Can you
identify this tune? Can you identify that tune? I listen,
I don't don't look away, all right? Can you identify

(01:46:24):
that tune? Don't come around here and put your crummial,
rotten hand in mine and tell me you're an American.
And if you can give me the first, give me
the first, just the first sentence out of the out
of the first, or the chorus, the opening lines. There,
you'll have it. I mean, you know, it's only in America.

(01:46:47):
Can can a can a cemetery advertise itself this way? Uh?
Pine Lawn Memorial Park is designed for the living. Visits
the Pine Lawn are pleasant. Which way do we go?
How do we go from in? Where? Tell me? Tell me?

(01:47:07):
Just lead me? Help help. Speaking of help, if you're
going to make the if you're going to make the
village scene, listen, I have a real thing for you.
The other night, I was down at the paper Book
Gallery and I dropped in just to nose Eranda whenever
I do. I don't know whether you're like me, but

(01:47:31):
one of the terrible curses I had whenever I get
into a place like the paper Book Gallery is that
I rarely can get out without spending all the available
change on me, and a lot of change that is
not available that I had earmark for other things later
in the week, like say, rent, it's a funny thing.
I'm standing out in front of the paper Book Gallery

(01:47:54):
last week. Oh maybe it was exactly one week ago
Saturday night. This is one wee could go tonight, And
it was about eleven o'clock at night, which is the
time I always go down to the gallery, and incidentally
at the time I will go down there again tonight,
because it's just a thing I like to do. It's
a kind of a cool, relaxing thing. And I'm standing

(01:48:16):
out in front. Everybody is down in the pit there
in front of the paper Book Gallery playing skittles. You've
heard the term beer in skittles, Well, the paper Book
Gallery is well, it's the only place I know of that.
Obviously it must be played in other places in New York,
but it's the only place I know of where there
is an outdoor skittle game available for anybody who wants

(01:48:37):
to play. And there's always about fifty guys standing around
playing skittles in front of the gallery. It's just a
place to be, you know, girls and elderly ladies. Was
great to see an old chick who must have been
seventy four years old whacking them off playing skittles. The
skittles is largely a game of luck, in fact, almost
completely a game of luck, and this old gal was

(01:48:59):
having a run of luck. She had made twenty seven
straight passes and skittles. And here she was, seventy four
years old, probably having the peak day of her entire life.
Doesn't she realized that it would happen at seventy four
And she's down there swinging and one hundred and fifty
guys are cheering her on outside in front of the
paper Book Gallery at one o'clock in the morning. But

(01:49:21):
it's this kind of place. But anyway, I'm standing in
front of the gallery and a kid comes up to
me and he's a listener and he's got a big
bag full of books, and he's got this chick with him,
and they had just come over from Brooklyn, and she's
got kind of a vaguely peeved look on her face,
and he looks sheepish, vaguely apologetic. He said, hi, Shepherd.

(01:49:43):
I said hi, and then the chick gives me a
hard look. I said, what's bugging you, baby? And then
the guy says to me, well, now, every Saturday night
we go on a date, and I bring her over
here before we go on. So we wind up spending
two hours here, and I spent when I spent six

(01:50:05):
dollars here tonight, and all we got now is money
for a Hamburger and carfare back to Brooklyn. And we're
not going to a show. And you can see the
chick is teet off and his kid's got a bag
of chopin. Howard kirk Guard and a few others and
we talked about it, and I said, you know you could.

(01:50:26):
I can think of no better way to squander your
money or to debauch yourself than to do it in
the paper book gallery. I mean, I don't know how
you can put a price on some of these things,
but nevertheless, I was down in the gallery here last
week and I picked up a a well, it's not
a copy, really, it's a it's a box set of

(01:50:48):
four volumes of something that for a couple of years
now I have been wanting to get, and I had
no idea it was in paper book. Have you have
you heard of this fantastic series of volumes called The
World of Mathematics. Of course everyone's heard about it. They
came boxed twenty five dollars a set. You know, the
thing was a bestseller. There were one hundred and two thousand.

(01:51:10):
I was talking to Marti the other day about He said,
there were over one hundred and two thousand sets sold
at twenty five dollars a set, and it has just
come out in paper book, boxed and makes a tremendous gift. Really,
it to me, this is one thing that I've wanted,
this thing for a long time. And I saw it
on the shelves down at the paper book gallery. And

(01:51:32):
I had no idea that that they were out in
paper book, all in the neat little box, all four
volumes and complete. There's nothing been cut and beautifully done,
beautifully bound. And I said to Marty, He says, why
didn't you know? Why isn't this the talk out? He says, well,
it hasn't been published yet. This is a pre publication
test of the world of mathematics in paper book. Now,

(01:51:54):
this is the same thing that costs twenty five dollars,
and when it comes out as a publication, which will
be in a couple of months, something like six to
eight weeks, it will cost three dollars more than they're
charging for it now down in the paper book gallery.
It was kind of a test to see whether people
would buy it in paper book. And he said, they
sold over one hundred sets in two days. They have

(01:52:16):
just seventy five sets. I called them last night about it.
They have just seventy five sets left. Plunk, and that's it.
Until it comes out as a regular publication thing, it
will cost more. But it is a wonderful thing to have.
And if you're going down to the paper book Gallery.
You better pick it up fast, because even if it's
just to pick up a pre seasoned Christmas gift, this

(01:52:39):
is it. It's the world of mathematics and it's great reading. Really,
you don't have to you know, it's one of those
things you have to talk about. It's interesting. The guy spent,
the man who did this, man of the name of
new Hall Spent or Newman, right, that's his name. Newman
spent something like ten or twelve years putting this thing together,

(01:53:04):
as does a scholarly work. He had no idea that
it would turn out to be a best seller. You
know the story of it. They quietly put this thing
on the market a couple of years ago, and it
became a top nonfiction bestseller and established well, it established
publishing history. Nothing had ever happened like this before at

(01:53:24):
twenty five bucks a set. And of course now it's
out in paper book and there will be thousands more sold,
but they'll all be sold at a higher price than
they're selling it down on the gallery. It comes in
a beautiful little box, all four volumes, and is really
worth having. It is truly worth having. It's one of
the things that you can't you just can't stop once
you read it, because mathematics is in many ways a

(01:53:47):
history of the human race. Well, all the abstractions that
we have developed, whether they be theology, whether they be
philosophy or mathematics, all these things which are part of
the the world of the mind of man, represent in
the most profound way the true history of mankind. And

(01:54:09):
I think this is the reason for the great fascination
that this series of volumes has for people once they
pick it up and start reading it. But this is
the world of mathematics. And if you're going down to
the gallery this weekend, be sure to look at them,
because they won't be there more than a couple of days.
And by the way, there are two paperbook galleries, one
on Sheridan Square. This is the one I usually go

(01:54:32):
down to with the skittles and all. That's on Shardan Square,
right across from Knicks, directly Catty Corner or Kitty Corner
across from Knicks over on the west side of Sheridan
Square and just where tenth Street hits Seventh Avenue South
And they're open until two this morning, So if you're
looking for a place to go after the theater and

(01:54:53):
it'll be comparatively peaceful tonight because most of the New
Yorkers are out of town. And you'll also find another
paper book gallery over on Third Street. And incidentally, that
gallery is just two doors away from what I consider
to be one of the really fine restaurants in New York,
and that's Yin and Yang. I took a couple of
Oriental food experts down there a couple of days ago,

(01:55:17):
and both of them agreed that it's one of the
better Oriental restaurants in America. As a matter of fact,
Glomet Magazine, in a review a few months back, pointed
this restaurant out as one of the five best Oriental
restaurants in the United States. It's Yin and Yang, which
is at eighty two West third Street, and they are

(01:55:38):
open until one o'clock this morning. And it's almost impossible
to find a good restaurant in New York open over
the Fourth of July weekend, Well, Yin and Yang is.
They will open at noon tomorrow on Sunday, and they
will be open until ten or eleven o'clock Sunday night.
They're open seven days a week. They open at noon
and they remain open usually till around one or two

(01:56:00):
in the morning. They closed an hour or so earlier
on Sunday. This is ying and yang. Oh hey, listen,
is it eighty two West third Street? And wear a
coat when you go down there. And another thing too,
They have a good bar there. Hey, I was going
to say something before I say anything else. Maybe some
of you remember about two years ago I took a

(01:56:23):
trip to Lebanon with a movie company to make a
movie about the Lebanese landings that occurred in the navy
and so on, that it was the whole situation of
the Middle East. That if any of you are interested,
does anyone have a TV guide with him? Well, my
little movie will be on television on NBC tomorrow around

(01:56:44):
five or five thirty. I'm not sure. If anybody has
a TV guide, please look it up. That the name
of the movie is Summer Incident. I narrated the movie
and was instrumental and right along with Louis de Rochemont.
It's a Louis de Rochemont production. And I'm very proud

(01:57:05):
of this little movie. So if you're interested, it is
on tomorrow on July third, on NBC. It's called Summer Incident,
and it's a half hour film, and it is about
the Navy in the Mediterranean, the sixth Fleet. But that's
neither here nor there. It's funny. Not a single one

(01:57:26):
good good while we're on the subject of the good,
the good, and the quick and the halt. While you
you can you know sometimes, and then you can't. I'm
walking in and I'm sitting down, and I'm eating the sandwich,
and it was one of those one of those living days,
you know, one of those existing moments, and I must

(01:57:48):
finish the story because it has some bearing on the now.
I'm sitting there and my mother is looking out over
the over the yards, and over the world, over the
eternal alley. He is in the eternal garages of all
man's existence, and just standing there, looking off into the twilight.
And I'm sitting there, knocking down my peanut butter and

(01:58:10):
jelly sandwich in my fielder's mitt is at my feet,
when all of a sudden, my mother turns kind of halfway,
you see, and looks over into a dark corner back
of a stove, and she says, I'm getting to be
an awful rubber neck. I said, what, ma, Because I'm
getting to be an awful rubber neck. Gus, what do

(01:58:32):
you mean, Ma? Should I just stand here? And I'm
just getting to be a rubber neck, that's all? And
I had no answer, and she turned down the hot
water and went back to the pots and began to
work that old brillo pad. And I remembered the term.
I remember my mother said she was a rubber neck.
She was an observer of life, and she just was

(01:58:57):
a looker. A looker's looking out over when she is
I'm goinging to be an awful rubber neck, and I
I am beginning to come around to the conclusion that
I come by my rubber neck proclivities honestly, and I
am a rubber neck. I am a looker. Is there
is there anybody out there, Jim? Did they use that

(01:59:17):
expression here in the East? A rubber neck? You mean
this is an everywhere expression? All? Come on, now, a
rubber neck. That's a beautiful expression. I mean, I can't
think of a more descriptive expression to describe the act
of just looking rubber neck. You realize what that means,
rubber neck. His old neck is just going around, his

(01:59:39):
rubber He's just bouncing around and looking a rubber neck.
It's too bad. They didn't use it here in the East.
They need too bad that way. But if if you
if you let go of those paddles, you know, sometimes
it's going to, it's going to, it's gonna lash back
at you. Like today, I'm sitting in a bus now.

