Episode 110, February 8, 2025 - Jean Shepherd Marathon, Part 4 - Airchecks

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:22):
Welcome to air checks. Here is more of the Gene
Shepherd Marathon on w o R in New York City
from July tenth, nineteen sixty. Shep talks about the chain
on the door, the steel mill, and Terry and the Pirates,
permanent protection from the Elements. War is breaking in a
new fifty thousand watt transmitter after the show. The one
in current use was put into service. In nineteen twenty three,

(00:44):
Mom's Cookie Cutter. The New York Times asked Shepherd for assistance.
Whitey Ford pitches to a loser, Fu Manchu for president,
Chinese water torture, a lifetime credit card, three roosters on
a bathtub. Portions of this program might be recorded out
of sequence.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
I just couldn't help it, oh I every time, every
time I hear that, I break out in the sweaty.
I just couldn't help it. This is this is a
Have you ever been to a convention, a real political convention.

(02:12):
I once attended a convention, and let me tell you,
there is nothing. I don't know whether or not many
of you realize, because most people are basically afraid to
get up before other people constantly get this written in letters,
and I just can't get up in front of people,

(02:33):
mister Shepherd, I just don't. I don't know you know
this this routine. Let me tell you this that there
are very few things. In fact, I don't know of
anything that is as quite as intoxicating. I guess that's
about almost the only words you can use. It even
goes beyond intoxication. Intoxication of some kind or another is

(02:59):
just as a flows through your brain. Your brain gets
on fire. Your words are a fantastic turmoil. I don't
know of any feeling of intoxication that even remotely approaches
the feeling of standing before a group of thousands of people.
It's not a group, it's a crowd, of course, when
it gets to be in that category. But let's say

(03:23):
a thousand people with a microphone, and you are you
are having a good day, you are hot, and they
are listening to every word you are saying, and everything
that you utter is important, and there's a microphone in
front of you, and every time you say something, you
can hear the sound echoing back to you, and there

(03:43):
is this intense feeling of power, and you know, once
you have tasted this, it is impossible to ever go back.
Again really that we're always talking about what is the
cause of war? What is the cause of this drive
to become a hitler? Is what makes some suddenly become
a castro, What makes a man suddenly become a Mussolini

(04:06):
or a or whatever it is that rises to become
a tyrant over other men. No one can explain it, really,
except to say that anyone who has ever tasted the
little bit of it that is controlling a vast crowd,
a vast crowd, a faceless crowd, anyone who has ever
had that experience will know there's just never any any

(04:29):
question of what it is that makes the hitler. What
it is that makes it is something that catches on
fire in your brain. And I just couldn't help but
play this record, which is part of an LP that
I cut about a year or so ago. And this
particular LP has to do with the with the whole

(04:49):
phenomenon of the man standing before a gigantic crowd. It
doesn't refer specifically, you know, to crowds. The idea also
is that the crowd itself after it becomes two after
it it in a sense, ignites, when the crowd ignites,
when the brain begins to burn. When this little man

(05:10):
is standing in the in the cleaglights and his microphone
is picking up the echoes and the feedback. When the
crowd ignites it too, you see, knows a moment of
exaltation that it hardly ever knows singly. It's a fascinating
thing that that that crowds. Almost any crowd you under
the proper circumstances, of course, people behave pretty much the

(05:32):
same and getting getting the crowd into a proper pitch,
a proper sense of that flame, that brush fire that
burns through the hearts and the souls of man. Once
someone has stood up before them with a flag and
says forward, man forward, they once. Once this happens, almost
any crowd will do almost anything. That's something that you

(05:55):
got to remember. Any of you who saw any pictures
of what went on down at Newport here last week
are aware of that. Any of you who saw crowds,
do you remember the pictures taken down in Cuba about
a year and a half ago when all those people
were sitting in the sports Palace and this this demagogue
or whoever it was who was speaking. It wasn't necessarily

(06:17):
constra but somebody would get up and would feed the
crowd more, and he draw the crowd Burnham kill him
and rising rising to a great height. Well, I remember
seeing newsreels of Hitler when Hitler was addressing, say a party,

(06:37):
congress or something of this nature. I had the torches burning,
and they had the great eagles rising above the podium
and Hitler this tiny figure. Incidentally, the tinier the figure,
the more imposing it becomes. This is fascinating. Most people
think of a big man. No, it's it's almost always
little men who lead crowds, because little men in the lime,
in the limelight are more dramatic than big men. There

(07:01):
is a and how do we explain this will You
have to go into almost a whole theory of esthetics
to explain why it is the light looks so big
and the man looks so small, and because he looks
so small, his ideas become even more powerful. That I
don't think we would follow a man forty five feet tall.

(07:21):
The dramatics would just be gone. And when I recorded
this thing, I was thinking of all the crowds I
had ever seen, and all the spellbinders I had ever
been involved with. And it goes into all different areas.
For example, in the religious area, the crowds will do
things in the name of religion. They will do things

(07:43):
in the name of just in the name of excitement,
that they would not normally do. I remember one day,
I'm standing here in a crowd down on seventy second
Street or seventy first something like that, over on Fifth Avenue,
right next to the park. Beautiful day, and the sun
was coming down, and there was a parade coming along,

(08:03):
and I'm in the middle of the crowd, and suddenly
I began to sense there was something funny going on.
And I could see a few policemen around, riding horses
and mounted police, and the little little thing going on
in the air. And the next thing I knew, there
were a group of Cubans marching past. And I was
in a crowd of Cubans and Americans and people, and
there was a sort of a big, fat blonde standing

(08:24):
in the middle of the crowd next to me, and
she was complaining because she couldn't get across the street.
And next to her was her poodle, who was also
complaining because he couldn't get across the street. And next
to the poodle was her girlfriend who looked exactly like
the poodle, and she was complaining because she couldn't get
across the street. And one of them said, one of
them said, you know, I've stood one time. I stood
between sixty first and sixty fifth Street. Took me over

(08:46):
an hour in a cab to get that distance. This
traffic is getting terrible. Of course, there was a parade
going by, and we were middle. We were in the
middle of a gigantic human event, and within thirty seconds,
people started to throw eggs. Believe it or not, you've
ever been in a parade where they started to throw
away and suddenly eggs came out of people's pockets and eggs.
Look back and forth, and I'm in the middle of it,

(09:06):
and the cop comes galloping over on a horse, and
directly in front of me, there's this little cuban. This
little cuban is looking at the crowd, and he's wearing
a green shirt, and he's getting more and more excited,
and he's sweating, and he starts to throw pieces of
paper out and the next thing I know, he's hollering, yankee,
go home, Yankee, go home, yankee. And there I'm a yankee,
see And I turned to him, and I say me, Yankee,

(09:26):
me home. He says, Yankee, go home, Go home, Yankee,
And within thirty seconds I began to believe he had
a point. I don't know why. I began to believe, Yes,
maybe it is time that I pick up my my
care packages and go home. And here I was on
Fifth Avenue and home. I didn't know what to do.
It's getting to the point where there's no place for
a Yankee to go. And it was. It was all

(09:50):
part of that gigantic crowd. Speaking of the gigantic crowd philosophy,
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like man, Yeah, it is something that I don't know,

(11:00):
you just can't explain. I as a person who has
done a great deal of public forming, public speaking, I
can tell you this that the most exciting of all.
You don't get the sense of it. In radio. Radio
is a very interesting and intricate, very intricate medium, And

(11:20):
it's a medium sadly enough. You know, someday I'm going
to talk about this. In fact, I might do that.
That might do that even now, right right this very minute.
But the whole idea of radio performance and radio acting
to transmit an essential, ethereal, almost tenuous idea of our

(11:41):
radio is almost a completely lost art back in the
nineteenth It's sad that a whole art form grew to
fruition and then suddenly disappeared. It would be as if
somebody had invented painting, and great painters had flourished for
well maybe twenty years, and then everybody forgot about painting
because everyone discovered ceramics, or they discovered sculpture, and they

(12:05):
just completely ignored painting for that day on. Because radio
can do things that television and that movies and that
the stage can never do. It plays with the imagination
in a mind that I think no other medium can
never even approach. And yet the whole idea of radio acting.
You know some great radio actors who in their field

(12:25):
were as fine as and in many cases even better
than anybody performing on Broadway, anybody performing in the Shakespearean
repertory today. Some great actors rose to become really fine
artists in the field of radio back in the nineteen
thirties and early forties. And the whole canvas is gone now,

(12:48):
the whole thing is gone. It's really a shame because
this was a fine medium and is as far as
it's like, it's as though there's a big sleeping giant
out there, a huge sleeping giant that's lying out there
that one time people hunted, that excited people, and has

(13:08):
now long since somehow been forgotten by the people, and
it's lying out in the jungle there, just completely untouched.
It's as though there's a whole new mind land, let's say,
a universe of the of the psyche, is lying out
there untouched and will be untapped. And it's interesting how
it's ignored by even the most important types of people.

(13:32):
That as far as radio is concerned, it hardly matters
what you say, on radio, even though there are thousands
of people listening to radio millions every day, it hardly
matters what is said on radio because the official journals
don't really take cognizance of it. They never do. Somebody

(13:54):
puts on a little bit off Broadway show with twenty
five people in the audience and four people in the cast.
They will get columns of print and type in the
New York Times on the Sunday page too, You say,
But radio shows go on and on, many of many
of them are very, very worthwhile. But that's beside the point.

(14:15):
What I was trying to say here was that perhaps
the sense of power that is evident in working before
a live audience with a man before a live audience,
the sense of power and the kind of two way communication,
this is not, obviously not often felt in radio. I
know that I don't often feel it in the sense

(14:37):
that there is a great crowd out there. It's just
just not there for me. When I work, I'm working
in a vacuum in a closed, sealed room. And I
can tell you this that as a person who has
done a great deal of stage work of one kind
or another, I can say that the sense of power
that a person know is performing on the stage is

(15:00):
a sublime thing. It's the thing that draws people into
the theater. Don't don't let him give you this jazz
about I'm here because of the art. I'm always I'm
always amused when I hear an actor being interviewed and
he's talking about, you know, the artistic, all the all
the sure there are there, certainly there, there is a

(15:23):
there is a percentage of that involved too, but a
very small percentage. Let me say this that the that
the sense of power that a man feels when he
walks before a camera or when he walks out of
the wings and onto the stage, the sense of the
power that he has over all the people watching the
audience is by far and away the greatest thing that

(15:43):
draws him to what he does. And the personal sense
of power. I would like to know how many actors,
for example, would act, really work and would really and
genuinely act if there was a law passed that there
would be no no credit lines given, nobody name would
ever be mentioned. Would change a lot of attitudes, I

(16:04):
can tell you towards acting overnight, and it would also
change a lot of people in the audience's attitudes towards
the theater. They would be furious if they didn't know
the names of the people. For some reason or other,
knowing their names makes them more important, even in the
case of the bad actor. And you know, when you

(16:25):
get into this business of Crown psychology and the great
sense of fantastic power, you feel you're going to hear
this in all the conventions. That is the reason why
I played this record today. I was listening to it
the other night and I think, yeah, you know, I
can remember the first time that I attended a convention

(16:46):
which was not let's see, it was nineteen fifty two.
Was the first convention I ever saw. Fifty two. Yeah,
and I went into this convention hall, and almost always
the convention halls aren't seem hot. Even if they're not hot,
you know, they have five thousand the air conditioners all going,
but they're hot. The reason they are heated is or

(17:09):
the sense of being heated. They're not really heated. You
can look at the thermometer and it says seventy four,
but you're walking around and you feel like it's one
hundred and ten in there. The reason, of course, is
the electric tension in a way, this constant sense of
excitement that is bubbling up inside of everybody all the time,
even when it seems as though nothing is going on,

(17:29):
it's always there, it's always latent. You get three thousand
people there, bound together on one thing, and generally bound
together by a set of abstractions, with a sense of
being embattled, and that's very important, with a sense of
being embattled, and that there is an enemy, and in
the case of the convention, the enemy, of course is

(17:49):
the other party. That there is an enemy, there is
always that little thin thing that can break out in
any direction. And you walk into the convention hall, you
feel immediately just this this hum and all the machinery
is humming, the air conditioners are humming, and you can
hear the sound of the PA system echoing back and forth.

(18:09):
And then at night, when when the when the when
the speeches begin, when after after all the preliminary work
is done, And incidentally, the preliminary work is important to
the building up of the dramatic impact of the real
thing of the of the meeting, the solidarity, the kind
of religio socio psycho involvement that everyone has in this thing.

(18:35):
It builds up, slowly, slowly, until finally there is a
tiny mac Can I have that record again? I want
to show just a piece of it. There is a
tiny man standing on a podium and the lights are
shining down on him, and everybody has slowly drawn toward
this moment. It doesn't make any difference what he says.
And this is the thing I would like to one time.