(02:00:00):
I don't know whether you're a bus fan, but I
love to ride buses. Yeah, they used to have rubber
neck buses. I wish we had double deck buses here
now in New York. I remember one time when I
was I was the very first time I was in
New York, the very very first time I was a kid.
I was just a kid, And of course one of

(02:00:22):
the things that everybody heard about out in the Midwest
was the double deck buses that they had in New York,
the double deck buses. And yeah, I still say, I
still say that we have lost a great deal of color,
we have lost a great deal of the joy of
living by I don't know what it is we've done.
And I'm not really This is not a program devoted

(02:00:44):
in nostalogy, and I am not an old man sitting
around saying wasn't it great? No, I don't say that,
but I say that we forget about things sometimes that
that are that are good. We have lost good things.
We of course have invented others that are good too.
We have we've there's no time really that's better than
any time. But some of the better than other times.

(02:01:04):
I should have said. But some of these things I
would like to see kept a little bit, like, for example,
a bus that has the top down, you know, the
rubber neck bus. And I'm a kid, and now I
remember riding along, riding up Fifth Avenue with my old
man sitting on one side, my mother in the seat
behind me, and sitting next to her as my brother

(02:01:25):
and this son, and we're riding up Fifth End. I
could imagine nothing more pleasant than that. It would make
the most gigantic traffic jam fun, believe me. Do you
know that in Cincinnati just a few years ago, when
I was in Cincin This was in nineteen fifty two
and fifty three. I don't know whether they still have
it or not, but they have street cars in Cincinnati,
real street cars that run on tracks, you know, the

(02:01:47):
real ky this kind of street car, you know, And
they've got that big area of sticks up there, and
it runs on that electric wire and at night it
makes spark and when it's when it's wet, and when
there's when there's ice on it, that makes great big,
long blue arch. And when it stops, you know the

(02:02:07):
sound of a street car when it stops and you
sit there and the guy has turned the switch off.
You know, he's moved the great, big old Libra over
to one side, and the street car is waiting for
a light and you're just sitting at all of a
sudden he goes underneath your feet. You know that feeling,
and then it stops. The compressors are putting compression into

(02:02:29):
the air brake chambers. Well, in Cincinnati they had as
recent I don't know whether they still have or not.
It's not an old time thing, so I don't think
I'm a horse growing tight. Just a couple of years
ago when I was there, every summer they would bring
out three or four streetcars that were completely convertible, that
did not have a top at all, just great big

(02:02:51):
open tubs with wicker seats, and you would get on
a street car. It's a regular streetcar, you know. You
would get on a street car. You would pay your
ten cents or fifteen cents or whatever it was, and
ride all over town on the open street car, and
they used to call them promenade street cars. And you
just get in. You'd ride, you know, and the sun
comes down and the breeze blows across you, and the

(02:03:14):
big traffic channel. It doesn't make any difference. You just
sit there. People would sit there and they'd smoke their
cigars and they'd look out at the crowds, and it's
just like the old The rubberneck buses were also operating
in Chicago on the Mission Boulevard, but they were never
as it seemed that they were really associated with New York,

(02:03:37):
those big green rubber neck buses. And I remember vividly,
just completely, and it's sad to note. But then I'm
sitting in a bus. I love riding buses. I must
admit that I'll take a bus over a cab a
thousand times. I just like being in the bus. I
like the feeling of kind of freedom and everything there

(02:03:59):
isn't the bus streets. Now. I get a sense of
freedom in a bus and there's no meter ticking, there's
no yeah, there's the whole thing. So I'm sitting in
the bus just today, and the bus driver is kind
of sitting there hunched over his wheel, and there were
only two or three people on the bus and we
got to about, oh, I don't know, forty eighth street,

(02:04:23):
something like that, on sixth Avenue, seventh Avenue, seventh Avenue,
got about forty eighth street when a woman got on
and she says, ah, sure, and what a pleasure it
is to see ye, What a pleasure it is to
see ye. And she just got on ges she walks
up to the bus driver and she says, ah, sure,
and what a pleasure it is to see me. And

(02:04:45):
the bus driver's sufferingly beamed all over the place, and
he says, ah, sure, it's a pleasure to see you.
And he sat there beaming, and a couple of people
laughed in the bus. And this woman, who must have
been about sixty obviously her name was Bridget or Sheila
or something like that, dropped in her fifteen pence and

(02:05:06):
moved and sat back on the bus and just sort
of settled in, you know, and looked out of the
window and the sun was coming on. Sure it's a
pleasure to see and I by George, you know, this
is the kind of thing. You'd never see this in
a cab. You would never see it in a a
in a subway, you'd hardly ever see it anywhere else.
And every place I go, whenever I travel, when I

(02:05:29):
go to Europe, when I got a even when I
went to Bay Route, every place I go, I try
like men to get on the public transportation, particularly the buses.
There is nothing like a Roman street car, believe me,
nothing at all like it. And the way people act
in buses and street cars, it's very much an indication

(02:05:50):
of their character. Americans are isolated in buses. Often they
sit quietly, they don't want to catch each other's eye.
They stare straight ahead, and there is a general kind
of a general sense of don't touch me, don't don't
touch me. Now, don't you touch me. These are Americans.
Americans are the least mixing of peoples that I know.

(02:06:13):
In spite of all their togetherness and all they're hoped
up friend in us, they just don't. They distrust one another,
and they sit and they keep their eyes from from meeting.
And whenever anybody says something out of the way to
somebody else, like uh gee, what a great day, they
think you're you're up to something, you know, you're you're
you're you're getting ready to do something to them, and
they kind of look sidelong out of you, out of

(02:06:35):
their eyes at you. And so this is an American
in the bus. He's generally a very controlled, self involved
individual who will not look at one another, just they
just keep their eyes away. On the other hand, the
Germans are an interesting crowd in a bus. You get
in a German bus and uh, the Germans are are

(02:06:56):
are vaguely affable in a bus. Strangely enough. Up they
are very much together in a bus and they sit
and their their Their street cars, particularly in a town
like Munich or Frankankfort, are beautiful, just absolutely spick and
span cleaning. Nobody drops any papers on the floor in
a German or a Swiss street car. They they're, they're, they're,

(02:07:16):
they're beautiful, just shiny and all wood and glass and lovely.
And they sit there very quietly, and once in a
while the conductor will october cole them up and they
all leap up, and they move quietly back and forth.
It's as though if he suddenly were to shout all
out now, every one, if you out now, they would

(02:07:38):
all without question get out and just leave. Uh. There
is a sense of order in their buses that in
a way is kind of frightening. But on the other hand,
you get into a Roman bus and there is a
constant feeling that you are in the middle of an
incipient riot. I mean it is just about to begin,
or you are in the middle of a crowd that

(02:07:59):
has just had a riot one or the other. Little
fat ladies constantly using their elbows, and every little fat
lady in Italy wears black. They all wear black because somehow,
almost by definition, little fat ladies and little thin streaming
ladies are widows in Italy, and they all wear black,

(02:08:21):
and they all have elbows that have been sharpened to
a fine point, and they know how to use them,
stringy muscular shoulders, and they edge their way back and
forth on the buses. They'll come right up to you.
How they'll give it to you right and the kidney
how like that. And then you look at her and
she looks at you, and her big brown liquid eyes
are just bubbling over. There's no anger in it, you know,

(02:08:44):
it's just the way it's done. You're supposed to do
the same thing. And there's just a constant moiling mass
of people, all jammed in together, guys carrying I'm sitting
in a Roman bus here the last trip, and it
was a guy too seats ahead of me carrying a
gigantic stalk of bananas. Right behind him there was a

(02:09:04):
guy with a great, big bird cage, with two big
parrots in the cage, and the whole boiling mass. Once
in a while, a parrot goes, and the guy with
the bananas pulls a banana off and quietly eats it
and throws the peeling out on the street. By Georgia.
I'm right home here, I'm right where the people are living,

(02:09:26):
and there is a real genuine sense of the life
of all of it. And I had an instantaneous feeling
of that this morning when I'm on the bus, and
that that Irish lady gut and she says, oh, sure,
what a pleasure it is to see. Oh what a
pleasure it is to see. And the bus driver sort
of perked up. He didn't expect this, you know, because

(02:09:48):
there's a constant warfare that goes on between people who
serve people in New York and people who are served.
And it says, I believe me, there are no quarters given,
no holes barred. Bus drivers sort of sat up like
that and for the whole trip, all the way down
here to fortieth Street. There's a sense he stopped at
forty second Street. I don't know, I've never seen this

(02:10:12):
happen in a bus. It was a sort of a
holiday air that immediately started when this old gal made
her opening gambit. Ah, what a pleasure it is to
see he he stopped at forty second Street. And this
is right in the heart of where the fistfights begin
with bus drivers and people and some there's always some
clown who stands outside the bus with rimless glasses and

(02:10:34):
begins to ask questions. How far downtown does this bus go?
And he says, well, we go down to Third Street
and Broadway. Well, is that past Houston Street? Is that right,
Mabel Houston Street? Is that past Houston Street? And the
bus driver says, well, now there's two short blocks you
can walk two short buses across town. Bus, Well, I

(02:10:54):
thought it was a number six that went down there. Well, yes,
that's right, but I'm a number so and so go
to d And this long involved explanation will usually bus
drivers say all right, mac boom bang goes the door
and away he goes well, this bus driver quietly put
his foot out in the island, sat there and we
talked it over, and two or three passengers got in
the act, and one of them says, well, look, you know,

(02:11:15):
it's only a block and a half. And the next
thing I knew. The two people got on the bus
and just quietly sat there and we went our way. Ah. Sure,
and it's a pleasure to see. So don't give up,
I mean, you know. And then, on the other hand,
did you see the little item, the little item that
says a woman passenger became so incensed yesterday when the

(02:11:35):
Lexington Avenue bus failed to stop at the corner where
she wanted to get off, that she whipped off one
of her shoes and hit the hit the bus driver
with it twice, smartly with a beautiful wrist action right way.
You know that that old old old lady angry sound
that wait it off, that turkey sound. It's a kind

(02:11:56):
of it's a kind of barnyard sound. That I have
a feeling that as we get older, we get more
and more closer and more involved with the real barnyard
inner that is us. That women, when they get older,
they become more and more like chickens and turkeys. Men
when they get older, they become more and more like
hogs in their own way, and you know, a kind

(02:12:19):
of lumbering way. And until finally, as man reaches a
certain stage in his life, he is indistinguishable, indistinguishable from
the denizens of the corral, just sort of mills around
in the whole mixture, kind of a great malaf Sure,
tis a pleasure to see. Tis a pleasure to see. Good.

(02:12:43):
This is w o R Radio, your station for news.
A man with drive, A man with drive. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:12:53):
From July fourth, nineteen sixty Summer Madness and the Great
Ice Cream War. A real ingredient in bowling balls is cheap.