(18:57):
I would like to see somebody right, uh, oh, it
doesn't matter, not any place. Sometimes I would like to
see somebody write a treatise. Undoubtedly there have been several,
and I just haven't run into them, a treatise on
what this phenomenon has meant to man's history, this phenomenon
of the single man standing before a vast crowd. Hitler

(19:20):
was a perfect example of it in our time. Almost
he almost completely solidified and brought together so many diverse
elements in man's nature. The exalting, of course, the power
to make a man feel that he was bigger. You know,
man constantly feels that he's bigger than nature itself. This

(19:41):
is what Hitler always told the Germans. In addition to that,
there is also the sense of violence that's always that's
always there to do violence. We all have it deep
within ourselves, and even the most simpler plane of Staten
Island type people will have, if given the upper provocation,

(20:01):
will rise to heights of violence that you never possibly
would have thought was inside of them under all the
proper triggering. Believe me, it's there, and it's a fascinating
thing to see in performance. I have seen, for example,
evangelists speak total nonsense, complete and utter non secretorial nonsense

(20:23):
for forty minutes at a time, but their eyes burn.
No one can quote them, you see, after they're through.
I sat in a hall one time, whether it was
an evangelist, a famous evangelist was speaking, and he walked
out on the stage. And incidentally, there's another thing that
must be must be impressed on you, and that is
this that all the great successful practitioners of this have

(20:48):
always striven, at all odds, and always under all circumstances,
to be the plainest of men when they are out
on the stage. When I say plain, I mean plain dress.
You like to think of guys with badges and swords. No,
the really effective ones were almost spartan in their simplicity.
Hitler was always surrounded by guys who had big fancy

(21:10):
hats and swords. Hitler's uniforms were drabbed, almost to monastic monasticity.
You would walk out with nothing, just a dark gray
uniform and a dark shirt, no badges, maybe a tiny,
tiny symbol somewhere, and that's all. A brilliant showman, probably

(21:31):
just perhaps more instinctive than anything else. Anyway. I remember
this evangelist who always wears dark clothing, completely white shirt, dark,
dark suit, dark time, that's all. He walks out on
the stage with brilliant lights on him, brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

(21:52):
And the rest of the auditorium, and this is important too,
is almost in total darkness. The people are dark, you see,
because when you're in darkness, you can become part of
a mass. If everyone is looking at everyone else, there
is this little sense of a self consciousness. Look at
this little, short, fat, idiotic looking woman sitting here next
to me. But no, when the lights are out, everybody

(22:14):
is won and everybody is handsome, and everyone is exalted.
And so he walks out on the stage. You see,
he looks down at the audience and there's this long pause,
and the pause gets kind of like a rubber band
that's been stretched beyond its endurance. The pause rises, and
he looks down with burning eyes upon the crowd, and

(22:34):
then he starts on slowly. Sinnies, you have come, Sinnies,
you have come. And it rises and rises and rises,
and he speaks. If you listen to him carefully, if
you ever, if you've ever taken a dictaphone recording of
what he says, the nonsense flows as self contradictory. One
phrase contradicts another, and it rises higher and higher and higher.

(22:56):
But by the end of maybe twenty or thirty minutes,
the crowd is to a tremend this frenzy of exaltation,
and they are ready to march in any direction. And
the interesting thing about it is that nobody can ever
quote this man. He's dynamic, he's dynamic, and he's so sincere. Well,
these these are fascinating manifestations, you know, this thing. The

(23:21):
desire to be led and to be exalted, and the
desire to lead and to exalt are the I think
the most interesting facets of man's whole personality. There's no
other animal that we know of that has this. And
when the moment, when the moment arises, how can you
the queue here? When the moment arises when the lights

(23:43):
the lights are dimmed in the auditorium and it's let's
say it's it's it's nine thirty, ten o'clock at night,
and thousands of people have gathered and they're all pressed.
And you know that one of the pilot, in fact,
I think it was Roosevelt in the in the early thirties,
they even went so far as to turn the air
conditioning off during one speech, to turn the air conditioning off,

(24:08):
because the air conditioning, you see, that heat that was
generated within each man excited him even more, until finally
the whole crawler was rising to a frenzy. They were
ready to march. And if you've ever seen a great
victory march after a man has been after a man
has been nominated, a victory march where suddenly everybody is

(24:31):
out there. He doesn't know why he's carrying his sign.
Fifteen minutes ago he said he was for somebody else,
twenty minutes ago, he said he was for somebody even
before that. And now suddenly he's out there with his
sign and he's watching the speech rises and rises and rises,
until finally man's brain squirrels in this great sense of exaltation.

Speaker 3 (24:53):
Listen, they can't control themselves now, there's no going back.

Speaker 2 (25:10):
How do you feel it rising? The heat, the tension. Oh,
I'm not any lost. Oh can't you just see this
guy standing down there with his coat, collar opened, his tie, crotown,
sweat pulling off his face. Great lights beaming down on him.
The pa system is echoing and echoing.

Speaker 4 (25:33):
He pauses, stand before you on this this John occasion.

Speaker 2 (25:43):
How can they control themselves.

Speaker 4 (25:47):
And doing all of the western world?

Speaker 2 (25:51):
Oh wait, the decision. We are all too may he
as sure is the mob, But they're important. The mother
is great. They're about to make a great decision. Listen
to him. How can they control themselves? Here?

Speaker 4 (26:14):
Is that ens humble and prows.

Speaker 2 (26:17):
Humility is important. Cal we are all smaller than the occasion.
Then a friend of many, He is now pointing to
the savior, a man.

Speaker 4 (26:32):
Whose name show lame with the greatest presidents.

Speaker 2 (26:41):
In the history. Of these young guy pets, than of
am great scoff, than a general man. They're pulling into
the aisles. They haven't even heard Claria to a place.

Speaker 5 (27:01):
No any time?

Speaker 2 (27:17):
Oh, I mean, aren't you ready to march? Oh? This
is to me one of the one of the aspects
of man's little nature that no one ever even talks about.
Oh they don't want to. They just don't want to
mention it, you know, And it's within every one of us.

(27:39):
Believe me. Uh, don't think. Don't think that because you're
an egghead, you won't march daddy. You will march quicker
than anybody. Uh. It's it's a fascinating thing. I one
time went when I was a kid, I was just
a just a just a tiny urchin, and I had
gotten a job. I got my a job the steel mill.

(28:01):
And one thing led to the other, and this was
this was when the steel mills were having a tremendous
battle with the labor forces and with unionization, and one
thing and another, and it was just a great rising, hissing, steaming,
boiling cauldron. And I was just you know, I was
about sixteen, and it was in the summer, and I
was working as an office boy. And the next thing

(28:21):
I knew, they had me down at the union meeting
and people kept jumping up and shouting and pounding on tables,
and other people kept pounding on the diies up in
front with gabbles, and the next thing that happened was
that all of the men, all of the men, there
must have been a thousand of them in this meeting hall.
There were about four guys who were controlling the mob,

(28:44):
and they kept jumping. They had there were patsies, of
course in the crowd who were who was shills you
might say. And the man who was giving the speech
would say, hell, I stand before you tonight, and he
would he would rise, and I'm listening to this, and
I recognized even in my primeval, my primeval mind of
the period, in my early neolithic mind, I recognized that

(29:05):
that that what this man was saying boorn no relationship
at all to what was going on the actual facts
of the of the world that we lived in and
worked in. But it didn't matter, you see, And he
kept shouting, he kept shouting, until finally the crowd marched
right out of the hall, marched down the street. And
the next thing I knew people had torches. I don't

(29:25):
know where torches came from, but fire, by the way,
is very important to a real uh, to a really
a wild emotional catharsis. And Hitler knew this too. We
always had torches raised that if you've ever if you've
ever seen a mob somewhere in the south, you'll see
the torch raised sometime. Next thing, you know, there's a

(29:45):
fire burning, because fire is very primeval boy. And so
the next thing I knew, people got torches. They marched
right to the right to the front gate of the
mill and they broke down. They broke down the gate,
and they were they were destroying the clock house and
all this just marching and sc and hollering, and the
police arrived with hoses and everybody. It was sort of

(30:05):
like the next morning, everybody woke up with a hangover.
It's a wild thing. I never saw such a thing
in my life. But it's oh, it's there. Believe me,
it's there. It's down with him because and I think
it's even more evident in our time. It's more there
during our day than ever before. It isn't because man

(30:26):
man has not progressed really as man. He has progressed
as a machine maker, but he hasn't progressed really as man,
because you see, as he gets more, I feel, because
he gets more and more and more abstract with his life,
there are fewer and fewer things which he can really
believe in that he can become really transported by and
so he is willing to march almost on any provocation,

(30:49):
even if he has to march against himself, if he
has to hold up a big sign that says I
hate myself. Down with me. If somebody gets up and
gives them the right word and raises the the temperature
in the room high enough, he will march. Believe me,
he will march. It's an interesting phenomenon. And I can
say this that as a person who has spoken for

(31:11):
groups of people where there were maybe two or three
thousand in the crowd. The bigger the crowd is that
the larger the crowd gets, the more faceless it gets.
I'm speaking to you as a as a person who
has for example, well maybe some of you remember when
out at Central Park, for example, about three years ago,

(31:34):
I did some humor things during things that were going
on out at Central Park, and at that time there
were upwards of five and six thousand people gathered there.
I've done Carnegie Hall things where there were as many
as four thousand people in the hall with nothing but
this great, faceless, dark mass facing you, and it doesn't
really face you. It's just out there and the thing

(31:57):
that's important to remember is that when you're when you're
addressing a large number of people, it is much easier
to be in control than when you're addressing a small
group of people. This is something that very few people
seem to understand. Yow, can you get out before all
those people? It's much easier to get out before all
those people than before ten or twelve people. And also

(32:18):
it is much easier to be in a crowd and
to listen to someone in a great crowd than it
is in a small group. And that's why all the
great tyrants of the past have concentrated on huge crowds,
not little crowds. They didn't stand on street corners and
talk to twenty eight people. They talked on balconies overlooking
great squares where there would be masked maybe two million people.

(32:42):
This is, as any speaker can tell you, this is
a situation that is loaded. Wow, it's loaded. And the
sense though that have you ever asked yourself, what does
the man who is doing it feel like? Have you
read Rever Reedy asked yourself what does he feel like
when he's standing out there in front of this massive
al and he feels them reacting? You see he says,

(33:05):
he says the word he says, and fellow Americans, and
you feel that coming back to you. Have you ever
asked yourself what it feels like to be a man
who has said this or who is in this situation. Well,
I can tell you, having been in the situation several times,
it is probably the most exciting feeling that a man

(33:27):
can ever that I have ever known. Exciting. It's a
sense almost of god like power that goes beyond your power.
I mean that raises you to a height of millions
of feet tall. And it is the same sense you
see modified of course, because most actors don't have a
personal involvement in their material that they're espousing. They don't

(33:49):
they don't really have the feeling of saying something that
is from within them. But nevertheless they get up there
and they are forty feet tall. And everyone has the
secret desire to be looked up, to, the secret desire
to be paid homage, to, the secret desire to be
in power. And if you're if you're if you're in

(34:10):
doubt about that, I would suggest that you look up,
look in any one of our advertisements, almost any one
of the big ads that you see for automobiles, and
for hats, and for skid chains, and for overshoes, and
for wash and wear suits. They all subtly say. They
all subtly say power. You will have power over the

(34:31):
lesser dressed, You will have power over the lesser shod,
you will have power over the over, over the lesser,
over the lesser riders in the lesser automobiles, and it
just flows on out of us. It's a fascinating thing.
As a matter of fact. The uh, the great tendency
of one of the saddest things that happens when a

(34:53):
man works before great crowds is because is this sense
that when the great crowd is responding, that in the
end you will do or say anything to make them respond.
It is a kind of a mutual adoration thing. And
I know that well. I've heard many nightclub comics, for example,

(35:13):
who sound as though they're saying things, and when they
say things, when they contradict themselves or when they deal
in half truths, they often start out idealistic. They often
start out with a real sense of point and direction
in what they have to say. But then after maybe
two or three years of working the trail, the crowd

(35:36):
of plotting and the crowd being part of him, and
being one of him becomes much more important than what
you have to say. And as long as you can
make people think you're saying something and they will respond
to that, that is even even better. The terrible sense
of unity that you get is something that has to

(35:56):
be experienced. Really, you know this, uh this, I listened
to conventions. I'm always fascinated by them. I I wanted
to go to the convention this year. I uh, in fact,
had kind of planned to go to the convention to
make some reports back on radio. Uh. The way you know,
the real the way it really feels there, the the

(36:18):
the tension and the sense in the air, rather than
talk about the specific candidates. To walk into somebody's uh,
to walk into somebody's caucus room, or to walk into
into someone's campaign room and come back and tell you
how it feels in Lyndon Johnson's room where his headquarters,
or how does it feel in Kennedy's room? How does

(36:38):
it feel in Nixon's room? You know, all the people there,
what what are the what are the the little under
inner sensations and tensions that you feel. You really get
some interesting things going in this world of mass man
and it it's it's a thing which we all desire,

(36:58):
There's no question about it. We all desires somehow to
be in a vast mob. We have this terrible split
right down the middle of us, a split that on
the one side says I am an individual, find George
on an individual, and on the other side a mankind, mankind,
mine love mankind. Well, in a sense, the two are

(37:21):
really diametrically opposed, and you'll keep shifting back and forth
between the two of them. When you feel that mankind
has walked away from you, then you become very much
the individual. When you feel that you are able to,
in some way or another, draw mankind to you, then
you become a non individual. You see, it depends on

(37:44):
which side of the of the particular coin you happen
to be working on at the moment. I've seen this
constant contradiction arise when people are gathered in sales meetings,
for example, who work in mass media. I'll see it,
guy say, well, of course, I mean I believe in
individual initiative. I think of all of us here, we

(38:07):
believe in ideas. And then in the next phrase he
will say, well, I mean, what about what about the
mass out there? What about the mass in a sense
that he has negated exactly what he has said prior
to that moment. Speaking of the speaking of the negation.

Speaker 6 (38:23):
You are tuned to seven ten on your dial. This
is w o R Radio, your station for news.

Speaker 7 (38:41):
Why are you here in the bass circles?

Speaker 8 (38:45):
Say neworst peerage.

Speaker 7 (39:06):
Ehper, That's why here in the bad.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
Factions chaff settle on Chaffer your queue of quality.

Speaker 9 (39:30):
This is WOR AM FM, New York, owned and operated
by RKO General. Next best thing to being a delegate
Here the Democratic National Convention starting Monday, July eleventh, on
WOR Radio, your number one station for convention coverage. You're
not to set four news at the WR time tone.

(39:53):
The time will be exactly one pm.

Speaker 10 (40:02):
James McCarthy reporting or up to the minute reports. He
tuned to this station. Now the news. Well, America, when
did you last look in the mirror? Perhaps you'd better
do it now because the collar has never been associated
with this nation is beginning to show through the collar
of a canary. Today we've been attacked by Castro Khrushchev

(40:22):
and intimidated by two leaders of the Mexican government. Khrushchev
said Soviet rockets would face America if we intervened in Cuba.
Two Mexican leaders said that Mexico would sell oil to
Castro and would back Cube against the United States, and
the Bearded One himself announced that he is going to
put on a worldwide propaganda campaign to put automatic rifles
in the hands of thousands of Cubans to combat United

(40:43):
States aggression. From some officials here in the nation's capital,
the harshest words were that Krushev has virtually declared Cuba
to be a Soviet satellite. But of course the usual
don't quote me was issued immediately after the statements from
the vacation White House in Providence, Rhode Island. The only
statement that was issued was from a bow in the water,
where I said, you should have seen the one that
got away.

Speaker 2 (41:04):
More news. In a moment, reach for.

Speaker 11 (41:06):
Your partner, swings to the right when the music stops,
get right.

Speaker 12 (41:10):
Hell has found the secret unlocks the flavor unlocked.

Speaker 5 (41:16):
The flavor unlocks the flavor.

Speaker 13 (41:19):
Has found the secret that unlocks the flavor.

Speaker 2 (41:24):
Enough filter say yours.

Speaker 14 (41:34):
In today's elen m fine tobaccos can be blended.

Speaker 9 (41:38):
Blended, blended blend.

Speaker 14 (41:42):
Not to suit a filter, but to suit your taste.
So through the miracle tip, pure white inside, pure white outside,
you get taste, more taste, more taste. By far Hells found.

Speaker 12 (41:56):
The secret unlocks the flavor.

Speaker 14 (42:03):
Reach for flavor, reach for LMM.

Speaker 10 (42:11):
The clown prince of Latin American politics held a very
unusual television speech last night in Nevada. Castro didn't scream
once Robert Perez reports from Havana.

Speaker 15 (42:20):
Soviet Premier Truth Jeff announcement that Russia will come to
the military aid of Cuba in the event of the
United States attack has been treated here as another victory
for Prime MINISTERSI Dolcastro and his revolutionary regimes. The announcement
reached Havanah moments after the premiere bombarded the United States
with kin salt in a seat clearly designed for consumption

(42:41):
by Latin Americans outside of Cuba. Also this morning, Krous
gathered outside the Mexican Empathy in overwhelming approval of statements
made by Mexico's Chamber of Deputies that that country which
supports Cuba in its conflicts with the United States. This
is Robert Perez in Havana and now back against in

(43:01):
Walkington from Los Angeles.

Speaker 10 (43:03):
The Democrats are starting to get down a definite business today,
but there's also a light side. William Evenson reports from
Democratic National headquarters in Los Angeles.

Speaker 16 (43:18):
This is the town of convention excitement, the banners and
the streamers announcing the fact that the favorite son of
some group is here. Delegates in the general public know
that the top runners for the nation's highest office fall
into one category. In any hotel, they have either been here,
or here or will soon arrive and here in La
one of the biggest booboos. Twenty eight hundred banners proudly
announced in big bowl letters Welcome Democrats, c rtees. It's

(43:42):
believed the signed company is run by a Republican Other
top political news. Fifty five thousand hot dogs to be eaten,
one hundred and twenty thousand soft drinks will be sold.

Speaker 9 (43:55):
He wor AM and FM New York owned and operated
by RKO General. Now back to Jeane Shephard.

Speaker 2 (44:03):
Rhythm, Rhythm, Rhythm, catch this swing and guitar. Yes, friends,
it's the Nervous sixtiesh my ba ba, do me Right?

(44:38):
And nafta last pret rising ballas bomb bomb. Oh boy,

(45:05):
can I have about ten seconds of that? Jo is is?
Is this an anthem of our time? The nervous jump
in sixties, the age of the.

Speaker 5 (45:20):
Rum.

Speaker 2 (45:37):
Oh boy, don't you feel it? That tension in the air.
It's all around us. It's the nineteen sixties, the soaring,
soaring sixties, rising higher and higher and higher and higher,
higher into the sun, into the veritable orb itself, into
the sun. Did I ever, Hey, listen, you know I

(45:57):
met a girl the other night. I'm telling you that
is madness. There is not only madness of foot. There
are great heavy Neolithic demons still lurking in the dark
foliage of the mind of man. I'm sitting in a
party the other night, and I find myself talking to
a chick who believes, really does. She looks it, looks
right right into my face, right directly into my baby

(46:19):
blue eyes, and tells me with a straight face that
she is a sun worshiper and believes that the Sun
is God, and that every day this God rises in
the east and arches across the whole world, the firmament
that we know, and a fiery chariot, a chariot rising

(46:40):
and around and around. I says, well, well, yeah, that's
that's She says, that's that's why I have such a
sun tan So I yes, and she says, every every
day I go out on my roof and I have
a little mass. I lie out there and the sun
beams right down on me. And I said, well, are
you kidding? And she says, no, I am not. She
really literally actually is. She really does think and feel

(47:05):
that the that the God is Son and the Son
is the God. Well, yes, and I listened to this,
and I says, well, yes, I don't. I don't you know,
I mean people's religion, And I don't say much. I listened.
And then then she proceeds to tell me that she
suspects that that Hitler and Roosevelt are still alive together

(47:29):
and they're living in Russia, in Staline's Russia. She said, well,
I said, well Staline is dead too. She says, oh no,
oh no, Well, she says, do you have any do
you do you have you ever? Did you see Hitler dead?
Did you see Rose? Did you see stuff? No? Well,
then how do you know? Are you the kind that

(47:50):
believes in everything you hear? He says, well, no, not
exactly and I'm sitting there with a with a with
a bottle of beer in one hand, you know, trying
to hang on to this Danish this Danish chaised lounge
with the other because the ground was sort of rocking
under me, see back and forth. And she's seriously talking,
and she's the angry kind of girl, you know, with
the black rimmed glasses, you know, and and kind of upswept,

(48:14):
and she has this fiery glint in the eye, a
fiery glint. And I said, well, yeah, this is true.
I I you you really have a point there, I
I I'm not quite sure. She says, well, let me
tell you. And she she goes on. She proceeds to
tell me that all the things that all the things

(48:36):
that matten just here, here's a typical phrase. Uh you
don't think for a minute that the side is aren't
covering up. Well, we'll cover she says, covering up. You
know what they're covering up. Don't think for a minute
that that they haven't created life already in the laboratories,
that they have created other men in the laboratories. And

(48:58):
as a and as a matter of fact, I have
happened to know a man who works in a laboratory.
And he tells me that there are seven people living
in New York City who were created entirely in a laboratory.
Don't tell me they're not covering up. Boy, you certainly
are a simpleton swallowing all that stuff. And you know,

(49:18):
by George, I felt like a simpleton. She says, well,
I'll look for example, and then it sort of trailed
off in little dots, and I was powerless to compete
with this. I recognized, of course that I really was
and am a simpleton. Of course, as you know, that
is one of the great one of the great fallacies

(49:39):
of the deep non scientific thinker, that the scientists, or
the air force or somebody is covering up. And you
can always get a rise in people. I'm gonna get
a rise in you. Listen, hey, listen, listen. They're out there. Listen.
Come on over here for a minute. Listen, listen. Who's

(50:01):
covering up? I mean, who's covering up? You don't think
for a minute you're getting the full story, do you?
When you read it's wrong the times? Of course not.
You know who's covering up? I know we both know
who's covering up. And who do you think is gonna
get it in the end. Yes, that's right, you and me,

(50:21):
the little guys right right in the end. Look at
my hand, it's all swollen and bumpy. It's got great
big footmarks all over it. Would you please give me
a l I'd like to just just one person give
me by the way, this is the quickest way to
get people on your side. You're covering up. They're covering up.

(50:42):
And I'll tell you there's so many things that are
that are covered up. It's so hot. We can't even
say it on the radio. So hot, can't say it
on the radio, can't even print it. It so hot.
Oh wow, it's hot, terrible hot stuff. I mean, it's
the big cover up. What do you think runs all

(51:03):
of it? You don't think I could say, do you?
You know? The interesting thing about it is that I can.
I can just see that a lot of people out there.
Some guy. Can you see some guy just tuning in
his radio, Suddenly here's this who do you think is
covering up? And there says Suddenly there's a little spine
rises inside. He says, yeah, yeah, I know, I know. Yes,

(51:25):
here's a guy that's gonna say it at last. Okay, Okay,
you see everybody, Please, I want to talk to one guy.
Give it one one honest, simple soul out there who
really believes they're covering up. Come on, come on, I
want to talk to you. I want to want to hear.
I want to hear, I want I'm just just I

(51:46):
want to hear it they're covering up. And then then,
of course I will feel vindicated because I have suspected
that they're covering up. Who's covering up? You know, you
know very well who's bring up. I can't say it
on the air, of course, can't even printed. Of course,

(52:07):
this day and age, this isn't the age of man anymore.
You could say what you felt covering why they'd kill
me in a second, why they'd have me off the
air in thirty seconds, So off the air plane, sealed wrapper.

(52:33):
Information will be sent to you. It's a beautiful isn't
it interesting? Here? Here, here comes a guy who believes
that they're covering up. You know, I'm looking at I'm
standing in front of a magazine counter today, yesterday, day before,

(52:54):
something like that. Isn't it a fantastic It hasn't the
weather been fantastic? I mean, you know, I literally an
ice cream cone melting in the sun. And there are
a few things more festive and in the same time
sadder than that. I am a rainbow ice cream cone. Yet,
I mean, yes, that's right. Twenty eight flavors, that's me.

(53:16):
Have you ever had the feeling that one day? Of course,
it is impossible, you know, I remember those big signs.
Did I ever tell you about the friend of mine
who traveled from coast to coast gym coast to coast,
stopped at every Howard Johnson from Maine all the way
down to Mexico City. Everywhere, and by the way, now
it's the Mexicans. Everywhere you turn, there's a gigantic sign
that says Yankee, go home, and now it's the But

(53:40):
this friend of mine travel from coast to coast, he
stopped off at every Howard Johnson, and he began to
perceive that there wasn't a single Howard Johnson anywhere that
had all twenty eight flavors. It was another one of
those utopian dreams. It was a dream of utopia, of paradise.
And every place he would go, they would say coconut rum.

(54:01):
While we were out of that. We don't have that
only the ones that have the stars next to them?
Do we have does somebody have does somebody have peppermint grape?
You have peppermint grape up there? Well, we have it occasionally.
And he traveled across the country trying to try to
buy a big scoop of peppermint grape or coconut rum

(54:23):
or almond tuti fruity, and everywhere he went he found
that the twenty eight flavor concept was a utopian dream.
Get it out of your skull. It is not going
to happen. And so I said, what happened to that?
Did somebody feel that there were no cover uppers? Oh,
that's right, covering up. Don't you think that I don't

(54:44):
know that you're covering up utopian dream? I sit here
a rainbow cone melting in the beautiful summer sun of
nineteen sixty America. I'm alive a cake of yeast. I
remember my mother one time. I'm this kid and see.