Speaker 2 (02:13:00):
If I could please have now you just keep that
thing up, don't touch that, don't touch that on the
other table. Please, would you please get for me in
that No, no, no, no, it's right here. Please get
for me my cheap guitar music. Oh it's perfect for this,

(02:13:23):
just perfect. And there aren't many things in this life.
Believe me, Oh, believe me, daddy. Oh that are perfect.
That's right, that's the exact demo. Indeed, demo. Just let
it go anytime, just just set it right down in
the middle of it and let her slide. Don't go,

(02:13:45):
don't don't. Ah, that's better, much better. The kids are going, huh,
the women and children have departed. The beautiful thing about

(02:14:08):
living in New York over the Fourth of July weekend
is that it's like, have you ever had the feeling
that you would like to go into a big castle
a palace and be the only person there, and you
could run up and down the halls, and you could
push over suits of armor, and you could stand and

(02:14:32):
look at the great tapestries, and maybe even pick up
a battle axe and just kind of swing it to
get the feel of it. You know, they get the
heft of it just through the air you're running through
these great halls. Oh, that's the way New York is.
Hardly any more exciting feeling that I know of in
this day and time than to be in New York
when everybody else is gone. It's fantastic. I wouldn't be

(02:14:54):
anywhere else, anywhere else. So now the women and children
have gone, In fact, all the people are gone everywhere.
I'm here, and you are there, Peggy and Fitzgerald. We're
the only two people you're listening. I'm sitting and in
those of you, there's a few, a pure essence of

(02:15:19):
humanity out there whose toes never point right when their
shoes are removed. Let's put it this way, my dear,
Let's put it this way. When you were a tadpoem

(02:15:41):
and I was a fish in the Palaeozoic time, and
side by side on the ebbing tide, we sprawled through
the ooze and slime, were skittered with many a caudal
flip through the depths of the Cambrian fen. Oh, my
heart was rife with the joy of life, for I

(02:16:04):
loved you even then mindless we lived, mindless, We loved
and mindless. At last we died, and deep in the
rift of a Caradoc drift, we slumbered side by side.

(02:16:25):
The world turned, the world turned on, and the lathe
of time, the hot sands, heaved a man, until we
caught our breath from the womb of death and crept
into life again. We were amphibians, scaled and tailed and
drabb as a dead man's hand. We coiled at ease

(02:16:48):
neath the dripping trees, or trailed through the mud and sand,
croaking and blind with our three clawed feet, writing a
language dumb with never a spark in the empty dark
to hint at a life to come. And happy we loved,
Happy we lived, and happy we died once more, and

(02:17:16):
our forms were rolled in the clinging mold of a
neo Chomian shore. The eons came and the eons fled,
and the sleep that wrapped us fast was riven away
in a newer day, and the night of death was pasted.
Then light and swift through the jungle trees we swung

(02:17:39):
in our airy flights, or breathed in the bombs of
the fronded palms, and the hush of the moonless nights.
And oh what beautiful years were these, when our hearts
clung each to each, when life was filled and our
senses thrilled in the first faint dawn of speech. Thus,
life by life and love by love, we passed through

(02:18:02):
the cycles strange, and breath by breath, and death by death.
We followed the chain of change till there came a
time and the law of life, when over the nursing sod,
the shadows broke, and the soul awoke in a strange,
dim dream of God. I was stewed like an orox bull,

(02:18:27):
and tuscan like the great cave bear, and you, my sweet,
from head to feet, were gowned in your glorious hair,
deep in the gloom of a fireless cave. When the
night fell o'er the plane and the moon hung red
or the river bed, we mumbled. We mumbled the bones

(02:18:47):
of the slain. I flaked a flint to a cutting
edge and shaped it with a brutish craft. I broke
a shank from the woodland bank and fitted it head
and half. And then I hid me close to the
reedy tarn where the mammoth came to drink through brawn
and bone. I drave the stone and slew him upon

(02:19:10):
the brink. Loud, I howls with the moon that wastes loud,
answered our kith and kin from west and east to
the crimson feast. The clan came trooping in over joint
and gristle and padded hoof. We fought and clawed and
tore and cheek by jowl with many a growl. We
talked the marvel o'er. I carved that fight on a

(02:19:34):
reindeer bone with rude and hairy hand. I pictured his
fall on the cavern wall that men might understand, for
we lived by blood and the right of light. Ere
human laws were drawn, and the age of sin did
not begin till our brutal tusks were gone. And that

(02:19:56):
was a million years ago, in a time that no
man knows. Yet here tonight, in the mellow light, we
sit at Sardis. Your eyes are deep as the devon springs,
your hair is as dark as jet. Your years if

(02:20:16):
you your life is new, your soul untried. And yet
our trail is on the combridge clay and the scarp
of the Purbeck flags. We have left our bones and
the bag shot stones, and deep in the Coralline crags.
Our love is old, our lives are old. And death

(02:20:41):
shall calm a main should it come today. What man
may say, we shall not live again. God brought our
souls from the tremadoct beds and furnished them with wings

(02:21:01):
to fly. He sowed our spawn and the world's dim dawn.
And I know that I shall not die. I know
that it shall not die. Those cities have sprung above
the graves where the crooked bonnet man made war, and
the ox Wain creeks, or the burdened caves where the

(02:21:22):
mummied mammoths are Then as we linger at luncheon here
over many a dainty dish, let us drink, Let us
drink anew to the time when you were attacked and
I was a fish.

Speaker 11 (02:21:44):
Town.

Speaker 2 (02:22:03):
How can you better say it? You know, how can
you better say it? It's that confound, concerned thing that
keeps rolling on like a fantastic tumbleweed. I never tell
you about the time my kid brother got caught in
a tumble weed for over three days, just all tangled up.

(02:22:23):
It was an awful mess. Came home and sat and scratched.
And once you have been caught in a tumbleweed, you
never forget a daddy ever. So don't give me that
jazz about how you're civilized and you've made it. Oh no,
let me tell you if you were all caught in
some terrible fantastic thing, if I wasn't caught, if I

(02:22:49):
wasn't caught in such a way, I mean, you get
caught by well, there's an expression for it. I mean,
where you get caught, there's an expression for it. And
I can't say it because, as you know, how our
civilization is, it's ridiculous. But I'll tell you if I
wasn't caught by I mean if it was another way.
Let's put it that way. I mean being I'll tell

(02:23:11):
you what one time. One time, I'll listen to this.
Can you imagine anything as exciting as this? Listen to this?
When I was a tadpole, I got an offer. I
had just gotten out of the army. See, I'm telling
you some past real life history. I got out of

(02:23:32):
the army. See, and I'm slugging it out in these
miserable classes and the origins of English words and phrases.
I'm slugging it out in courses called Latin one and two,
organic chemistry one on one B. And I'm slugging you know,
I'm going through this real world. And at nights I'm
working in a radio station. See, I'm doing all these things.

(02:23:54):
I'm doing these things, and slowly, by tiny, tiny inchines,
my fame grew. I began by doing the English cunnings
on a Lithuanian Matt on the Street broadcast. That was
just a first run. After that, I was given my
own program, a program that was heard every morning at

(02:24:17):
five thirty AM, a program of Elmer Roade Heaver hymns
recorded in which I did the commercials between. But it
was my first program. I was beginning to inch my
way up and up and up, inch by inch, moment
by moment. It looked like any day now. The next assignment,

(02:24:39):
I was cousin Jean on a hillbilly teenage program when
I had to talk like this, and I was beginning
to really feel it. I mean, you know, I was
tearing aside. Well. One day I got a fatal, a
fatal special delivery letter. I've only gotten three special delivery
letters in my life, but this one came, and here
I was. I was maybe, you know, I was just

(02:25:01):
beginning to see that there was a world out there.
I mean that there was something beyond Western Avenue. I
was beginning to understand that that out past Howard Street
there was something, and that if you went, if you
went out the other side of the municipal Airport, there
was something out there. And over beyond the lake, the
big old lake, there was so Babylon. I was just

(02:25:24):
beginning to understand this scene and I got and it
was beginning to already do its terrible work. It's already
beginning to erode me. You see, this city is the
worst seducer in the world. That erodes, It cuts and
digs and grinds and makes you into little things that
finally you begin to read magazines like Esquire and believe
New York is like that. You know, all the guys

(02:25:46):
who make us sit around until all the other guys
who haven't made it how it is to have made it,
You know, guys like Truman capote my attitude towards New York,
how it looks to me. Let's get some little outer
work nothing living up on the Grand Concourse, and have
him write two paragraphs, oh, Esquire, on how New York looks.
They probably the best two paragraphs you've ever printed, you know,

(02:26:09):
I mean, you know, just sit and talk to him
for ten minutes and put it down for batim. This
is the way one guy saw it. Well anyways, slowly
but surely the strings are being drawn. And I didn't
realize it. And I got this special delivery letter which
I opened. Especially delivery letter said, dear mister Shepherd, I
own a string of radio stations in Alaska. We've been

(02:26:30):
watching your work. This is a true story. Was emblazoned
in my mind. I own a string of radio stations
in Alaska, four of them Juno Gnome Anchorage. I can't
even I mean, you know, four of them. We would

(02:26:53):
like to have you come up and run our Juno
radio station. We will provide you with a cabin, a cabin,
a cabin. We will provide you with a cabin. Here
were the terms of the deal. You come on up here.
Will give you one hundred bucks a week. We will
give you all the all the all your expenses. That
includes food, that includes oh bait, I mean you know,

(02:27:16):
and it includes cartridges for your thirty oh six. We
will rent you a gun reasonable rates. We will provide
you with a parka time payments. I mean, this is
exactly what they said. You have to sign a contract
for one year and come on up and run this
radio station, saying and and and in addition to that,

(02:27:37):
after the year, we will give you thirty days vacation.
We will pay your transportation back to Seattle. Oh, I mean,
you know, back from the from the timber line. I mean,
this is the wildest offer I ever got. It says
back to Seattle. From then on, you're on your own.
You want to ride the rods, Okay, thirty days vacation
and furthermore, we will furthermore speak of wild offers and

(02:28:02):
the Timberline and this is wrim and FM, New York. Boy,
we are in the wilderness. That's another story, another kind
of wilderness. I mean there is a wilderness WITHINU, a
wilderness within a willingness. You know, just as there are
many mansions, there are many wildernesses and many gods. And boy,
we are in a wilderness now. I mean it's a dark,

(02:28:23):
dark one. And so anyway, it said, in addition to that,
mister Shepherd, we are going to make it. We're going
to make it possible so that you can, i mean,
live the right life here. We're going to make it
possible that you meet proper friends. And furthermore, after one year,
we're will increase your salary to one hundred and fifteen

(02:28:44):
dollars a week. Now, all of this money will be
deposited in a Swiss bank. I always wanted to have
a job where they deposit the money in a Swiss bank.
I mean, I want that kind of life. You know.
I'm sure the chase is friendly, but there's something really
swinging about a Swiss bank with you cable, you know,

(02:29:05):
send back. I want this kind of thing, you see. Well, nevertheless,
I read this thing. I read it you know, and
I was excited. Wow, see the look at this guys, huh.
And and every one of these, these these guys who
were doing things like the Elmer road Hever Gospel Hour,
and guys who were doing the English cut ins on
the Croatian Hour, all of them looked at me.

Speaker 5 (02:29:27):
What what even did the same ridiculous thing for I said, well,
look at this Alaska, Alaska, Solaska.

Speaker 2 (02:29:38):
Are you insane? Are you out of your mind? You fool?
I says, but it's Alaska. I mean Kodiak bears. Salmon's
so big that they jump out and nip at your fanny. Heines,
that's fantastic, I said, are you ot your mind? I
s now, look around us.

Speaker 8 (02:29:54):
Here.

Speaker 2 (02:29:54):
We're in this little dank radio studio with the Leana
vines growing up the side and the old the old
Wayne King records that we played over and over and
over again. And in the middle of this, the music
was playing in the background, and it was Bing Crosby
singing to a ukuleles, singing about Blue Hawaii. And every
once in a while the announcer who was hiding with
me would get up and make an announcement to the

(02:30:15):
effect that Bing sings every day at the same time
on record old record, and he's telling me, I'm insane
because I want to go to Alaska. I said, why Alaska? Fellas,
And three of them looked at me with one eye,
and all three of them said, if you go anywhere, man,

(02:30:38):
there's only one place to go in New York. I
mean the Big Apple. That's the big Time. You could
stand right next to Andre Beruch, right up there with
Frank Gallop, with Kenny Delmar and all the while the
bing Crosby record was going blue. Am I bad?

Speaker 4 (02:31:04):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (02:31:05):
Doo doo doo doo doo. We didn't have three dollars
between us or one decent suit. As a matter of fact,
it goes on and on, and I'm sitting there and
then I looked at this litter, and I'll tell you
what I did. I looked at the three guys and
I said, you're right. Oh. And now now, of course,

(02:31:28):
now I see what happens is I'll tell you it
happens to horse players. I mean, if you lose the
first five hundred races, you get to the point, you know,
But if you if you lose four hundred and eighty
four races and win the four hundred and eighty fifth.
You're dead. You're gonna sit there on your on your

(02:31:52):
deaf for the rest of your life, feeding the machine.
You think, Oh, I would love to go to Alaska. Now,
I mean just fantastic, I'd love to go to Alaska.
I mean, really, Hawaiian. I mean this sounds like a
gigantic needing stand with false you know, with reeds hanging down, capia,

(02:32:14):
juice on every corner, and all the real estate operates.
But no, I mean really, I mean, really, Alaska. What
have we done? I mean, what have you done? Don't
laugh at Shepherd, What have you done? You clown? Look
at this? Look at this. It's getting to the point

(02:32:36):
now where if you have to travel four hours and
you see one little piece of ocean, do you know
that I've traveled for at least twenty five miles on
Long Island looking for a place where I could get
out of my car and walk down to the ocean.
Every place it's at private beach, stay out. Only for
the residents of Babylon. I haven't done Babylon. What you've

(02:32:59):
called Babylon only for the residents of Stom, only for
the residents of Gomorrah down the street is only for
the resiments, oh you know, and you just drive on
and on and on.

Speaker 8 (02:33:12):
I drove on and on and on with the night
one night, and I finally arrived at the end of it,
at the end of a long drive, and I got
out and there was finally there was a place. And
I went down through this little drive and I got
all the way down.

Speaker 2 (02:33:22):
It was a big sign. It said sanctuary, keep out,
travel at your own risk. Sanctuary. Here I'm sitting. See
there you're sitting, and Alaska is up there. We are here,
daddy here, I mean, you know, frittering it away what for?

(02:33:45):
I mean, who knows, you know what for some clown
up and up in West Points. For my kids. Oh yeah,
my foot. Your kids would go out of the skull
if they ever landed in Alaska. Let me tell you
for your kids. He says, well, well, I'm I've got
a career here, A career you call that peddling little

(02:34:10):
business you're involved in every day, A career. Come on out,
career schrom. Then he draws himself. Phillip says, well, I've
got my home, almost paid for home home. That poor
little pitiable plaster box. Well, at least I have my

(02:34:37):
good books. Books you haven't read since you stopped taking
the Reader's Digest because people were giving you dirty looks.
On the train on the way back to Westport, me
I tell you about these two friends of mine who
were riding the train to Darienn. They saw this happen.

(02:35:01):
There were two guys sitting down the aisle from him,
and they both began to fall asleep. One guy looked
like the Grandpa Charlie type. The other guy was thin
and crew cut, elderly crew cut. And they both fell asleep,
and simultaneously, when the train gave a jerk, their heads
jerked forward and both of them cracked together like two coconuts. Clock.

(02:35:24):
They both woke up, swinging at each other. They fought
all the way to Dirryann. Just thought you ought to
know for what, sir, that's my baby, No, sir, don't
mean maybe paleolithic remains, that's what for. That's all deep
down within the heart of each one of us. Their beats,

(02:35:46):
believe me, their beats, the untamed pump, the untamed pump
of a true Neolithic man, a Neanderthaler. Don't think for
a minute he's changed all you got to do is
blow the whist, shoot off three mortar shells, and the
Neanderthal comes out, and we're all going up the beach
right away. Don't think for a minute it's it's it's not.

(02:36:10):
All we need is an excuse, that's all a legal one.
The guys would let it come out illegally, wind up finding,
you know, with the doors slammed on him and all that.
We're looking always for a legal way. You know, the
half that old Thompson submachine gun and feel that bell
are on your hips with eight grenades hanging down there

(02:36:31):
over your fanny. You know, I know this, fee Have
you ever Have you ever seen these guys in the movies,
by the way, throw grenades by pulling the pin with
their teeth. Do you ever see anybody ever do that
in the army? Any ugis ever no teeth? Look, Charlie, look,
no teeth. That takes quite a pull there. I'd like

(02:36:52):
to see Wally Berry pull one of those and his
uppers come right out.

Speaker 7 (02:36:59):
You know.

Speaker 2 (02:36:59):
That's like shooting from the hip. Another great American myth.
I remember one time I went on on the forty
five range and started at try the first one with
from the hip. You know, I'd seen John Wayne do
it so many times. Bah, I got a first sergeant
three counties over, not on the but on the trajectory.

(02:37:24):
You know, what are you gonna do? You know? I mean, here,
you see this, this, each one of us live. We
get drifts slowly gathering up around us. Now, you just
heard Lester Smith do the newscast, didn't you. Now this
is called news, well it is, I suppose, but actually

(02:37:45):
all it does is describe events. The real news would
be news that describe people. I mean, what is happening
to people. This would be the real news, because I mean,
all these events are forgotten. Everybody forgets the events. I mean,
can you tell me what events you were swinging with
in nineteen forty seven that you said yeah, yeah, yeah,

(02:38:08):
he can't you know, they're gone. But if we could
somehow capture the essence of people. Now, I have prepared
a newscast of items that I have removed from the
newspapers within the past well five days, of the real
news of what mankind is doing. The real news, I

(02:38:30):
mean the real news. You are ready for the for
the now, ladies and gentlemen, it's time now for the
real News program with HG. Grubbage, World commentator, author, lecturer Gourmey,
Matt About, Tom bon Vivant and seer. Mister Grubbage reports
every evening at the same time with the real news,
the news, behind the news, behind the people, and now

(02:38:52):
here he is, mister Grubbage, leaving Americans everywhere. Rabbit Chap.
A woman passenger became so incensed yesterday when a Lexington
Avenue bus failed to stop at the corner where she
wanted to get off, that she whipped off one of
her shoes and hit the driver smartly between the shoulder
blades twice and now more news. A disappointed television viewer

(02:39:25):
took us spring revenge yesterday. Armed with a twenty one
pound sledge hammer, he went to the shop where he
had bought his defective set and smashed every television set
in sight.

Speaker 3 (02:39:51):
And now.

Speaker 2 (02:39:51):
From South Bend, Indiana, a modern youth went on an
interesting rampage yesterday afternoon. At an early morning hour, a
sixteen year old youth picked up a cement block in
South Bend, Indiana, hurled it through a department store window,
then removed a bicycle and several other items in the
display Shortly afterwards, he was apprehended by the police as

(02:40:13):
a suspicious character because he was riding down the middle
of the street at that hour waving an American flag.
When it was discovered that he had pilfered the bicycle
and several other items on his person, and he was
asked why, he replied, that's the way I saw them
do it on TV. Lewis J. Christopher Junior of Saint

(02:40:50):
Louis complained the day before yesterday to the helicopter had
severed the string leading to his kite that he was
flying from a tennis court south of Forest Park, which
is a residential suburb of Saint Louis and now Sports

(02:41:17):
News brought to you at this time by the wr
Sports Department. The American Legion baseball came between Revere and
Beverrely was held up for more than a half hour
last night by a sixty year old Revere woman who
sat on home plate until removed by the police. The

(02:41:40):
woman perched herself on the plate at Paul Revere's Stadium
in an attempt to block the game because a foul
ball had broken a window at her home several weeks
prior to the contest. In question. Game officials called for
police aid when they could not coax the lady off
home Plateravere was leading a to nothing at the end

(02:42:00):
of three and a half innings when the untoward incident occurred.
Revere policeman managed to soothe the irate woman. After several
long discussions. The remaining inning was completed before darkness set in.
Revere won the ball game eight to two. And so

(02:42:31):
you have heard the news of people as they are.
Good evening of melegants, and before we leave you this night,
we would like to provide you with our for tonight.
Sit it out. It might work out after all, Rabia,

(02:42:51):
good night, lad Is and Joe. Women, you have been
listening to news behind the news, behind the people that
make the news, the inside story of mankind, brought to
you each week at the same time with international HC. Grubbage,

(02:43:19):
who will be back again at the same time next week.
Stay tuned for the Ed Sullivan Show, which follows in
just thirty seconds. Not me, do do do do do do?

Speaker 8 (02:44:16):
Do?

Speaker 2 (02:44:31):
Oh boy, those were real news notes. You want to
hear more? Oh no, no, no, I mean it's it's
hard enough to face the facts, you know, to face
things the way they really are, without facing things the
way they really are. Speaking of facing things the way
they really are? Uh uh oh, hey listen, bye bye.

(02:44:59):
Kind of a side sidelong glance. Well, there's no I mean,
you know, you can push and you can pull, and
you can tug, and you wind up. You know where
you wind up?

Speaker 6 (02:45:10):
You know?

Speaker 2 (02:45:14):
I have you seen in the current in the current
New York Times book review section, there is a big
review on a dictionary of Slang. Have you seen that? Well,
there's a big review. It's the cover review. As a
matter of fact, Well, I'll tell you I feel like
I have really made it now. I mean I have

(02:45:36):
made it. You know. I would never have dreamed when
I was a kid that this could ever possibly have happened.
I have made the dictionary. I'm serious, I am in
the dictionary. On page one thirty of the New Slang
Dictionary went with in Flexner's Dictionary of American Slang that

(02:46:00):
I have contributed a word that has become part of
American slang. It's a great feeling, you know, to know
that you really have somehow affected you know, your time,
your country. And I'm telling you this is a true story.
And the word was a word that came out of
a show, a late night one of the all night

(02:46:22):
shows I was doing back in nineteen fifty seven fifty six,
as a matter of fact, was when this word came out.
Can you tell me what it's not really a word,
it's a phrase. Can you give me which phrase you
think it was? And it really did come out of
the show. I mean, it just came out part of
the thing I was doing, and it began to catch

(02:46:44):
on a lot of people began to use the phrase
until even today now people come to me and tell
me the phrase and hutz feel's kind of silly, and
it isn't night people. Although night people is in the dictionary.
They do not give me credit for night people. Isn't
that sad? No, maybe it's just as well. I don't know, uh,
but uh, the term is this? All right? All right,

(02:47:07):
I'll tell you what. I will award the bra We're
really put the old listeners on the test. Any of
you old listeners who might possibly think you know what
phrase it was? Uh, give us, you know, get give
us a call here and we will award the brass
pig Gie with bronze oak leaf palm. And if I
and if the guy who calls up with it, uh,

(02:47:28):
and and you get him on the phone there and
I want to talk to him. Yeah, huh, I'll tell
you you just come in here and then uh and
I'll award the brass pig legy with bronze oak leaf palm.
What a what a, what a fantastic feeling it is
to know that you're in the dictionary, you know, just
out out of the blue. There it is there, it

(02:47:49):
is see there it is now who who? Who? Who
is the winner? It's a long time Who's the winner?
You know? Speaking winners. There are signs everywhere, I mean
really signs. A guy, a guy wrote a note to me.