(55:06):
I don't know whether this expression was ever used in
the Eastern Seaboard region. I don't know. I have no idea,
and I'm i'm, I'm in the kitchen and I'm knocking
down a salami sandwich at that time I was hooked
on salami sandwiches with strawberry preserves. If you're ever mixed
kosher salami with strawberry preserved, Oh, it's it's really don't laugh. No,

(55:29):
it's the ying and yang principle again. Now, don't look
at me like that. It is the ying and yang
the slight. Another thing that you'll you'll find is very
good is to take a big deal pickle. It's the
same principle. Take a big deal pickle, you know the
kind that floats in barrels. Get one of these big
delicatess and dill pickles, the real dill pickle, and then

(55:50):
get a hole of down on the dime store, get
a hole of a stick of peppermint candy, you know
the striped kind. Cut a hole in the end of
the pickle, just like you're cutting the end office of gun,
and slowly bore down into the center of the pickle,
bore the peppermint stick. Has anybody else ever tasted this?
This is a this is a strange Midwestern phenomenon. I'm

(56:12):
gonna tell you exactly what you do. You take a pickle,
got the end off of it, and then bore down
into it. A peppermint stick, you know that kind of
has little holes in it, You know, the peppermint stick
that's kind of hollow, you know the little holes. There
is a kind of a kind of little hollow things
running through it. You know how peppermint is. You can
you can suck it like that. So you stick this
thing all the way down into it like a straw,

(56:34):
and then you you you draw the pickle juice up
through the peppermint stick. Yes, really, I'm telling you this
is I did not invent this. This is an old
ancient tradition. Am I the only one who has ever
tasted this? I'll tell you another thing you do. You
take a water melon and see, and you cut a

(56:54):
square out of a watermelon. This is this is a
real India Island trick. You take one of the big
green watermelon, not to stripe, but the big green kind,
the long green one, the gourd watermelon, the big fella,
and you make sure that it's ripe, see, and you
cut a plug out of it and you remove you
remove the plug, just pull it right out, you see.

(57:16):
And then you turn the watermelon over upside down and
you pour out just the little water that gathers, you know,
the juice that you pour it out, and then you
turn the watermelon back over again, see, and then you
take you take a bottle of well what they generally
used out there was well it's chin. You take a

(57:39):
bottle that you pour it right into the into the
into the into the watermelton. Just pour it right down
into it, you see, and it'll go in. Actually, you
just pour the whole thing in. They use sometimes they
use to use a big almost a fifth. You just
pour it right in and then put the plug back in. See,
just stick the plug back in and sit it out
in the sun and leave it out there for one

(58:00):
solid day, the old sun beaten down, saying. Then you
take the watermelon. Now it's even gotten riper in many ways.
Then you take you take this watermelon and then you
put it in a great big tub of ice and
you just punk it down, all crushed dice all around it,
and you just stick it down on the crushed dice,
and you let it sit in there for about another

(58:20):
half a day until it's ice cold, just absolutely ice cold.
And then you make as if you have say nine
people there, you get a little a knife and you
cut nine plug holes in this thing and put straws
in each one, and you're in business. Oh boy, speaking

(58:41):
of businesses at w O R A M and FM,
New York, the biggest watermelon dealer on the East Coast.
We'll be here until one o'clock.

Speaker 17 (58:49):
And the speaking of business, Son, no son, no coat,
two hundred execut you bring up ingredients and bringing a
PCE two hundred exeu premium ingredients a regular price. Two
hundred X gives your premium ingredients a regular price.

Speaker 2 (59:06):
Son, no oats and no news and no go blend
two hundred x.

Speaker 18 (59:11):
A new gasoline gives you the ingredients of a high
price premium, yet you pay only regular price. Many cars
get extra power up to thirteen percent more power after
just two tankfolds.

Speaker 2 (59:22):
Two hundred X gives.

Speaker 17 (59:23):
Your premiumedis a regular price.

Speaker 10 (59:25):
Dew So Noco two hundred X gives extra mileage up.

Speaker 2 (59:28):
To nineteen more miles per tankful.

Speaker 17 (59:31):
Two hundred X gives your premium medi it's a regular price.

Speaker 10 (59:34):
News so Noco two hundred X gives you extra engine
protection can mean longer life for your car. Yes News
and no go Blend two hundred X gives you extra power,
extra mile age, extra engine protection.

Speaker 17 (59:45):
Two hundred x gives your premium ingredients a regular price, no.

Speaker 2 (59:49):
Oats and no two hundred x exceptional.

Speaker 6 (59:54):
You're tune the seven ten on your radio dial. Next
best thing that being a delegate. Here the Democratic National
Convention starting Monday, the eleventh of July on w R Radio,
your number one station for convention coverage.

Speaker 2 (01:00:08):
That's w R A M and FM in New York.
Now back once again to Jans Shepherd. I'm your delegate
to the vast Convention of humanity, and I'll cast my
one half vote any way you decide that I'm to
cast it, so here, he said. Oh, speaking of convention coverage,

(01:00:36):
the the the it's it's it's a hard thing to describe.
I don't know whether or not has anyone ever tasted
that pickle thing? Or is this another creation of my, my,
my poor I think as you grow older. Now, this
is just what I think. And when I say older,
I mean when you get to be nine. When you're
nine years old, you have you have a fantasy thing

(01:00:57):
in the background which you consider your memory. And this
is what you say it was like when you were
six or three or two. When you when I use
the term old. I am merely say when and when
you when you slowly traverse along that vast horizontal line,
that curved, plain horizontal line of time, that great time
space curve, that jot and as you as you move

(01:01:20):
along it, more and more that that hazy, shifting foliage
in the background that you are leaving, that jungle that
you have traversed, becomes more and more of a fairy
land and less and less real. Now has anyone ever
tasted that pickle thing? Or did I create this? Totally
out of my own imagination? Totally, completely, thoroughly, totally, just

(01:01:44):
just like I remember again, you know, I'm sitting I'm
sitting in my swivel chair the other day, and the
phone rings and people talk, and I hear the sound
of a mimeograph machine, and I'm writing a piece for
a magazine or something, and I'm all involved, and suddenly,
like a belt in my ear, I heard the faint
echoes of something which I think I'm the only one.

(01:02:08):
Was there ever any radio program that you ever heard
of called the Tale Tales of the Alhambra? Did you
ever hear of anything like this? Tales of the Alhambra Campbo?
It was a very mysterious, enigmatic East program, that kind
of thing, you know, with big gong cawing, and the

(01:02:28):
announce would come from the mysterious East, many many centuries ago.
It was writ in the fingers of time as they
moved across the great sands of Eternity, the tales of
the al Hambra, this sort of thing, And and I
just suddenly occurred to me, and it disappeared then and
the sound of the mimeograph machines took over again. So

(01:02:51):
this is no, no, no, Shepherd stopped. No, there was
never any such thing. No pickles with cut it out,
and I walked away, and it was much better ten minutes.
And I went back to the water cooler and talked
to a salesman, and I was back in reality. Speaking
of the salesman. The other day, I got a copy

(01:03:11):
of Life magazine. This is not a commercial for Life,
by the way. I got a copy of Life magazine,
and there is an article on sharks. I'm fascinated by sharks.
I used to see sharks and a lot of different
and I was fascinated by the strange, beautiful, primeval ancient,
mysterious creatures. We don't really know a great deal about sharks,

(01:03:33):
you know, And there was an article on sharks, and
so I had to buy this. I saw it says
on the cover of Sharks. So I bought the article
just for that. I just just wanted to see this
shark thing. So I opened it up to the shark
And what do you think, Jim. Right in the middle
of this essay on sharks, there is a double page spread,

(01:03:53):
a double page in color spread picture.

Speaker 1 (01:03:56):
Of a wo r Monday after Sales meeting in color
from July twenty third, nineteen sixty. The emblem of the
eagle should be replaced by a cocker Spaniel. A modest
proposal for ex presidents and others. The Starlings have arrived
in Queen's Memories of the Lone Ranger.

Speaker 2 (01:04:30):
It's impossible to believe rightly in a way, I am
sitting here looking out over the river. We are twenty
four stories above Manhattan, in the very shadow of Times Square, mysterious, sinister, wild,
fantastic Times Square, where on the one hand, you can

(01:04:51):
buy an ineffable taffy apple, you can look at a
movie that cost seven billion dollars to make. You can
look at a gigant sign that guarantees that you can
get a sun tan without moving out of the range
of your television set. You can sit right there on
your dof drink your beer and be tanned in three hours.
And you can buy a hat that looks like the

(01:05:13):
top of Donald Duck's head with two great, big orange
ears and a big flapping orange bill out in front.
And you can have your own name inscribed in mother
of Pearl, mother of Pearl thread right over the bill.
Frank L Waternobby fantastic. And I'm looking at over the river,
that old Devil River, and I can see hanging there

(01:05:34):
like a low sullen cloud. I can see the lost
continent of New Jersey. Makes the old blood boil with
the desire to run, get out there, and just just
to go, go, go to the far western beaches. It's
impossible to believe that New Jersey exists the mythical continent.

(01:05:57):
Have you ever sat, Have you ever sat and looked
out over the river at those poor lost souls wandering
around out there in Limbo. I mean that's Limbo. You
know that there is a county in New Jersey named Limbo,
just wandering out there. And then look at it, hanging
like a low flying cloud, as was pointed out by

(01:06:17):
James Missioner, that that mysterious lost land hangs like a
low flying cloud on the horizon. You shake your head,
believing the first it's a mirage. You shake your head again,
but no, it does not go away. It stays hanging,
scudding over the water, New Jersey. Possible to believe that
it's there. I mean, look at it over there. A

(01:06:43):
steamboat goes passed between us and Jersey, a steamer bound
for far distant ports. And believe it or not, more
than ten minutes ago, I'm sitting here waiting, waiting to
go on, and I look out across there looking at
that low flying cloud. That that that impossible mirage, that
that incredible creation of man's mind, that couldn't possibly exist

(01:07:06):
in reality New Jersey, and between me and New Jersey,
believe it or not, a Chinese junk sailed upstream on
the Hudson, went right past us here, flying all flags,
that high stern reaching up to the sky, a beautiful thing,
and sailing downstream with this great, big old steamer moving

(01:07:29):
on and between between us and New Jersey. There was
a moment of reality and a moment of a moment
of beauty and a moment of poetry by George did
hardly believe it? Look at it hanging over there. It's incredible.
On crawdiebla. On crawdiebla, look at the tiny spires. I

(01:07:53):
remember one time, did I ever tell you about the
time that I that I rode into a valley in Austria?
About this, I had just passed through the Alps and
was on my way to was on my way to
a town in Austria, and I came down from a
long mountain, a long foothill, uh one of the foothills

(01:08:14):
that crawl up the sides of the Alps until finally
they break into that almost unbelievable thing that is the Alps.
And I came around a long bend of the road,
and lying below me was a deep, dark Austrian valley,
and it was it was about maybe four thirty or

(01:08:35):
five o'clock in the afternoon, and it was very very
early in spring. It was actually late winter, and so
twilight and and dusk came very early. It was maybe
four thirty quarter to five, just about the time when
it gets dark. And I came up over the top
of this hill and made a right hand bend and

(01:08:57):
a great forested road that I was driving on, and
below me lay this valley that reached on and on.
It must have stretched for oh oh, it's hard to judge,
maybe fifteen twenty miles it it kind of faded off
in the distance, and down on the valley floor I
could see a river, a very tiny thin thread of
a silver river, one of the ancient four letter rivers.

(01:09:20):
By the way, almost all the rivers are ge have
four letter names for some reason. The other the the
uh Oh I can name does Loats, the the uh
avon the uh Well. One of the most interesting of
all the rivers that I've seen along in that area
was the uh Esar, the Isar that goes on up

(01:09:41):
through Bavaria and reaches into the mountains. And these these
are flat, low, beautiful rivers, and way down below I
could see that silver ribbon. But the thing that made
it what it was at that instant, at the very instant,
was that all around on the hills the sun had set,
and the sun had already set down below in the

(01:10:02):
valley it was dark. It was dark down there, it
was already nighttime, and where I was, it was still daylight.
Just that beautiful gold and purplish haze of daylight. And
on the edges of the hills all around me it
was still daylight. And on the far side of the hills,
which I could see on one slope, it was still
broad daylight. The sun was beaming in and it was

(01:10:24):
a golden day. And you could see the green trees
crawling up the side with the shepherds and the sheep
and all moving on down into the valley because it
was night and they knew it. But down below it
was dark, and I could see a few little lights,
but I could see that silver stream of the river
because it was catching the reflection from the sky and
reflecting it back up to me. And it was a

(01:10:47):
sight that it was the kind of thing that you say,
this is. It's a mirage, it's an illustration. It's an
illustration of a fairy tale. And you can understand why
fairy tale were written the way they were written by
the people who lived in that As you know, most
of the fairy tales came from Bavaria, Hansel and Gretel,

(01:11:09):
the Great Black Forest tradition and the tradition of Heidi
and the Alps. Because it's an unbelievable world most of
the time, and the people there wander through it as
they lay themselves, having lived there all their lives, don't
believe it either, just like the New Jersey Its wandering
through that great, low lying fog that stretches on either

(01:11:32):
side of the ribbon of reality the Turnpike, as the
solitary travelers look forward from one Howard Johnson to the next.
Out there in the darknesses, solitary travelers out there beyond
the swamps li the natives wandering in their strange native dress,
the New Jersey eight moving occasionally. I remember, once in

(01:11:53):
a while I used to years ago, when I had
a I used to do the show from Carteret, New
Jersey late when I was raking late at night, and
I would get off the main highway off of the turnpike.
You'd be surprised, but lies there, and I would see
the occasional shy, roguish eyes of the natives peering at
me from the from the gorse bushes that's line, those

(01:12:15):
long pebble pebble strewn reaches of road that exist out
there beyond the swamp. And I would drive along and
I would try to I remember time and again when
I would stop the car and I would lure them
close enough to photograph them, and I would some of
them even got at at one point two or three
of them got so they would eat from my hand.
It's a wonderful moment, I would say. And if you

(01:12:36):
sit quietly, don't make any fast moves. You don't no
fast movements. Don't don't make any loud sudden noises. If
you sit on a log, or you sit on a
fire hydrant, say and hack and sack. You sit on
a fire hydrant long enough and quietly enough, don't move
that you will will find that they will. They will
begin to come. You'll see them at twilight especially, which

(01:12:59):
is the eating time, and you see them come down
into the into the light. And just just be very careful,
and you'll find you'll find that that that well, as
I said, you know, it's a low lying cloud hanging there.

(01:13:19):
It's impossible to believe, but it's there. It's impossible to believe.
It's like it's like one of the great you know,
one of the great problems that faces mankind today. And
oh we have billions of all problems, all problems, you know,
you know, as a as a race I have a
feeling that in the end, since problems and troubles are

(01:13:40):
becoming the great burden of the American you know, you
know why why the rest of the world seems happier
than America. It's got somebody now that can blame everything on,
you see, and and we our history as Patsy right now,
no matter what happens, if it rains three days too
long in Abyssinia, the Americans, they are playing with the
Adam Bama that I strucks doing that, and everybody feels

(01:14:02):
happy because you can blame somebody if a river overflows
in a South American province somewhere hit down the myericants
stay playing with the Adam baumbdas somebody down to the Americans,
you know, and make all of them vaguely Middle Europa accent.
That's just foreign accent. That doesn't mean Argentina's just foreign accent.

(01:14:24):
And the point being, you see, the rest of the
world is it walks with a spring in its stepped.
Now it has discovered a doll into which you can
stick pins. And we are natural pin being naturally loving
type people who want to be loved more than I feel.
Along with Clifford odettes. I feel stronger that we should

(01:14:45):
get rid of the eagles as the national emblem, and
we should get ourselves a nice friendly conquer spaniel as
the national m with great big eyes, big round eyes
looking up out of the flag, and all these saying
and instead of saying, you know, the scream of the
eagle is a fierce scream in the valleys. I mean,
we were not eagles. You're not an eagle, of course,

(01:15:07):
not Jack Parry, not an eagle, I mean, of course not.
What we need is a nice, big, fluffy Saturday evening
post covered type black and white cocker spe you know,
with big brown liquid eyes looking up from our flag
and underneath the motto, which should be our new national motto,
please love me, Just love me. And you see, a

(01:15:34):
person like that is a natural patsy. He is going
to get He's going to get a swift kick in
the slats every five minutes. When he turns around, or
even when he doesn't turn around, they'll turn him around.
They turn around plunk every time things go bad. You
kick that in every office. There's one guy who please
love me, every office, believe me, And he is the

(01:15:54):
one who has the biggest welts. He is the one
who gets the size ten and a half right in
the right place all the time, with the hobnails. I mean,
he is the one who constantly gets it. And since
we are the lovely people of the world, I mean,
you know, just turn around, I mean, just turn around. There.
The rivers are overflowing again. The plague of locusts has

(01:16:16):
hit Estonia again. Turn around, and we are the but curs.
We must be honest that always throughout history there has
been a patsy, And incidentally, patsy's are usually ex bosses.
Interestingly enough, in the historical sense. England became a patsy,

(01:16:37):
you know, for a long while, and suddenly they were
taken off the hook. Everybody was mad at the English.
Everybody was mad at Germany for a while. And now
it's us, the Patsy's of the world. Can't you see
those That would be an interesting flag. Peggin would like
that flag. I mean, either that or a soft cuddly
kitten on our flag. I have to make a nice

(01:16:59):
flag for American know, a little soft cuddly Siamese kitten
with big liquid eyes looking up please love me. Just
a little dish of cream and hobby happy. We're speaking
of big fat, round, glowing warm liquid brown eyes and
spaniels that just sit quietly hoping to be loved. This
is w O R M FM, New York, right here

(01:17:22):
in the middle of the big app Aren't you got
any business there? Gone? Come on, That's just all I
care not. I stand athwart the bulwarks, I stand atop
the barricades, and I shot an arrow into the air,
and I care not work let any one of those
arrows and into my into my bow. I shall put

(01:17:44):
this slang here. It comes right. Her blend makes the
difference in taste, yes and cigarette taste. The big difference
is filter blend, and only Winston has it. Winston tastes
good like a cigarette should. The reason Winston tastes so

(01:18:23):
good is filter blend up front, rich golden tobaccos, specially
selected and specially processed for true satisfying flavor and filter smoking.
So remember it's what's up front that counts. Try Winston
for flavor. Winston tastes good like a cigarette should. Just please,

(01:18:51):
I mean, hello, hello, Just please love me. That's That's all.
That's all I need is just to love. What will
someone please call and just say we love you, just
we love you, you know. And speaking of the problem

(01:19:11):
of love speaking, I wish I had I wish I
had some some Hey, Jen, I'll tell you what you do.
Go in the next room, quickly into the library and
get a a you notice where all the classical music
is lined up there? Or I'll tell you what you do.

(01:19:32):
Go in there. Do you know how to look in
that file cabinet there? I'll tell you what you do.
You go in there and get the h I'll tell
you what Go in and get Wagner's the ride the
valveceddes val Kitties. Either that or get the William tell overture.

(01:19:52):
I have a very special reason for it, ominous deep
reasons for it. Speaking of ominous deep reasons, has it
ever occurred to you don that one of the major
problems that man has to face today is, let's say
what we shall call built in obsolescence. You know, you're

(01:20:15):
just like you're probably aware that your car has an
obsolescent factor built into it. In other words, the men
who build a car do so with an actual factor
that is built in. In other words, they say, well,
now this year, we're going to build this car with
this thing in that is guaranteed that we are making
it is obsolete. We are going to make sure that

(01:20:36):
it's obsolete next year so that this guy will become
dissatisfied with his car, and that he will then go
out and buy another one the year after another that
is actually built in. When I say build in obsolescent,
I don't mean, you know, most people have an idea
that progress sort of happens haphazardly. I mean, change happens
that the guy turns out a car and he builds
the best thing he can build, you know, he builds

(01:20:57):
it just the best thing he can build, and then
the next year he it's another and he's, oh, gee,
you know, wouldn't it be great if we if we
made the grill around this year, and if we made
the light square, and if we made the window in
the back smaller, and if we made a stripe over
the side there. Now, I think that would improve that car.
This is the way most people think it's done, but
it really isn't, you know, not anymore. The way it's

(01:21:19):
done is this. Let's see, I'll tell you last year
we had that diamond shape we'reill there in the back. Now,
would you please get out the obsolescent blueprints for that one.
And they find out that for three years in advance,
they have already plotted the changes which will come every year.
You see, instead of going from point A to point

(01:21:40):
z the first year. In other words, if they think
of this great new shape, let's say in nineteen fifty nine,
and in building it at night, no, they save that
to nineteen sixty five, and they gradually changed the shape
in different ways until you finally hit sixty five. The
point being that they want you to be constantly a
little bit dissatisfied. I'm coming. He didn't think about a year,

(01:22:01):
I bought my connor. Well they did, you see, they
thought of it three years before. And that's built in obsolescence.
And this is beginning to happen to man himself. You see,
there is a built in obsolescent factor. And you know
what that built in obsolescence factor is what it's called,
what I shall call it for you, that is called memory.

(01:22:24):
You see. Memory is that, at one hand, is the
great beneficial thing of Maggie. In other words, what do
you have in your life? I mean, you've lived let's
say one hundred and twenty eight years, and you don't
have much to go, and all you've got is what
you've lived, the past, you see, to draw on. And
this is like a book. You know that if you

(01:22:45):
constantly forget the book as you read it, the book
is senseless. In other words, if you start to read
at page one, and you're now at page two hundred
and seventy four, but you have forgotten every page that
you've read it, the story means nothing. It is meaningless totally.
And so memory is necessary to give meaning to your life,
if there's any meaning at all. But on the other hand,

(01:23:06):
memory keeps bugging you. It is it is again, you see,
it's the it's the factor that keeps like you sit
there and you hear some guy. He gets up and
gives a speech. He says, our party is determined the
sheer of all years, in the shear of decision. Our
party is determined to give rights, free rights to all men,
regard of the race, creed, and color, and that once

(01:23:30):
more man will be on the pathway, the roadway to
stuffing into that beautiful, clean pasture, that clean pasture, ah,
that safe harbor that all of us have been striving
for in the Great American relation since the very first
settler landed at Plymouth Rock. You know, here's here's where

(01:23:52):
memory bugs you. Now, if you're hearing this for the
first time, it sounds fantastic, But after the thirty fourth time,
she begins sort of itch. You know, are not a
great leader who shall safely steer us into the safe harbor?

(01:24:19):
Begin to itch? You know, you can see yourself sailing
into a safe harbor, with the leader at the helm
pointing that I am here. And and of course this
is why what I say. Memory, at one one hand,
is a great thing, and at the other hand, it
bugs you, and so it makes you obsolete. You leap
up and you say, oh, come on now, and all

(01:24:39):
the people who are hearing it for the first time, Oh,
take him out, get an old take him away. You
know that's true. As you as your memory gets more
and more complete. In other words, as you get more
and more into the story, you know more and more
about the story. And as you know more more about

(01:25:00):
the story, you are more inclined to snicker at each
episode as it comes up. Once you begin to learn
the style of the author, you see the author in
this case being mad, and he has his own style,
and he's predictable, just like every other author is, because
authors are mad anyway, and so you're bugged at one

(01:25:24):
at the same time. And one of the problem, of course,
is is built in obsolescence. What do we do with
all the obsolete people? Now? Now you are looking at
a man me right now, who remembers nothing. Strangely enough,
do you know that I can't remember anything that happened
between I don't remember. Nineteen fifty three has disappeared from
my memory. If you were to say to me, Shepherd,

(01:25:47):
what about nineteen, I can't. I can't remember anything. I
can't remember one thing about fifty I can't remember. I
can't even remember New Year. It's nineteen fifty three. I
can't remember. I don't even remember writing nineteen fifty three?
Were you here? Do you remember nineteen fifty three? Clearly?
Do you remember anything about it? Do you, for example,

(01:26:07):
do you remember nineteen forty seven? Now I had no memory.
I remember nothing, which makes me a perfect twentieth century man.
I realized that I could very well be a man
of the hour. And the minute I begin to remember things,

(01:26:28):
I'm in trouble. I mean I I can tell I'm
in bad trouble. Like like many times, I sit in
sales meetings or or various other gatherings of the of
the of the of the Optimistic Plan of international Believers,
and I sit in these in these meetings, I go
to all kinds of meetings, luncheon meetings, and it's getting
to be like a great a great organ sound all

(01:26:50):
the time in my ears. Everyone is going to plan
a big thing for next season. Everyone has a big,
big deal going on. And I've heard the same thing
me and I never see the big deals happen. You know,
I've sat here, I've gone to all the cocktail parties
that introduce all the new models, that introduce all the
new big plans Operation Dynamic, which we're going to begin

(01:27:13):
in the first of September, an Operation Dynamic. And then
I raised my hand and say, what happened to Operation
Happy Happy? I mean Operation Happy Happy. Well, that was
the last crowd that were here. And each operation, you see,
it kind of fades off into the darkness. Now I

(01:27:34):
know that a large number of people are saying, probably listening, saying,
what is this guy talking about? Because I noticed one
thing that's interesting. Most people lead lives of a of
a straight line nature, they walk along a long, narrow,
straight line, and they hardly ever look to the right
or to the left really to see whether or not.

(01:27:55):
Have you ever had the impression that you are in
a cartoon, I mean an animated car the kind you
see in the movies. Have you ever looked at the
background in an animated cartoon? I mean, you know, you
see that you see the dog chasing the cat, or
you see the duck chasing the beaver, or you see
the mice chasing the bear, or whatever it is. You
know there's always a chase sequence in all these things.