(02:48:10):
He's got he just bought himself this this super high
fidelity FM tuner and he's got me coming through a
big pre amplifier now and I'm going through a sixty
watt Macintosh amplifier into a giant pair of wharfedales. And
he's listening to me on FM and he says, Shepherd,
do you realize, He says, you will be pleased to

(02:48:32):
know that you are a truly low five personality full
of hiss, scratch and rumble. Don't tell me there's a
checker nose. All right, hello, hello, Yeah, well how did
you know? Oh well, actually they they didn't have any

(02:48:56):
You really think that they were responsible for it? Yeah,
but it was a terrible picture. Yeah, but that actually
was the right one. That's true. But it did not
come out of that magazine, you know. It came out
of the radio show. And you didn't hear the original

(02:49:17):
show though, I see, Well it was about then. It
was nineteen fifty seven, I think fifty six. Yeah, so
it wasn't it was about when you just started. Maybe
you weren't you know, you weren't listening. That came out
about three point thirty in the morning, I might point out.
It came out a big bolt of lightning came through

(02:49:38):
and I realized what was wrong with our country? Yeah, oh,
don't use that phrase, dear what you just said? Say
it again? Yeah, that might be why we're getting it.
We're pushing it too far. Okay, baby, thank you. He's cute.

(02:50:01):
She sounded like Bonnie Baker with a cold. You know,
I will award you the brass figligy with bronze oak
leaf palm if you can tell me what band Bonnie
Baker's saying with I mean, and it meant. Furthermore, if
you can tell me what was the vocal group that's
saying with her now, I don't know, I mean scratch rather,

(02:50:23):
I mean it don't don't just just don't don't push me.
Oh hey. And since this is fourth of July and
obviously nobody's listening, everybody's out of town, we have a
minus rating. There's no no question about it. Several people
have called in and made a request, and I'm going
to honor that request. You got it set up in there. Yeah,

(02:50:47):
that several people have called in. And here it is.
I I once every four years since the election, the
big convention is now getting ready to go. The first
convention I guess started this coming week, this weekend, this weekend.
Isn't it once every four years? It's like it's like

(02:51:08):
if Christmas came once every ten years, and every ten years,
everybody gets out white Christmas. Once every four years. The
American Convention. Convention fascinates me more than almost anything that
we do. I have attended one convention and I will

(02:51:28):
never forget it. I just went there as a kind
of reporter, and I've absorbed this thing. And there is
something about conventions that brings out everything in American life.
Everything fantastic dreams, fantastic phoniness, fantastic platitudes, and the all
the great panoplate that goes to make up a kind

(02:51:52):
of dream life that we're all involved in. The belief
that one man can come and save us. This is
one of the great, one of the great human fallacies,
the belief that somehow man is perfectible. This too, is
one of the things that crops up constantly in conventions.
Another thing that crops up in conventions is the terrible

(02:52:15):
urgency on the part of everybody to somehow, somehow, at
all costs, get on the right side of God, which
is to say, be on the right side of the
guy who gets the nomination, even if you've been after
him and against him for six years before. Speaking of that,
did you see this beautiful piece that James Reston wrote
in The Times about Ike's speech. I came back, you remember,

(02:52:38):
and gave that speech. This is one of the parts
of American life, by the way, where where advertising has
really taken over. Nothing bad happens in the advertising world.
You know that nothing really bad, nothing bad in the
whole world of the promotional life that we live. For example,
the description that Russ gave me the other night that said,

(02:52:59):
Madison Avenue's new definition of death is nature's way of
telling you to slow down, is probably as close to
the as close to the truth. Everywhere you look you
see ads for cemeteries that say that the design for
the living, and they're kind of fun cemeteries. It's all
Madison Aveu, and it's gotten to be part of it.

(02:53:20):
Today I heard a minister on the on the television.
He was talking about talking about religion. He was saying
that one of the things wrong with with religion today
is that that the churches look like churches, you know,
and that ministers keep using words like atonement, keep using
words like like sin, keep using words like such terrible

(02:53:44):
words as oh, crucifixion. I mean, these are scary words.
I mean, they keep using words like redemption and so forth.
And of course all these words are not today words,
I mean. And so he was and seriously he was
saying that religion should get should make it. He said

(02:54:04):
it with a sense of satisfaction. This is what frightened me.
He was describing a church out on Long Island that
was very successful and he says, the reason it was
successful is that they got this terrific architect who came
around and made a church that looked like a supermarket.
He says, it was beautiful, had all this fluorescent lighting,
and it had plasting in all the windows and glass
and everything. And I was thinking, now here we finally

(02:54:27):
come to where the real heart of the matter lies.
You know that the real worshiping is about to begin.
If you ever try, if you ever, if you ever really,
if you ever really were going to chase the money
changes out of the temple, Daddy, there would be no
temple anymore. And so I'm sitting there and I'm Roora,

(02:54:47):
and you see, and I began to realize this is
all part of the whole convention world. That and these
guys get up and that one of them really is
against sin, or really is for this, or really is
against that, because of the terrible hard fact of the
reality of man comes through when you try to do
any of these things. I ever to tell you about
the reform mayor who got elected in Chicago, and everything

(02:55:12):
was great until he started to reform. Everybody elected him
because he said he was going to reform. And three
minutes after he got in there were lynching parties being
formed among honest citizens. He was honest, you know, he
was in exactly one term. He got four notes from
the black hand, he got ten petitions from the local

(02:55:33):
theological students. Everybody was mad. Everybody was mad. And by
the end of his second month he shut up and
just sat on his duff. For the next four years,
al Capone was voted back in. And you know, speaking
of speaking of al Capone, there is one of the
most wild marquis I've ever seen in my life. Right
on Times Square. Shows you how our values are getting

(02:55:55):
all balled up. There's a sign that says this movie,
and it tell us about the has al Capone's guts
and Marty's heart somehow al Capone is. That's exactly what
it said. Oh al Capone has got guts, that's the

(02:56:15):
last thing he had. All he had was a lot
of guys with guns. Doesn't take guts. And somehow, oh
by the way, Another thing that bothers me is that
every time we do a movie about crime, the poor
little idiots who make these movies, and the poor little

(02:56:36):
idiots that go and sit in the seats and watch
these movies. Obviously, have never had any contact with crime
outside of the pages of Argacy and Blue Book and
maybe Earl Stanley Gardner. Criminals all are very colorful guys
in these things. Some of the dullest people I've ever
known were racketeers. By the way, a crime somehow the

(02:56:59):
criminal is inevitably a sort of romantic man. He's romantic,
he's a non conformist, he really frights and all this.
Oh no, let me tell you if anybody I happened,
Did I ever tell you what Dillinger? I saw a
film about Dillinger one time, and I'll tell you, this
is a sickness in our world that will do such

(02:57:19):
a thing. Speaking of sickness, this is w R A
M and FM, New York. We'll be here till one o'clock.
Speaking of sicknesses. I saw a film a couple of
years ago about Dillinger, and they called me over here,
you know, and they said to come and see the film.
We think you might like it. And I like it
a Dillinger and guy says, yeah, it's great. So Shepherd

(02:57:43):
is down there in the darkness watching a previewed thing
of Dillinger. Well, of course it wound up. Dillinger is
a kind of folk hero. We have this thing in
America where we make folk heroes of criminals. We really do.
Carol Chessman is one. Dillinger. Certainly. He goes all the
way back to Jesse. Jesse James, Billy the Kid is

(02:58:06):
always a guy who was shot in the back by
a coward. You know, he's always a wrong guy. Oh yeah,
and all the way out and down we've done this.
And so I'm sitting there and here is Dillinger, and
somehow Dillinger is a colorful guy, and you feel kind
of bad when he gets it in the end. The
movies are kind of slanted that way that you feel
bad when they get it. And I'm sitting there, I'm thinking,

(02:58:27):
what is this? And it's over and they turn up
the lights and here's this happy looking producer sitting next
to me, and he says, how'd you like it? I said,
it's one of the sickest pictures I've ever saw. I've
ever seen. I've never seen anything as sick as this.
He said, what do you mean? He said, what's f
I says, wait a minute, daddy, I want to say
one thing. Do you know anything about Dllinger, anything about Dillinger,

(02:58:50):
And he says, well, of course, we researched it completely research.
Come on, now, do you know anything about Dillinger? Did
you get anybody in anybody outside of some guy who
wanted his name on the credits for the picture? You know,
did you get really get into anybody? Did you? He says, well,
I don't know what you mean. Yes, we had several
of the police. Officer. Let me tell you about Dillinger.

(02:59:14):
This happened two blocks from my home. You want to
hear by Dillinger. Two blocks from my home. There was
a little bank in this town in northern Indiana, and
one quiet Friday afternoon, just before closing time, a large
black automobile pulled up before this bank. Six men got out.

(02:59:37):
Two of them stayed outside in front, one guy stayed
at the wheel, and the rest of them went in
and immediately fanned out, carrying great, big, fat old roscoes,
you know the expression. And they fanned out, and immediately,
of course, the people all froze. One of them walked

(02:59:58):
over to an old guard who was standing next to us,
to a long glass table that had blotterers on it,
shoved his roscoe right under his floating rib and pulled
the trigger. Another one walked right up to the right,
up to the teller, who was a man of forty
eight years old, rimless glasses. A little, thin, tiny individual

(03:00:19):
shoved his Roscoe through the bars directly between the eyes.
Have you ever seen a man who was hit between
the eyes with a forty five? And they began to
scoop up everything in sight. Everyone stood. They walked out
by the way. The leader of it was John Dillinger.
They walked out with five valises. They always used black valises.

(03:00:41):
They call them valice bandits. They walked out with five
valises full of ten dollars and twenty dollars bills. They
didn't take anything bigger, and they got into the car.
They turned the car around and they drove down the
street one block and they're standing at the corner. Was
a policeman who did nothing all day long, but helped
school kids across the streets. He was right in front

(03:01:03):
of a school, a guy about sixty two years old,
you know, the summer kind of policemen, you know, with
the sleeves cut off. And he's standing there in the
middle of the street, just standing there. The car pulled
right up in the middle of the intersection. One of
the guys in the out of the wind and says,
come here, bud, pretending they were looking for instructions. The
old man walked over. One of them struck the roscoe

(03:01:24):
out out of the window, the back window in his back,
and says, how do you like this, dad? Pah, A
forty five shot to the back. Have you ever seen
what happens when a slug goes out the front? It
ain't colorful, daddy. And this was at about two thirty
in the afternoon. The car slowly drove down the street.

(03:01:47):
Two shots were fired up in the air. They put
it in high and they stepped on it. The boys
had done another job. Don't tell me about it. I
refuse to make folk heroes of this, this madness, this insanity,
and yet we constantly do it. Pretty boy Floyd, he lived,

(03:02:11):
He lived, big signs. Come and see what is the
sickness in us that does this?