(01:28:17):
Have you ever looked at the background, I mean just
the background, when you'll find that it's the same background
going past all the time. If you look here, the
same tree they keep passing, They keep passing the same rock,
they keep passing, the same ponds. Look carefuie the next
one you see. Have you ever had the feeding that
you sometimes are involved in that same thing, That you

(01:28:39):
might be a character in an animated cartoon and you
were running like mad, and you were passing the same rock,
the same tree, and you're involved in the same chase sequence.
That either you are the mouse chasing the rabbit, or
you are the rabbit chasing the bear, and then it
always turns around, you know, in any one of these
things that the bear suddenly gets he gets the upper hand,

(01:29:01):
and he chases the rabbit for a while, and then
the rabbit chases. And if you'll notice, every one of
them ends inconclusively that you see the two of them
running like mad over the hills and dales until finally
they disappear in the distance. But nobody catches anybody reab
in the end, which is as close to real life
as you can get. These are true realism. These cartoons

(01:29:21):
much closer than say something that Montgomery Clifton and Elizabeth Taylor,
you know, you get this feeling of Elizabeth Taylor Montgomery.
They come together in the end. Ah here, Yeah, the
music rises, and you have a feeling that you have
arrived at an end. Oh no, life doesn't end like
that after a two hour session. It does not end

(01:29:42):
with muddy dude, you know, big music rising and you
walk arm in arm with this chick, you know, into
the sun. No, No, what happens when the sun comes
up the next day and the next day and the
day after that, it sort of drizzles off, you see,
and the next thing, you know, you're passing the same
needs time and time again, waiting for them music to
go again, which is you see. I feel that this

(01:30:04):
is why the cartoons have a classical quality, much more
so even than the classical Western, a classical quality, because
they never are resolved. The rabbit never really catches the mice,
and the mice never really catch the cat. They give
him a hard time all the way. He's got black
eyes and an old baffo. The dog is lying there

(01:30:24):
and in his dog, his dog host has great big teeth,
and he gets hit in the face and hitting the eye,
and he gets flattened up against the concrete. But he's
right there running at the end, and so are the mice,
and so are the rabbits and the dogs and everybody.
And they've seen them disappearing over the hill, which is
exactly the way life is, and that and the horizon
goes constantly past them. Now it is a matter of style,

(01:30:45):
of course, style changes. There's the Upa style, there's the
moon Bird style. There's even the Walt Disney style. All
these are different styles, and they seem to be living,
but they're all living the same way, still chasing over
that same horizon. Now you can parallel the changes of
style with the changes of time in man's existence is history. Sure,

(01:31:09):
we don't dress like an eighteenth century man now, I
mean the houses look different from eighteens, but the same life.
You see the same scurrying, the same chasing over the
horizon and disappearing in the distance, completely unresolved. And so
BeO Wulf stands up there with his great, big, old
shaggy skin hanging all around, and he swats down the

(01:31:31):
giants and the monsters. He's above the same thing, just
different styles. Well, one of the problems, of course, is
this build in obsolescence. I would like to make a
modest proposal. All our Charles Lamb, have you noticed that
the litteral is becoming littered with obsolete people, I mean

(01:31:51):
sore heads and kerm mudgeons, guys who keep leaping up
and say, now come on, will you cut it out?
That's gotten worse and you know it. I mean, nothing's
happening good. I mean you're just saying that. I mean,
these are getting to be very bad people to have around.
So I would like to make a suggestion, a modest proposal,
And I want to go on record as having said,

(01:32:12):
I will stand by this completely. If you hear this
on any comedian's LP from herein in, he got it here.
If you hear it on the on the Ed Sullivan Show,
spoken by a friendly comedian who sits on a who
sits on a stool and talks on the telephone, he
heard it here. First, I am making a modest proposal,

(01:32:33):
and I think you'll see immediately the efficacy of this proposal.
I propose that all the obsolete people, particularly, you know,
one of the great problems we have today is used presidents.
I mean, what do you do with the used president?
I mean, a man who has risen to the rank
of president is at the very peak. I mean, he's

(01:32:56):
at the peak. Where do you go from the peace?
You can't go higher than that. And it's sad to
see a man actually past his peak. I mean, you know,
an ex president has passed his peak. He has to be.
I mean it's like an x sty or something. He's
an ex president. You can't go any higher. You can't.

(01:33:17):
I mean, you can't be an ex god. And here
is an ex president. What do you do with an
ex president? Now, each one of us, you see, we
can stand each other because we always have the vague
suspicion in our minds that our best day is coming.
The guy's that you don't know that his best day
is gone. You see, we can hide it, but not
an ex president. When you are an ex president, you

(01:33:39):
are an ex president. But an ex president it's like
an ex chairman of the board. You know, when the
chairman of the board is finally voted out and put
out the pasture, sent off to the chicken farm that
he always wanted to have in Rhode Island, and he
keeps coming back every third or fourth week, wearing his
golf pants and making snide remarks when he sees the

(01:33:59):
same charts, and he walks up and down by the
water cooler wearing his green eyes shield when he'd just
come back from his trip to Europe three days early
because he wanted to attend the stockholders meeting, and he
makes those silly remarks. I mean, you know, what do
you do with an ex chairman of the board. How
you can't go any hire? See. So I have a
modest proposal for the obsolete people of our world, A

(01:34:24):
modest proposal that I want you to consider for the
ex presidents for the ex chairman of the boards. And
I'll tell you another crowd, what do you do with
an ex big leaguer? I mean a really ex big leaguer?
I mean, where could Babe Ruth or where you see
Babe Ruth? After Babe Ruth stopped hitting the home runs,
he was a broken man. You know, he's embarrassing to

(01:34:48):
have around, you know, Babe Ruth. After Babe Ruth stopped
hitting the home runs, he was a broken man. You know,
he's embarrassing to have around. You know, really this is
you know, I mean, I remember one time, I'm sitting
in a I'm sitting in a in a gas station,
in a gas station, mind you, in Ohio, a miserable,

(01:35:09):
rotten little gas station. They had one of these little
little dirty glass cases full of old candy bars and
vulcanizing kits, and it smells like old oil.

Speaker 7 (01:35:21):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:35:21):
It was one of these just a little, old, crummy
gas station that still had hand operated pumps, you know,
and snorts the old gas into it. I am sitting there,
believe it or not. I am sitting on a box,
talking away an afternoon with an ex home run slugger
of the National League who was not. He did not

(01:35:44):
own that gas station. That's the sad part of it.
He was just working there. He was working in a
forty third rate gas station. I'm not going to tell
you his name. It doesn't matter, you see, because that's
the embarrassing part of it. Everybody wants to know who
it was, because you see, you want to be in
on the wake and and anyway, I began to have

(01:36:05):
the feeding that X that the that the building, the
obsolescent feature is a terrible thing in man now with cars,
you know, the old dream How would you like it
if the car that you had all your dreams in
that you thought, yeah, I mean, your whole dreams were
poured in to this automobly was to come back and
haunt you, that car and come and drive around and
look at look at and drive right up your driveway

(01:36:27):
and look at you and you're sitting there in your
new nineteen sixty one swept wing model and that that
old nineteen forty seven Dinah Flow type, the one, I mean,
the fantastic car that you poured your dreams would come
and look you right in the eye with its poor
old sealed beam headlamp doing That's what happened to us.

(01:36:49):
Looks at him. You remember, I remember when I was
important to you, And look at you now, and this
poor old thing. You see. The thing is that that
makes themile a beautiful depository of dreams, is that we
can throw it away. And so we take these old
cars and out there in that fable never never Land,
that lost continent of New Jersey, that lost Atlantis, there

(01:37:11):
is a there is a great field of acres and acres,
and you know what they do. What they're done. They
burn all the old dreams of mankind. All the last
year models are burned and crushed and banged out of
so that they can't come back and haunt you. But
we can't do that with people well, I mean, you know,
Western Western civilization and all that. We can't do that.

(01:37:32):
So I have a modest proposal. Here it is. Are
you ready to listen to it. I'm gonna warn you
first of all that I am aiming this at idealists.
If you're not an idealist, get out of here. I
am aiming this at people who have a deep love
of mankind and the dignity of man, and that our
no later will safely guide us into a harbor of Oh,

(01:37:54):
excuse me, I got off the subject there. I insist
insists that women and children leave because we are dealing
with a real problem here now, and all men know
more about this than the women and children do, because
women are never obsolete, nor our children. But men, oh boy,

(01:38:15):
do they become obsolete? And do they know it? Every
man I know is an next second basement. Every man
I know remembers when he could make a pivot play
of one kind or another. Every man I know remembers
when he could move with feline grace through the jungle,
carrying that mit loosely, ready to make that hard, sharp

(01:38:35):
fielding play it short and of course, using the terms allegorically.
I know, son, you don't play baseball, but it's another
game we're talking about. Okay. I have a modest proposal.
I propose that all ex presidents, immediately upon becoming an
ex president, let's say, the afternoon after the inauguration of

(01:39:00):
the new president, that at proper ceremonials, at a proper
reverent time, that the ex president be completely encased in bronze,
the way we encase baby shoes, completely encased in bronze,
to be immortalized and memorialized forever. How much higher can

(01:39:27):
you go than to be a bronze statue. And then
you see all the ex presidents. That would dispose of
a lot of problems. It disposes of the convention after problem.
I mean, it's very embarrassing to have an ex president
show up at conventions. Believe me, mister Hoover is very
embarrassing to a lot of people just because he's around now. Ah, yes, Truman,

(01:39:50):
all of them, all ex presidents, doesn't matter, doesn't matter.
How great do you realize it's Can you imagine sitting
around and talking to Lincoln, let's say, thirty five years
after the Civil War, and he's lost his teeth, you know,
and he's getting kind of seen on, and wow, I
remember the old day. It's terrible. You don't want it
this way. One of the reasons that that Lincoln is

(01:40:11):
always considered a great man in our thinking is that
he left the scene at exactly the right time. Believe me, dramatically.
That's why, in the minds of many people, Glenn Miller
is still a great band leader because he left the
scene before it you could find out otherwise. And here,

(01:40:32):
and this is not an inhuman remark it's a realistic remark.
So I make a modest proposal that all ex presidents
be encased in bronze like baby shoes, and we have
a hall built in Washington called the President's Memorial Hall,
and all of the presidents would be placed on great

(01:40:53):
marble statues, and you'd see him there, you see, they'd
be really there. You could walk along, you see, there's
there's covering the Truman. And if they're really there, they're
encased in bronze, immortalized forever, and they can never and
and exactly at the moment when they were still at
their very peak, you see, he was a president when
this happened to him. We might even arrange it to

(01:41:15):
have it done fifteen minutes before the inauguration of the
next president, so that we could properly say this is
a president. Do you realize that countless Americans would it
would be become a national shrine, a national What do
we do with old dictators? Poor old perone wanders around,

(01:41:37):
you know, he said, the old days, the old days,
it's very embarrassing to see the next dictator, really terrible
embarrassing thing. And historical figures could submit themselves, you see,
immediately when they become you know, when it's quite obvious
that you know, this is no way to go now
any longer. It's just all you know, you've been at
the top. They could, they could, they could automatically, they

(01:41:59):
could all automatically be submitted to a board. There would
have to be an international board. I mean, I mean
Winston Churchhill. Do you know I can think of countless
man who Peyton Peyton is a superb example. Pouo Peyton,
who was a hero in World War One, a great
French hero, lived to become quite the opposite. And if

(01:42:24):
somewhere right along that line he had been encased in bronze,
never would have happened, and a hero would have remained
on and on and on and on. Can't you can't
you imagine? Can't you imagine? Let's say, let's say General Motors.
Let's say, uh oh, let's say the International WATA Nabby
Widget Corporation of North and South America, a gigantic corporation

(01:42:47):
that for years has been the kingpin in the widget industry.
An old C. M. Avery Wiget, a tough man who
pulled himself by his bootstraps out of a mire. The
mediocre mud of civilization, who wrote was to create an
entire empire, is now getting a little dey. And so
one day they decide that se Avery is going to

(01:43:09):
be put out the pasture. They call them in and
they give them a solid platinum watch. They give them
a solid platinum plutter, They give them a solid platinum
thirty eight foot chriss craft. They give them a solid
platinum scroll, and then they lead him into the next

(01:43:32):
room and encase him in bronze. I mean, it's beautiful,
and think of the problems it solves. And of course
we could have our lesser shrines, the innumerable uncles and
aunts who long since of outlived their usefulness to mankind,

(01:43:53):
the innumerable you know, you know what I'm talking about,
of course, and we could we could all have a
little lesser shrines. Now this is Aunt Teresa here, and
you can have you can have half models made busts,
you know, or maybe just a foot I mean, if
you if you live in a small efficiency apartment. And

(01:44:17):
of course, the beauty of it is is that all
of us could look forward to immortality then in one
way or another, quick instant and it lasts forever. Speaking
of the last thing, forever. I would like to point
out that time and tide in the affairs. No, let's
tune in, but soon again. Night with two load.

Speaker 7 (01:44:53):
Right persashure the wrist breed pressure.

Speaker 2 (01:45:03):
Valentine Beer, the.

Speaker 11 (01:45:07):
Crisp kind of light with true logger flavor. That's the
crisp refresher Balentine beer. Enjoy a tall, foaming glassful and
you'll soon see why folks have made Valentine the largest
selling beer in the East.

Speaker 2 (01:45:24):
Beerine colder. That's on Valentine Beer. I just couldn't resist that.
There's so many things I can't resist. I wish, I wish,

(01:45:46):
I wish I were. Oh, look at that the lost
continent over there. The reason I was reminded of Austria
is that as I sit here and look out the window,
I can see the spire of a church reaching up
into that gray, gray cloud. That is the imaginary land

(01:46:07):
of the munchkins. W R Radio your station for news.