Speaker 6 (03:02:17):
So?

Speaker 2 (03:02:17):
I can only deduce, after it's all said and done,
that underneath all of us there lies this lawless, terrible
creature which we love to see portrayed on the screen,
which we if somehow situations times and places have been different,
we would have been Why do we constantly write about war?
We love it, of course we love it, Let's face it.

(03:02:38):
We constantly write about it. We constantly make great movies
where somehow the war seemed like an awfully exciting thing.
And every twenty years the people who were never in
a war are now ready to go to one. They'd
love to have a war starting a lot of people,
a lot of young kids, because it's an exciting thing.
Oh no, oh no. I have stood to long in

(03:03:00):
the rain with a poncho over my head. I have
stood in too many mess halls I have heard. I
have heard too many I have heard too many P
fifty ones go through the trees at full throttle, you know,
and it ain't funny. Never. Only only in retrospect does

(03:03:21):
it become an idealized picture. And this is one of
the beauties of man's mind. He can idealize everything after
it's over, except peace, which which he suspects is the
unnatural state. Anyway, speaking of speaking of the states of mind,
I've been talking about the village voice for a long time,

(03:03:42):
and there's only one thing I can really say about
the voice that is important that I could read you pieces.
I could do all this. I can say this one.
The Village Voice is important enough that one of the
top publishers in the world has just completed the compilation
of a Village Voice reader. Of all the fine pieces
that have appeared in the Voice, we might as well

(03:04:04):
do this. You know, I went to this convention see
and I'm impressed by the dream quality of it. And
let me tell you, the dream quality is getting out
of hand in our world. Listen to this little news
item before we play this thing, and you will understand
what the nature of our problem is, why we no
longer can face anything without flinching. It's like James Reston

(03:04:28):
writes this piece. I'll get back to it about ike.
I had given a speech coming back, and I have
never seen a trip that was more of a fiasco
than that trip. Can you imagine you decide to visit
your relatives in Cleveland, Say so, you write them little letter,
and you visit your you're writ and you say, I'm
gonna come now, I'm going to visit you guys. And

(03:04:50):
you get a letter back and says, now, wait a minute.
My cousin raised the roof when he heard and not
only that aunt min through her shoes through the front
window when when they heard you work coming and you're
right back as I'm coming anyway, doesn't make any difference.
I'm coming. So you get down there and you get
to the house. It is all locked up. It is
all locked up. The welcome matt has been removed, and

(03:05:13):
you have to climb over the gate to get into
the front door. Even and then you walk back. You see,
you get on the train, you come all the way home,
and you meet this chick and she says, how is
your visit out to Cleveland? You say, well, actually it
was successful really because you see, well, it depends on

(03:05:34):
the way you look at it. It was successful because
I have found that my relatives are people of spirit.
I have found that my relatives are people with convictions.
And more than that, they have found that I am
a man of my word. I came so actually it

(03:05:55):
worked out very well because now we understand close. Your
understanding has come about now as a result. Well, this
was the kind of speech it was, and Rested began
his piece. It was a television speech that was to
be delivered by Ingemar Johansson to the people of Sweden,

(03:06:20):
explaining his victory through defeat technique, which, by the way,
the first time I heard this technique was wild. And incidentally,
when a nation begins to do that, lookout things are intrall, daddy,
when you begin to whistle in the dark like that.
The first time I heard that was one time. I
remember the ninth Infantry Division in North Africa had run

(03:06:45):
into about forty seven units of Rameel's outfit and had
mopped up the landscape with them. I mean there were
broken bicycles, there were bashed in helmets, there was a
dust cloud in the distance where the guys were running.
There were old rifles left all over. And that night
there was a newscaster who came on the German radio.
He said, elements of reminds fourteenth, fifteenth and eighteenth Panzer Division.

(03:07:07):
Today affected a strategic withdrawal that leaves the American troops
in a very dangerous position with extended lines which could
very well prove to be their final defeat. Oh, daddy,
extended lines. These guys left their mess kits, they were
leaving their shoes. There were socks spread all over the road,
there were dentures everything strategic withdrawal, And that was the

(03:07:33):
first time I ran into that, say, and now suddenly
it pops up here in another way. So I think
this is now apropos as it has never been apropos before.
I will now play you a cut from my LP,
which sold seven copies, four of them to my brother,
who mailed them to friends of his. I think you
will enjoy it, and you will hear. All I have

(03:08:08):
to say is that is that you will hear that endlessly, endlessly, endlessly,
beginning next week and from both coasts. Doesn't make any difference.
The dream goes on eternally. And to to prevent any
any any wild calling, and to sell a record, the

(03:08:34):
the record, the preceding record was provided by me. I
paid for it. Uh. If you uh, the record is
the Electra label. And if and if you have any
politically minded type friends you know, the indignant liberal, the
indignant liberal, or the the shell bound reactionary. They both

(03:09:00):
talk exactly the same because underneath, underneath that simple homespun
exterior there always beats the heart of a true Neanderthal.
Doesn't make any difference what direction he takes, you know, anyway,
the label is Electra e L e k Tra and

(03:09:21):
the name of the record is Geene Shepherd and other
foibles and don't take any talk. You know, it's an
interesting thing. There's a kind of there's a kind of
strange cabal that I have had dozens hundreds of letters
actually in the past six months from people who say,
every time I go into a record shop, they say,

(03:09:42):
there's no such record. Well, you tell him there is,
and it's on the Electra label, and order it. I
would be most happy, I really would. And you know
I would like to be right up the there in
the front. Did I tell you the the excitement that

(03:10:03):
I felt one day there I was right up there
in the front window one day with a with a
collection of of irreplaceable classics that have been put on LP,
sung by Judy Canova. I was right up there, next
to and and now on the other side of me
were seven hundred great hits sung by the crew Cuts,
and there I was right between the two of them,

(03:10:24):
my LP. Of course, that was one week I was
replaced by King Cole but or Johnny maths is But
uh I I I feel that the only that the
only thing I can say about this is that is
that we are entering a period in our history. We

(03:10:48):
are what do you mean entering We've been in it.
I mean, any any clown sitting on the edge of
the swimming pool in Rome when the when the nubie
and dancing girls were coming out and they were bringing
out the gigantic platters of grapes and the boars heads
was sitting there, and once in a while he would say,
you know, we're entering a period of history that might
not be so good. Of course, for one hundred years

(03:11:10):
it's been going on and he's probably the final result
of it. But we're never entering a period of history.
This isn't one of the great illusions too, of that
people have that history comes in periods and that the
next one's going to be better than the last. Oh No,
the story just goes on and on. It takes various
changes and twists and the variations. I heard a guy

(03:11:31):
today say with a straight face, friends, you're listening to
music from the soaring sixties. I guess it was the
flailing fifties that we came from and the flubbing forties,
but now it's the soaring sixties. You know, I'm always
reminded of Chicken Little, but listen to this item. I

(03:11:52):
mean how can you ignore it? Listen to this comes
from Washington. I'll have to deliver it, ladies and gentlemen.
Here now is h se grubbage and tonight's people behind
the people news, gleaming mends and Americans everywhere Washington. District
of Columbia textbook authorities are pursuing a quote very cautious

(03:12:15):
adoption policy, The Washington Star reported in a survey last month.
Among the victims of this so called cautious policy are
Little Black Sambo, Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice and Joel Chandler
Harris's beloved Uncle Remus stories, which are now not used
in District of Columbia schools. Quote. We try to make

(03:12:38):
sure that the books we select are not objectionable to anyone.
The Star was told by Deputy Superintendent Lawson J. Cantrell,
who serves as chairman of the school system's General Textbook Committee.
The newspaper reported, quote the publishers themselves have eliminated most
of the questionable material in the English and Music text.

(03:13:01):
Only History, because of the intrinsic nature of the material,
still presents a problem. If you will, I couldn't help it.
History does present a certain problem when it comes to censoring. Well,

(03:13:25):
let me tell you this. Do you notice that the
line is quoted as though the problem will be overcome,
We will be heavily get rid of that difficulty of history.
I mean, you know all those terrible things that happen
in history. I mean, I mean, you know all those
guys were supposed to love were rotten guys like twenty
years ago, and all the guys that we love now
were I mean, and the guys that were supposed to

(03:13:47):
hate now were great guys fifteen years ago. History does
present a certain problem, But you notice the way it's worded.
Only history, because of the intrinsic nature of the material,
still presents a problem. The implication is that we will
be able to take care of that. How many of
you remember nineteen eighty four? How many of you remember

(03:14:11):
nineteen eighty four? And what was Winston's job? No? No, no, no, no,
I want to what was what was? What was Winston's job?
Do you remember what Winston did? I repeat, only history,
because of the intrinsic nature of the material, still presents

(03:14:31):
a problem. Hold, I roped the history. Get it out
of there. That is not the way history should sound.
If I had some nice train music, much better history. Yes, oh,

(03:14:51):
set that up, hold it, hold it, hold it, hold it.
I got a reason for that. You got it? Is
that the special record, special record. And speaking of while
we're getting this set up, oh, we're swinging tonight. I
always swing when I got no audience swinging tonight. You know.

(03:15:18):
While we're on the subject of swinging, we better get
we better get one of these things out of the way.
Can I have my just keep that up over there,
don't lose that drum there. I gotta have that. I'm
going to read you something. I'm going to read you something.
Hold on, man, minute, who my dear boy, I get.

(03:15:41):
I happen to be probably the only subscriber in the
Western world to the confectionery ice cream makers quarterly. Do
you know that the people who make ice cream and
confection have have have their trade journal tool and I
subscribe to it because I've always been a candy fan,
ever since I once had my jaws stuck together by

(03:16:02):
two Mary Jane's for over three semesters in my third
and fourth year. Uh, and so naturally it's close to
close to the subject and and and uh getting to
the Roman. The Roman aspect of our civilization. If I
could get no, no, I don't need any music for
this because it says it itself. Can't you see this Roman?

(03:16:25):
See he's sitting on his stuff and he's on he's
in the old swimming pool is there, and the and
the maidens are swimming around, you know, and they're gauzy things,
and the nubie and dancing girls have come out and
they're plunking the lyre and the guys are eating the
grapes and everybody's chewing away. I mean, it's it's it's
a tremendous spectacular. It's the biggest it's the biggest cookout
you ever saw. And it's going on like man, you know,

(03:16:46):
everybody's swinging there and everybody's wearing and now we transpose it.
We just get the picture out a little bit fuzzy,
you see. And now instead of togas and instead of
all those short little pants, the guy's wearing a bermuda things.
They and the chick comes out and she's got a
Bikinian say, and she has she might as well be
the Nubian, you know. She's been working with the with

(03:17:07):
the man Tan. And there's a lady Tan now for
man Tan. And so she's out there and there the
coals are burning away there, you know, and the steaks
are frying, and Montavani is playing. It's the same picture,
you see. I read to you, I quote, I quote. Now,
we look down upon guys that roast an entire oxen,
don't we. I mean this is going a little far,

(03:17:29):
isn't it. I mean, you know, an entire oxen on
a spit. I mean that's kind of I mean we
always look down. We always do. I'm sure we look
down when a guy has a gigantic goat skin of
wine brought out starts squirting it in his guest's mouth.
I mean, this is going a little far. I mean,
fun is fun, but certain. Listen to this now, I

(03:17:51):
read to you directly from the confectionery ice cream world.
This is a direct quote. Climbers, skiers and other specialists
in high altitudes and low temperatures will find a real
challenge in an ice cream Sunday that is now being
served for twenty five dollars in a Brooklyn ice cream parlor.