Speaker 7 (01:46:19):
Why do you hear in the best of circles shave
for all around feed. If the pleasure doesn't fade on
one or two, you get that first beer pleasure each
That's why you're here in the best of circles Chafer
all around.

Speaker 2 (01:46:41):
The pleasure of Schafer doesn't fade after a glass or two.
Your last ones just was rewarding as your first Chaffer
gives you all the pleasure of the first beer. Every
beer through the pleasure doesn't fade after one or two.
You get that first beer pleasure two.

Speaker 7 (01:47:03):
That's why here of the best circles Chafer bottom.

Speaker 9 (01:47:10):
This is w O, r AM andt FM New York
and RKO General station. At the time town one pm.

Speaker 10 (01:47:21):
James McCarthy reporting or up to the minute reports.

Speaker 2 (01:47:24):
Keep tuned to this station. Now the news.

Speaker 10 (01:47:30):
Well, the dark horse presidential candidate of the Republican Party,
Nelson Rockefeller, moves into Chicago today for a meeting with
US backers. Richard Rendell is at Chicago's Midway Airport with
Rockies Welcoming Committee.

Speaker 2 (01:47:41):
So we'll switch to you Richard for that story.

Speaker 19 (01:47:47):
Here at Midway Airport, Chicago, there's great activity and excitement.
That's the cause Governor Rockefeller of New York is headed
this way. Lots and lots of the Rockefeller admirers are here.
They're milling about carrying banners which read draft Rocky, who
else but now? And the light JOHNA. Rockefeller comes here
to promote the platform proposals he and Vice President Nixon
worked out in New.

Speaker 2 (01:48:07):
York last night, and this crowd is all for him.

Speaker 19 (01:48:11):
This is Richard Randell reporting from Midway Airport, Chicago. Now
back to James McCarthy in Washington.

Speaker 2 (01:48:19):
More news. In a moment, Reach for Your partner swings
to the right when the music stops, give her a light.

Speaker 12 (01:48:27):
Now that it has found the secrets that unlocks the flavors,
unlocks the flavor, unlocks the flavor, rather than has found
the secrets that unlocks the flavor and enough.

Speaker 2 (01:48:40):
Flter say your red.

Speaker 14 (01:48:50):
In today's telling them fine tobaccos can be blended.

Speaker 2 (01:48:54):
Blended, blended, blend.

Speaker 14 (01:48:58):
Not to suit a filter, but to suit your taste.
So through the miracle tip, pure white inside, pure white outside,
you get taste, more taste, more taste.

Speaker 2 (01:49:09):
By far, tell that's found the secretciple that out.

Speaker 14 (01:49:13):
Lots of the flavor, Reach for flavor, Reach for l.

Speaker 2 (01:49:21):
And m well.

Speaker 10 (01:49:25):
Conflicting reports are sweeping Capitol Hill today about a possible
East German move against Free Berlin sometime within the next
thirty days, although it has been officially denied by top
government sources. The fund is still giving a lot of
Americans some worry. The man who initiated the thinking on
the Red German move is Pennsylvania Democrat Dan Flood. He
claims private intelligence sources told him why was it.

Speaker 20 (01:49:49):
Five by the food that around Berlin the Russian than German.
The German Russian Cali have been engaged for several weeks
in a progressive and very definite build up a troop

(01:50:09):
and equipment, military equipment and circling wet Berlin. My information
is that these troop concentration and their military hardware support
has been progressing and it's continuing to the extent that
there is in circling wet Berlin now in round numbers

(01:50:33):
thirty five to forty thousand.

Speaker 10 (01:50:35):
Troop congress been flood of Pennsylvania. In other news, Congolese
Premier Lamumba is then route to America today for a
meeting with United Nations leader and an attempt to quell
the growing feelings that he's headed toward the communist tent.
Belgian troops meanwhile, have pulled out of the Congo capital
amid the rise of cheers from Congolese onlookers. At the
same time, UN soldiers who are replacing the Belgian started

(01:50:56):
panning out through the hinderlands where most of the mutinous
Congolese soldiers are hiding. The latest word from the Congo
came from me one official there who said that in
his mind, the Congo as a modern republic has fallen
apart at the seams.

Speaker 2 (01:51:07):
That's the names James McCarthy reporting. The signs are everywhere.
Let me tell you, they are everywhere. Man. You know,
as he walks through the valley of the Vale, as
he walks through this great veil of tears, he begins
to learn a little something about living, you know. He
begins to observe the signs and the poor tents. He

(01:51:28):
sees the moss growing on the sides of trees, and
he can hold up his finger and he can detect
which way the wind is blowing. Ah, yeah, he can
detect which way the wind is blowing. And it is
blowing in many directions. Now, everywhere, everywhere, the great tidal
wave of history is beginning to engulf us. Things are

(01:51:48):
sneaking up in the darkness behind each and every one
of us, every one of us, no question about it.
For example, I read a letter. It comes from a
very simple burgher, a simple citizen of Queen's. All the
signs are everywhere, all friends, I cannot tell you how deeply,

(01:52:09):
how deeply the signs are inscribed into that vast, vanid
randed face of man. I read a few days ago.
The suspicion began to creep along my tendrils that the
great event had occurred, and this is a writer from Queen's,

(01:52:31):
that a greed event had occurred. One very fine morning,
as I was as I was cooking myself in the sun,
I noticed several very muscular, tightly built birds digging their
subsistence out of my back lawn. Their alertness amazed me,
and their attitude was that of someone who had discovered
a hidden secret and knew very well where the important

(01:52:54):
clues were hidden, and was not about to tip his hand.
One would have expected one of these creatures to stand
up on a rock and announce that he had solved
the mystery of existence. While standing at attention, Intrigued by
this bird, and being of a curious nature myself, I
proceeded to find out what specie it was from my

(01:53:15):
bird book, I decided. After looking over all the pictures
and reading all the descriptions that it could be only unkind,
but the ones I had seen were nevertheless drabber than
the book variety. I closed my book with doubt and uncertainty,
and I left the matter rest there until to day,
upon observing three more of these birds, there is no
longer any doubt, no longer a shred of doubt. Just

(01:53:38):
a few minutes ago, three birds paraded before my window,
one a metallic green as seen in the book. The
other two were drab brown. I had seen these before. Yes,
mister Shepherd, to day we must celebrate, or perhaps we
must go down on our knees. The starlings have come

(01:53:58):
to forest hills, and their bigamists too. So don't don't
don't hold. The signs are everywhere. Starlings are not the
only force, friends, that is hell bent on destroying a
supposedly superior human beings. I quote all everywhere there are

(01:54:18):
things that are planning, making preparations. And it's not just Americans,
it's all of mankind. I now quote from an item
that came from the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, a paper that
sits somberly like a large toadstool overlooking the schoolkel River
please don if you will, if you will, another force
hell bent. Oh there's mankind embattles mankind fasted once again?

(01:54:49):
What the realization that he is not alone in the universe,
but there are many forces, indescribable forces that are bent
on is eventual destruction? Alert un kind, Alert. I let

(01:55:12):
this so kid here enough so that you get ready.
I will award the brass fig bronze, oak leaf palm.
If you can tell me whose theme song this was.
There are horses on all sides of us. We are

(01:55:34):
on battle. A runaway bulldozer went out a tear in
South Philadelphia Monday night, inexplicable, but met its master momentarily,
Patrolman Paul Rawlings. Patrolman Rawlings leaped aboard the snorting, clanking

(01:55:55):
machine and wrote it down like a champion Bronco buster.
But by them Rawlings found the right button. The bulldozer,
in solo performance in a rampaging roaring scene, had chewed
up three man hole covers, two hundred yards of new curbing,
and a couple of Philadelphia traffic poles in one great

(01:56:19):
slash across the city of Philadelphia. Rawlings and his partner,
Frank Baron, were headed south on Tenth Street in their
red car in pursuit of an automobile speedster, when suddenly
get the scene, quick, hurry up, set it back. Oh,
we can't have no one that's it. Hold it now,

(01:56:41):
hold it, Hold it now now, I'll give you the cube.
Hold it now. Set it back now I set it back,
so no, no, set it back to that point. All right,
Now get the scene. They are driving along Tenth Street,
driving along tenth Street, They're pursuing their duty, when suddenly,
out of the darkness, yes, oh, the darkness loomed a monster,

(01:57:05):
smoke belching from its exhaust, its diesel exhaust. It weighed
sixteen tons. It was lumbering along all by itself in reverse,
apparently having been started somewhere by perhaps heat traction. Rawlings
crawled up out of the bulldozer's cab. He pulled levers,
He's creamed for help, Help, help, Radio headquarters for help.

(01:57:30):
About sixteen tons. Monster plunged along, knocking down lampposts, chewing
up curves, manhole covers flying in the air, until finally,
after two hundred yards of this, the machine, all by
itself stopped. Listen, do you realize the meaning of this?

(01:58:01):
A monster came out of the darkness, chewed up two
hundred yards of curbing, knocked down three traffic control polls,
stoplights to you through seven manhole covers in the air.
And then that's what I wanted all along. Give me that.
That's it. No no, no, no, no no no no

(01:58:22):
no no no. Mankind to the rescue, will stop it.
Hy George will stop him.

Speaker 21 (01:58:30):
Hurry comes home, oyay, but Camarne has come.

Speaker 2 (01:58:40):
Oh just said a nick of time. Hurry compligatively, way,
thank stop? Lookative all right, come on, rawlings, get on
with it, will you? Uh? I mean that is a

(01:59:05):
throwing eye. Can I that's a wild piece of music,
you know. Uh Rassini threw everything he had in it
and and uh cap it give you that one big boom?

Speaker 7 (01:59:17):
Do you?

Speaker 2 (01:59:17):
I will award you. I'll tell you since in just
a minute, hold it. It's cube up now, I'll hold
it there. That's the place I want it. Now. I
will award you because they never Yeah, they played this
part on the show too. Can you find the party
because brum brum it's at the beginning of the second movement,

(01:59:42):
So you'll find you'll find that the first movement goes along.
It's a quiet pastoral movement. It's describing the Swiss country side,
and so that. In case you're interested, and it's the opening, Yeah,
just look for it down, you'll find it in there.
You mean you've only got one record, only one record. Oh,
that's gotta be in there. Oh, I see it's disappeared.

(02:00:11):
Somebody took that part home. Uh huh, one of our
friends here. Well, I'll tell you this. I will award
the brass figgy honestly with Mon's oak leaf palm.

Speaker 7 (02:00:21):
You know.

Speaker 2 (02:00:21):
It's funny thing, the opening of that, the opening of
that show, which without even I'll do the whole thing.
I'll say. I'll say in the Legends of the Old West,
Oh you remember that, In the Legends of the Old West,
a mask man and his faithful Indian companion pundle. Right again,

(02:00:42):
a lone Ranger rides again. Oh you got that past
draw in there? Give me give me the gaser. All
of a sudden, I keep getting his tone power meant hair,
I mean the Lone Ranger would run out of gas
for the first five minutes against the old Sheriff for
that one. All right, let's try it again now deep
in the Annals, of the Old West. There is a legend,

(02:01:05):
the legend of a mask man who came out of
the East to right the wrongs, to right the lawless,
and to set the trail that was to be followed
by all the Western pioneers for centuries to come. He
was a mask man. He rode a gigantic horse named Silver,
and he rode with his Indian companion, His faithful Indian companion, Panto.

(02:01:26):
The mask Man rides again, High Silver. We want.

Speaker 21 (02:01:34):
Wow, can't you just see me roaring up sixth Avenue
with my mask Who the mask Man rides again?

Speaker 2 (02:01:48):
A casser. At this point he used to say, tonight's
adventure starred Price Beemer in the role of the lone Ranger. Remember, kids,

(02:02:11):
try Silver Cup the next time you hear High Silver,
High Last. Why this music makes you want to jump

(02:02:37):
right up to start a fist by it doesn't it?
And at this point that he would describe the adventure,
he would say, Sheriff Frank Conroy was having difficulty with
on rushing oncoming veterans of the Civil War who had
moved in their lawless way into the Old West, rampaging
making the West a cesspool of sin and vice. Frank

(02:03:00):
Conroy was out his wits end when they're lovely, And
then he describes the Sheriff's the Sheriff's daughter, when his
lovely daughter Miriam was suddenly speareded away from the wrench house.
And that night there was a knock at the door. Wholer,
who's whore? I'm the mask man? You remember the mask

(02:03:25):
and that the sheriff used to always say, mask Manton.
We don't tolerate mess men in this country. George gotta
go paint his arms behind him, mask man. We'll take
that mask off of you. Hair tanel, hair fick quick?

(02:03:48):
Why where my check? Couric? What so shall I graman

(02:04:27):
for the rescue? Yes? They were father problems, holly, oh
boy problem. Excuse me, madam Hello, I couldn't help, but

(02:04:49):
I mean, you know, you get carried away by being
carried away or speaking of faithful Indian companions. This is
w O R A M N F M, New York.
And we'll be here until now, you know, I mean,
you know, I'll tell you though, I really will. I'll

(02:05:12):
award the Bronze Palm for a listener duty above and
beyond if you can tell me now, don't look like
that because this is an important question. Can you tell
me what the Lone Ranger did before he went west
and became the Lone Ranger? And why did he wear
a mask? Uh hah? What kind of an American are you?