(03:18:12):
The serving listen includes listen to the Sunday talk about
the Romans. Can I have nothing but pictures of oxen
being roasted on spits. I have pictures of gigantic golden corn.
Your coope is pouring out Nubian handmaidens. Listen to this.
Oh if I heads get me my guitar music. Somebody,
what's that over there? Huh? That's no good. That's no

(03:18:35):
good either, No, no, Dixie Land will never know it.
This has got to be sensual guitar music. I will
describe what you can get for twenty five dollars in
a Brooklyn ice cream parmor, speaking of speaking of Roman
or Jesus is worm and FM New York and the
old Big Apple, and we will be here already, Eddie,

(03:18:56):
here it comes. Listen, you can get this. We're rapidly
approached something very interesting. Not at you, not at you,
not a sexuality. This ice cream Sunday takes a counter

(03:19:22):
man working at full speed over thirty five minutes to concoct.
He takes a large silver bowl resembling a punch receptac,
large big and working with a snowshovel and album stock,

(03:19:45):
he sets out to construct his twentieth century oxen that
roasts over its own Westinghouse spit three gallons of ice
cream are used fourteen flavor atop the ice cream, which
is dished out in individual balls and scoops until it

(03:20:07):
resembles a small mountain. In this great silver receptacle, ice cream,
brightly colored sherbets are piled to create a rainbow effect.
Six whole stalks of bananas, like ski poles in the snow,
are placed along the frozen slopes. Slabs of pound cake
are stacked along the sides like shingles, and these serve

(03:20:32):
likely as not to stem any avalanche that might bury
one of the celebrates. Whipped cream a foot thick crowns
the concoction like the snow cap on Mount Everest, and
then frozen pineapple is poured like lava down the gullies
and crevices down the sides like this ring thaw. The

(03:20:55):
peak is dotted with over two quarts of cherries, and
the whole is garnished with fruit, salad, coconut strawberries, sprinkles
and nuts. Twenty five dollars. The name of the ice

(03:21:19):
cream shop available upon request. It's a long time since
I've skewed an oxen on a spit, George. It's been
a long time. I mean a real long time. Dad,
What is it gonna do? You can't think of searching, searching, searching, searching.

(03:21:49):
We had Dixie got the razmatas. I know what it is.
I know what it is. Whole steal, yes, I know.
Worries to where we stand, never for an instant, never all,
because you see, we're sitting next to this pool, and
we take many, many stances as we sit next to

(03:22:11):
this pool. Now, how long has it been since you've
been in an east side lunchery with the music, the
sweet soft sounds of the meloklino strings drifting out over
the celebrants. The supplicants is perhaps the better word, those

(03:22:35):
who eternally are on their knees, eternally worshiping at some vast,
some vast, unmentionable idol, and the music floats out, and
the credit cards move back and forth like the shuffles.
Don't ever be caught with cash in your jeans, Dad,

(03:22:57):
that's as ghost as you can get. And all the while,
can't you just see the sales manager now has taken
the salesman down for their weekly lunch. Of course, it's
a business expense, so naturally deductible. Four martinis a piece,
maybe a screwdriver here and there for a sore head,

(03:23:18):
and a grasshopper for one of the one of the
lesser fry. Seven rows squab are brought out arders, and
then the main dish filet of soul flown over directly
by de Gaulle himself, who flew over flapping his arms,
and brought with him some real French peasant butter and

(03:23:40):
had no gum cheap. But it's a business expense, a
real business. Three and a half hours go by, and
the musact is floating back and forth. The sounds of
that beautiful, soft, eternal music, the clatter of the lovely silver,
and the rustle of snow napkins can be heard. And

(03:24:03):
then as our man, the sales manager, gets up. Of course,
this is to justify the expense for the unfortunate people
who work in Washington, Fellas Aham, and he takes his knife.
And now, first thing I want to say today, Fellas,

(03:24:31):
is this has been one of the best luncheon meetings
we've had in a long time. I'll tell you why.
I've got something to tell you. There's something to tell you.
The ad men tell me that Life was going to
do an eight page spread on us next week, I'd say,
I mean, it's a think piece, and I don't want

(03:24:53):
to say anything. It's Jimmy, come on up here. Jimmy
gets up and walks forward yead of the promotional apartment. Folks,
Jimmy pulled it, pulled it off eight pages in Life
next week, a think piece. And I want to tell you, fellows,
all of us together here, that none of us count

(03:25:13):
for anything unless all of us are together and involved.
I'm the boss. Sure it could be any of you.
It doesn't make any difference. There's no boss in our company,
no boss, and there's no well you know what I mean. Child,

(03:25:35):
Will you tell them to bring some more brandy? Now
this afternoon, we're gathered here today to talk about magnificent Julyes.
I had come to call with having it's our program
to put us really over the dolphrooms, the summer dollprooms.
And our problem is to bring is to bring well

(03:25:57):
the truth about our product, the truth about our product,
the truth about our product. It's suddenly out of the
out of the music loudspeakers, which for years have been
dealing in Melachrino and David Rose, he suddenly comes this sound.

(03:26:18):
He tries to ignore it, says Jimmy, I want you
to come up here in about five minutes or so,
and I want you to tell the boys, want to
outline them what this thing piece is about in life,
because we're going to follow it up with a sales program,
a sales campaign. It just isn't going to stop. It's
not going to stop. At the blues thing there there

(03:26:42):
is that it that blues that blues man, I'm belting
it out. Oh stop stop, Where's what's this one? What's
this cover? Oh? That's the one. Let's do right now,

(03:27:03):
all right, all right? And so he goes on talking
when suddenly back Water run on deeper gaming.

Speaker 3 (03:27:20):
God, I'm that backwater dining.

Speaker 2 (03:27:29):
Gaming. Stop it stopped? How hold it there? I wonder
if it would be some way to get a record
like this played on one of these things that play
these records all the time, you know that come out
of Can't you see all the girls coming into this
new Segrum building. You know, all the music is playing

(03:27:51):
like mad twenty forty feet away before he even reached
the building at eight in the morning, and all the
sweet plunking is going on, and all those fountains are
square up in the air, and that aggressive building is
just sitting there, aggressing all over the place. And you
walk into that chrome stainless steel lobby and you're waiting
for the chrome stainless steel automatic elevator to come to you,

(03:28:11):
and you're standing there and finally it comes boom. The
door goes and you get in with four other people,
all holding briefcases, and the music is playing with this soft,
cold porter Never Never Land music behind you. When suddenly
everybody's standing taking year.

Speaker 3 (03:28:32):
I'm living girl over world and fucking.

Speaker 2 (03:28:43):
People screaming and keepers screaming in the Arkansas Sure, he said,
people screaming, and I cannot see even missing going to
leave him back Warner Bilsman backed up all over me.

(03:29:09):
People thinks it's raining. I haven't seen at night and day.
What's this? It's just rain. I'm getting off the twenty
third floor. It's three floors short, but I've got to

(03:29:30):
get on. He's just singing out of them, not speaking.
Could you get away from it? This raunchy, eroded looking
face peering out from you, peering out from a couple
of rusted bars in a West Texas cell his belting

(03:29:52):
it out at you. His torn roped shirt hanging my
four threats. He's not one of the modern people. He
is not a sociable This guy is not sociable. This
guy just does not I wonder if he owns any

(03:30:15):
mutual funds, if he's making money the way the big
money men make it. Backwater woman, let's says, what is
he talking about? I wonder, I wonder if he if
he if he eats, he'll just go right into the
next Who's this one? What's this one coming out on?

(03:30:40):
What are they trying to say? I don't like the
sound of this. I can just tell I don't like
the sound of this. How long is this elevator going
to go up? How can't you just see you walking
past this bank on Fifth Avenue that has the music

(03:31:01):
playing out all the time on my hair and severny.
This guy comes belting it out past those voices. Flight
begin to throw my head alighting. I couldn't help it.
I would turn right into that bank. I would turn
my life safe. He's of over four dollars into them

(03:31:22):
to do what they want. Dreamlight my dog don sto
take him away? And people that take the creamy old
Bob away take him away. Get him out of here,
Get him out of here, get him out, out out.

(03:31:44):
Oh I'm safe. Oh can't you see those staring eyes?
Smell that sneaky pete hanging air in the air. A
guy can't sit down and have a decent lunch anymore,
not being bothered. And then the entire sales meeting at Gerion's,

(03:32:09):
and there's a funny feeling bindside of it that somebody
did an awful thing, a terrible trick, making terrible tricks.
Your general tire dealer is having his big summer sale,
and I would like to recommend that if you're going
to put new rubber on the heap you see, your
general tire dealer, I mean, you know, if you're gonna spring,

(03:32:31):
you might as well do it that way. I saw
a sign. I don't know whether anybody else has seen.
It must have been a mirage. I but like to
hear somebody else that heard this sign or saw it.
I mean, it must have been a mirage. There was
a sign. I'm walking along a dark street over in
the thirties, right off of Madison Avenue between Madison and

(03:32:51):
Lex which is a real business type area. You know,
a lot of fancy offices and places where they sell
dictaphones and all that. I'm walking along and there is
a sign in the window and this girl is looking
out and there's a little caption under it, sort of
balloon life that she has said this, and it says,
if I knew that I had just thirty seconds to live,

(03:33:11):
I'd like just thirty minutes to live. I'd like to
live those thirty minutes as a Claireal model, a Claire
Hell hair model. If I had thirty minutes to live,
I would like to live it as a Claireal model.
You know that the model isn't real. Look up the

(03:33:32):
word model. A model is an imitation of something, you know,
a model ship. I would like to live it as
a Claire All model. And I'm walking a little bit.
I said to myself, do I want to live? I
don't even just a minute here I can see myself

(03:33:52):
with with Paul Hesset taking my picture. I have just
won the Miss Wrangol contest. I don't know whether I
want to live my last thirty minutes. And I'm walking
a little bit further, and I get in the bus
and I'm riding uptown and I'm beginning to wonder what
would I like to spend my last thirty minutes of
as if? And but if somebody said, you have thirty

(03:34:14):
minutes to live, Shepherd, you can live it anyway you
want to live it. How would I live it? Would
you like to live it? As a left hander for
the Yankees just been called in to quell a fire
in the ninth inning, the Baltimore Orioles have exploded. Maybe
you know, I might consider it. That would be a
great way to spend my last thirty minutes. Wasn't it
toiling out there in the mound? Would you? Would you

(03:34:37):
like to spend it way up up forty forty fifty
sixty stories. By the way, the loveliest thing in our
city today, I think, are these etched, these etched skeletons
of the new buildings that are going up all over
the east side. The etched skeletons of these buildings standing
up there against the skyline. They're beautiful. They they immediately

(03:35:00):
lose their beauty when they start putting the stuff up it.
But all those skeletons are lovely. And by the way,
speaking of skeletons, why is it you know we've lost
the daredevils there hasn't been anybody try to go over
over the falls in a rubber barrel. In years, there
has been nobody wing walk over Manhattan. We've lost the daredevils,

(03:35:23):
I mean the guys, the guys who who always there
was always some guy issuing a challenge saying that he
could leap off a high dive four hundred feet high
and land and take all comers anyone wants to bet him,
he'd do it, and thousands of people would gather on
the appointed day. This guy would jump right off and
disappear like an ink blot into the cement, and everyone
would say, well, find George. And he died knowing that

(03:35:47):
he did it right, you know, and he went pre
very justified. There isn't one guy that went over, that
went over the falls in a barrel and knew he
was going to his death that didn't feel like somehow
at least he was doing it better than the guy
got the gout. You know, there's no can't you just
see can't you just see a present day hero, can't you?
Oh no, we can't. If we were living in the twenties,

(03:36:10):
if we were living in the twenties now, no, if
we were living in the twenties. Now there would be
a wire. Some guy would put a wire from the
Seagram Building from the top of the Seagram Building to
the six sixty six building, And on Sunday afternoon there
would be an announcement on the front page of the
New York Times, Wondrous Willy will make his dangerous trek

(03:36:32):
today at three Can he do it? Thousands of people
are asking will he be able to do it? Millions
of people with baited breath all over the world are
waiting to see if this dar devil we'll be able
to complete the dangerous journey unscathed. And at three o'clock
in the afternoon, wondrous Willy would begin his dangerous trek,

(03:36:52):
riding a bicycle over a thin rivet of steel stretched
from the Seagrum Building all the way over to the
sixth sixty six building. And on his shoulders would be
his wife, Wanda, and on top of her would be
a small polar bear holding a long stick, and on
the end of each stick would be a midget. And
they would slowly work their way, and millions of people

(03:37:15):
would gather and they would struck fifteen twenty minutes go
by and Wondrous Willy is making his way across the
deadly chasm, thousands of stories above the street and no nets,
none whatsoever, not a single net. Oh what a dream.
I mean, I'd be right there, you know, I'd be

(03:37:37):
right there. Wondrous Willy. Gee, what a great name I
just invented. Can't you just see wondrous Willy? I mean
already you know what we think. A brave man is
now a guy who will go on a quiz show
without pre line questions an ad lib. A brave man

(03:37:57):
is a man who sits on a television show late
at and tell us about how once he used to
be hooked on taffy apples and he had to take
the cure of four hundred times, and he does it
by and gets afroscale. This is called this is brave man.
You know, where are the wondrous Willies? I mean, who
really did it? I mean by George really did it?

(03:38:23):
I guess what I need is a load leveler. I
mean I still bottom when I hit the bumps. I
mean there's a big clunking noise, you know, and my
tailpipe drags, no question about it. Where are the wondering Well,
they're never going to come out of this coming generation.
Let me tell you nor ow to my generation. I

(03:38:44):
could tell you that they're not, because look, I mean,
what do you expect of? I mean, look at this.
I'm looking at the New Yorker very innocently the other day,
and there's an Fao schwartz Ad. And in the Fao
schwartz Ad is the picture of a sand cast in
the Fao schwartz Ad. And listen to this I read

(03:39:06):
to you at the caption sand castle made with powerful
plastic molds. Has your kid made bad sand castles out
of Jones Beach lately? Does he feel inferior that he
does not know how to handle sand properly? Buy him
these beautiful plastic sand moles that include four sturdy moles,
pre cast walls, turrets, towers, keeps, corners, great halls, molts,

(03:39:30):
and dungeons. Does this kid know what a dungeon was like? No,
of course not. Do you know what a dungeon was?
Look that word up. It's a perfect description of most
of your lives, including mine. A dungeon down there in
that dark keep? You know what is it? A keep?

Speaker 1 (03:39:47):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (03:39:48):
And you can buy it now? The size of your
castle limited only by the size of your beach, mortar
board and shaping tool included. Isn't that sad? You can't
even make your own sand castles anymore? A kid that
gets a pre molded sand castle, a pre molded sand castle,
I can see the day. I can see it now.

(03:40:09):
I can already see the day when out around the
outskirts of New York there will spring on vacant lots,
places that at night and during the day too, have
great big signs that say, fly a kite. Fly a kite,
without all that old trouble of running, without trying to
get it up, without all that old trouble, Just have
the real fun. Just stand and hold the string twenty

(03:40:29):
five cents an hour, and there will be fifteen kites
up there, hanging in the sky, and fifteen kids would
be standing down there at a quarter an hour, hanging
on the kites that other people are flying. Oh whither
goes to? Oh indeed, oh oh oh, stop and stop
in my flight. Cut it out. History, get out of

(03:40:49):
hair rock, and old crummy history keeps marching. Tired of
the whole messes history. We're gonna have to do something
about that. Dungeons keeps moats, dungeons keeps moats. You know,

(03:41:11):
I don't know. I don't know whether or not I can't.
I don't know I have I must say this. Where
is it? I'll find it? I never miss. Well, that's

(03:41:32):
not quite true. I mean, that's not quite true. Fifteen
man on a dead man's chest. Yo Ho yo ho
yo ho ho ho. Fifteen man on a dead man's chest.
Casey mounted to the cabin with his orders in his hand.

(03:41:57):
Casey Jones monitored to the cabin with his orders in
his hand. There was an old monk of Siberia, whose
life it grew drearier and drearier. We will award the
brass figligee with brownze oak leaf palm to the poor mendicant,
the poor ragged traveler on the yellow brick road of fate,

(03:42:19):
who can give us the last three lines to that one,
and do it with a yell as you break from
your cell. There was an old monk of Siberia, whose
life it grew drearier and drearier, whose life it grew
wearier and wearier till he broke from his cell and
with a yell, won't let you fill in the last

(03:42:44):
line there, Yeah, let you fall in the last hair's
to wives and sweethearts, sweet may they never meet. Do
you know the last line to that one? Tell you
if you know the last line to the one about
the old Monk of Siberia, or you were one of us.

(03:43:06):
I heard that when I was nine years old at
a cub meeting. I'll never forget that. I was sitting
around there, we were tying sheep shank knots when the
kid next to me leaned over and told me about
the old monk from Siberia. My life has never been
the same since that was the turning point. There once
was a young man from Hissizes whose ears were two
different sizes. With the left he won prizes. But the

(03:43:31):
do you want to hear the rest of that one?
I'll award you the brass fig nigie if you know
the last lines of that one. Daddy you too? You too?
Come on, come on, get out of my hair? Will
you come on? Get out of hair? Oh? Rewrite this,
somebody if it kills me. If it kills me, I'm
going to rewrite this. Or take all those papers, all

(03:43:54):
those little bits paper, all those old phone numbers, all
those old appointments, all those terrible thoughts. You know, it's
a funny thing. I'm sitting. I'm sitting in a movie
one time, just before I became a member of the
vast of the vast army of democracy. I'm sitting. Do

(03:44:16):
you know, do you realize that there is a man
alive today, right now, this minute, Doc, There is a
man alive right at this minute, might even be listening
to us who maybe seventy five years from now or
maybe one hundred years from now, I don't know what
with the new wonder drugs. Who will be the last
one alive of the guys who went through Camp Crowder,

(03:44:39):
the guys who were you know, went through the whole bit,
who listened to General Hersey speak, and who are there,
you know, the last guys of World War Two. There
will be one last guy and he will swear on
a stack of Bibles that he shook Franklin Delano Roosevelt's hand,
he heard him say it is a day that we're
living in for me right there when he said it.

(03:45:01):
And furthermore, he will tell about the time that Monty
walked right past him, and how he chased Rammel over
four hundred feet himself, the Desert Fox. There's some guy
alive right now. Well, just before I became a member
of the Armed Forces, I'm sitting in this theater, the
Orpheum theater, a little broken down the Orpheum. Do you
know what orpheus means? Friend? You know why they got

(03:45:24):
all those theaters named orpheum? Huh? You know what odeon means?
You know? Well, you've come to the guy who does.
And it's done me no bit of good. It's gotten
me nowhere except Sunday night at class X time on
the fourth of July. I'm here on Easters too. He
can be very big on Easter. I'm also excellent, wonderful

(03:45:47):
on Christmas Eve. I mean, I'm right here. So I'm
sitting there. You know, I'm just about to go. I
have already received my orders. And all these people are
walking up and down the aisles with cam ms, and
they have just played the Russian national anthem on the screen,
and they showed thousands of Russians marching fighting the wicked

(03:46:08):
hordes on the long, vast, snowy stretches of starling Grod
And there isn't a dry eye in the house, and
all of us are throwing our money out, and we
loved them. The sounds of balawaykas are playing. How can
I erase history? I mean, yes, sir, that's my baby.
I mean you know what you well? Well, yes, sir,

(03:46:31):
oh well, I mean I mean, don't accept any substitutes, man,
I mean, don't accept any any any ask for the genuine.
Remember that, ask for the genuine. I stop, hold it, stop,

(03:46:58):
look me right in the eye and tell me whether
or not you can give me the name of all
of the Lane sisters. Can you tell me all the
people who sang with Kay Kaiser's band? Oh? Anyone knows
Genny Simms? Come on, come on now, who is the

(03:47:18):
one who sang the singing titles in a sweet voice
over the open when he was imitating Sammy kay Eh?
Isn't there one of you who remembers Sully Mason? Not
one kind of an American? Isn't there one of you
out there? Not one of you who remembers Harry Babbitt.

(03:47:40):
Of course, I remember Ish Cabiblo with his bangs and
his bass. I remember Country Washburn. Do you know how
many of you can tell me how Jerry Cologne got
on the Bob Hope show, not as a funny man.
Oh no, he was a fine musician in his day.

(03:48:01):
I'll award the Brass Pignigy for Americanism above and beyond
the call of duty. For those of you who can
tell me what instrument he played? Oh what you caught
yourself American? No wonder. You can't sit down and read
Little Black Sambo, no whater, you can't face up to
Uncle Riamus, No wonder. You can't read the Wizard of Oz,

(03:48:24):
of course, not no wonder. And don't forget except no substitutes.
Oh yes, and remember try it tomorrow morning. Get out
of bed. Sleep you know north sound, don't face west.
Get out of bed right foot first, Remember right foot first.
Point the toes of your shoes inward and point them north.

(03:48:46):
Try it if you're lucky, and if it works, by
next By next week you won't have to listen to me.
You won't want to. You'll be sitting down there at
Sorrity's with the rest of them, with your black glasses on,
smoking seventy five cents Seaguars, Henry, here's luck to here man.
I hope you make it by Georgia, I hope you
make it. So ends another Sunday evening with Gene Shepherd

(03:49:31):
over wr Radio WR AM and FM in New York
and RKO General station. It's one o'clock at this time.
Wr FM, owned and operated by RKO General.

Speaker 1 (03:49:47):
Conclude that Blood, Well, that's it for Airchecks this week.
We will have more Gene Shepherd next week. I can't
always tell how long each episode is going to be,
but we keep on doing this until we hit the
last episode in nineteen seven twenty seven. Air Checks is
normally a three hour podcast uploaded weekly and can be
heard every Sunday on the k TI Radio network. See

(03:50:08):
you at the same time and same channel.

All Episodes

Episode 109, February 1, 2025 - Jean Shepherd Marathon, Part 3

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Fudd Around And Find Out

Crime Junkie

The Breakfast Club

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode 109, February 1, 2025 - Jean Shepherd Marathon, Part 3