(02:05:33):
Kim Mo Sabi? Can you tell me what kimo sabi means?
Kimo sabi. He's a Kimu Sabi. Me tanto, me tonto,
faithful Indian companion. Low nija me tonto. And he used
to say, Tonto, hurry in the town. Disguise yourself as
a collie dog. Look into the window and see whether

(02:05:54):
or not the sheriff's preparing to put together a passe
to drive the rustlers out of the South forty. I'll
wait here hm oh m shabi mm iiow silver away.
I speaking speaking of coming to the rescue. We have

(02:06:14):
with us today the electronic workshop. And then if you've been,
if you've been having the troubles that people constantly have
with the electronic equipment in their home. And I'm not
talking about please don't think that your your vacuum and
your iron is electing. You know, people think anything they
plug in is electronic. No no, no no, I mean

(02:06:37):
things like television sets. I mean things not not but
things like High five is what we deal in, things
like preamplifiers. We would like to say this that over
all the places that I have known over all the years,
I a fool with electronic equipment. I know of. I
know only three places that I have come across three,

(02:06:57):
and two of them are not in Chaka, not in
New York. Two of them are in Chicago. Places that
I know where you can really take some equipment or
buy equipment and know that the guy you bought it
from is going to be there the next week and
you can argue with him. You don't argue with a catalog.
Very few guys have successfully done it via order blanks.

(02:07:20):
Believe me. I'd like to point out that the Electronic
Workshop is the one High five place that I know
of in a long way that will stand behind its
equipment and will make it really worth your while for
coming down to buy. You know, to buy from them.
It's worth going there in a lot of the intangible ways.
First of all, you save money to begin with. Many

(02:07:41):
of the things that they sell down at the Workshop
are much lower in price than in other places around town.
But this is beside the point. They don't make a
big deal about price, even though their prices are competitive
with anybody in the market. The thing that they do
sell that most of the bigger places cannot sell is
this one guy behind the counter that you can argue

(02:08:02):
with whoever argues. Actually, I remember a thing that happened
one day when I was at the workshop that I
remember very well was I never saw anything like this
happen in a business house. Some guy came in and
I was standing around there and I was buying, by
the way, in case you're interested, I was buying a
KLH speaker and enclosure, and I was I was making

(02:08:24):
the deal, and I was standing out talking to one
of the guys and Lynn, who is the head man
down there, when Cliff isn't around, by the way, if
you this, this is a guy to talk to if
you have electronic problems. Anyway, len Len went over to
see this customer, and he was the Wilcott gibbs Kite type,
you know what I mean, the the the the the
genteel New Yorker reader type who prides himself on not

(02:08:47):
knowing anything about the modern world, the technicians and the
whole business. I just tear the knob, you know, and
the music comes out this sort of thing, and it
takes a great pride in saying that he can't drive
a car. Well, we have. This is a kind of
an inverse snobism, you know of people who pretend they
can't drive, who can't work anything. Anyway, it's the matter

(02:09:10):
Jenny look very very bored or something. This guy was
that type, talled in with white hair and that look
about the eye. And he says, well, I've heard that
if you buy a good pickup cartridge that the music
will be much better. And he had read an ad
for a cartridge that costs around forty five dollars it

(02:09:33):
runs to about fifty five or sixty installed, and Lynn
was talking to him, and believe it or not done,
this is a fact. He was talking him out of
buying this cartridge because he was telling him the obvious
fact that with the equipment that he had, this cartridge
was completely out of line. It would be like buying

(02:09:53):
racing tires for a nineteen thirty six Ford. You know,
you just don't need it. It just silly, it's impossible
to use, and so it's honest, it's like buying a
four hundred dollars electron microscope for a kid who's three
years old and he wants to look at butterflies. And
so he says, this was very good pickup, a very

(02:10:16):
good pickup of good instrument. I hood this somewhere, and
Len was saying, look sir, really, this would be a
waste of your money to do this. And the man
could not understand. He felt that somehow he was being
taken now because the man would not take his money.
And the easiest thing that Lenn could have done would

(02:10:37):
be saying, all right, fine, wrap it up forty five well,
and so you have to take it away. He could
have done this, and that is, by the way, what
ninety seven percent of them do, knowing full well that
the poor guy's gonna, you know, is going to be useless.
And so he wound up selling him a nineteen dollars
ceramic countridge which was perfect for what his use was,

(02:11:00):
and installing it free. The guy had his cartridge head there,
you know, it was a plug in head, and all
all ended was install it in five minutes and give
it to him. And he went out, and he suspected
I could see all the way out that somebody had
given him some kind of a bad he'd on't even
saved forty dollars, you know, and it's this kind of
an operation. And I would suggest that if you were

(02:11:21):
planning to buy any electronic equipment Harmon Carton. They have
the whole line of the magnificent Harmon Carton FM AM tuners,
the new stereo tuners, the ones that are set up
for the new multiplex systems. Have you seen any of
that system work, that new FM system, Well, well, this
is really something to see. And if you're looking for

(02:11:43):
a good tuner to listen to AM and FM, I
would suggest you go down to the Electronic Workshop. They
have a great big display of used equipment. Tool but
the number to call if you have problems with your
Hi Fi equipment, you're afraid that you don't want to
commit yourself, call Grammarcy three one four oh and ask them,
you know, just ask them what kind of a system

(02:12:03):
they can put together for what you can afford. And
by the way, the Midsummer is this is the period
to buy electronic equipment. Believe me, hardly anybody buys high
Fi equipment at this time, and so hence you'll get
a much better deal both as a trade and as
a as a cash buy. You'll find this to be
very true in all of the high five places. Wait

(02:12:25):
another month and a half or two months and you're
right in the middle of the big buying rush again.
You know, High Fi has become a cycular thing. Are
you aware of that? It sells in cycles like cars?
And this is the time to do it. Grammar Cy
three one four O twenty six West eighth Street. In
the village, it's the electronic workshop. Can't you just see
Len coming in with a soldering iron, red hot, and

(02:12:47):
your pre apps has blown up and they say, here
he comes higher silver run to the last year of
the Electronic workshop is hid in. That takes care of
that bu was once a while it was simply a transistor, Madam.

(02:13:19):
I just couldn't help it, you know, I'm sorry, I
mean really yes, sorry. I suppose though you know as
we as we if you feel occasionally from time to time,
I'd like to say this, if I may, I'm doing
all out there. Have you noticed in every one of

(02:13:40):
the courtroom dramas that after every comment by the witness
there is always a good or in the court all
around the part. We'll have to clear the part. I
just couldn't help it, because you see, I was sitting
in front of him. I have a feeling that I'm

(02:14:03):
in imminent danger all the time now ever since I
began to look at occasionally the afternoon courtroom dramas, Because
have you noticed have you ever looked at any one
of these drumas? If any of you, if any of
you ever have the chance, I would like to suggest
you do something some afternoon watch one of these real
life courtroom dramas. You know, a continual trial that goes

(02:14:25):
on and on. Have you seen these on TV? These
things are very significant because they tell a great deal
about what the common man feels about law. First of all,
every witness who comes up before the bar, who is
going to testify, winds up being made to look suspicious,

(02:14:47):
a sinister character. Have you noticed that on all? Have
you noticed in the Perry Mason shows, every witness is
made to look like he, somehow secretly was the one
who was responsible for it? And then have you noticed
also that almost invariably the lawyers on both sides of
the case have a sinister eye. They walk back and

(02:15:10):
forth and they say in all right, now, do you
mean to tell me? Do you mean to sit right
there in that chair with your hand raives to God,
looking out over this assembled multitude of your peers. You
mean to tell me that you're champing the ice pan,
the ice drip pan under your ice box. The night
of Friday the thirteenth, that Thursday night of July, when

(02:15:33):
Harold M. Murchison was found waited with seven sash rights
at the bottom of the East River, Are you mean
to tell me that cock and bull's eye? The man
sits there and looks, and he says, well, I think
it was Friday the thirteenth. I'm not sure that's right.
You're not sure, are you?

Speaker 18 (02:15:52):
You are not sure?

Speaker 2 (02:15:53):
I am Jack, I am Jack. The other way is
the little lab Jack lab Jack. You see. The point
that I'm making is that the average person suspects that
the law is a terrible dark ogre that's waiting to
grab him. But if he ever gets near it in
any context, in any way at all, he is going
to and you'll find it everywhere in New York. Guys

(02:16:15):
will be getting robbed on one street corner and other
guys are walking fast in the eye don't want to
get involved in it. They say, why, because they're afraid
of it. Men are suspicious of the law, and so
as you make your drama about the law, court, the
law is a capricious thing. You notice that there's no
such thing as justice, There's only luck in the law.

(02:16:36):
That if Perry Mason got coughtn a traffic jam and
was held up for four minutes, every one of his
clients would go to the electric chair. Everyone, believe me, everyone,
And these afternoon courtroom dramas. If somebody didn't break down
just thirty seconds before the final commercial break down and

(02:16:59):
blurt out, there always was burnt out the right, I
didn't I do that? If they never broke down, the
poor innocent guy invariably would go to jail. Now, what
would happen if Perry Mason not only got caught in
the traffic jam, but the witness that finally broke down
didn't break down at all. This is secretly what everybody suspects,

(02:17:21):
and everybody suspects the law of ship. That's why millions
of people secretly believed that Carrol Chessman not only was
not guilty of anything for fifty six different times when
he was brought in, he was railroaded every time. It's
the deep suspicion everybody has of the law, and it's
a fascinating thing to watch. When you say, I'm sitting

(02:17:43):
there watching this courtroom, drummon, I'm reading it again to
sweat any minute now. However, if a cop walks over
and asks me what time it is? I know I
have time. Time, What would you say? What time is it, sir?
What time is it, sir? Time? You know time? You
have a watch? What time is it? Five minutes to
five minutes of our five minutes to seven, five minutes

(02:18:04):
to seven. Let me look at that watch. It's ten
minutes after seven. All the rights bad. I've come with me,
Come with me. No, I want to call my low lawyer.
You will not lead a lawyer where you're going. We

(02:18:25):
have the suspension, you know. Isn't this true. There's a
great deal of truth, you know, and you see it
in the popular drama. You really do see truth about
the secret The secret fears that all of us have
are in the popular drama, not the serious drama. Never
the serious drama, because this is self conscious. It's the
day to day pouring out the soap opera life. These

(02:18:47):
are the secret worlds. Speaking of secret worlds, those of
you who have become involved in reading The Village Voice
are very much aware of the fact that the Village
Voice is a kind of secret world. You know what
I mean by secret world? That is, it is a
complete world all of us own, and it's a world

(02:19:10):
that red is. Of course, there's no sense in trying
to separate one world from the other. One of the
most amusing things that I hear all the time on
the rais and now in the world of news, the
world of news, I mean, do I live in the
world of news? And then three minutes later the same
guy will say, and now in the world of sports,
I mean, do the guys who live in the world

(02:19:30):
of sports also live in the world of news? In
other words, does the second basement for the Saint Louis
Cardinals is he under the same pressures world pressures as
I am. Since I live in the world of what
is it you and me? Do you live in the
world of news? You know? But the world of the
Village Voice is in the essence the world of all

(02:19:50):
of us. But it's it's the sight of the world
that hardly any of us ever see. It's the world
of ideas, It's it's the world of people pople who
want to say something, and even if they often say
it badly, what they say is quite often important. And
many people say nothing in the Village Voice superbly, you see,

(02:20:11):
which is another interesting thing. And I found that the
ones who say nothing the better. The best of all
of them are the ones who invariably become famous. But
that's just you know, that's all side issue. But it's
a beautiful show. I look at The Village Voice as
a constantly passing show. It really is. This paper has

(02:20:33):
reported and recorded all kinds of things, and it's constantly
referring to its past, and it's referring to the future.
And in just a few years it has become one
of the most important international newspapers in America. It has
read widely all over the world. You know, in fact,
more people probably read it in Paris than read it
in Queens, sadly enough, sadly for the people in Queens,

(02:20:55):
I might point out. And if you would like to,
and the only way to know about them voices. Don't
pick it up on the newstand or read one one issue.
I mean, it doesn't do you any gouy. It's like,
I mean, one page out of a book and deciding
whether you like it, because the voice really is a
continuing thing. I would suggest your pop for three dollars
for a subscription. And if you don't, I'll tell you

(02:21:16):
this that if you don't like it, if after you
get this paper for six weeks, you just call them
up and say I don't want I don't want the
paper anymore, send me my dough back, and I know
they'll do it. But this, this just doesn't happen. You
become hooked. Give them a call at are you right now? Now? Listen,
don't call here. People keep calling here. It's Watkins four

(02:21:37):
four six six y nine. Give them a call right now.
I mean it's a Secret World editor is on duty
at this moment. He reports on you know, and now
for our news from the Secret World. Here is Watkins
four four six six ' nine in New York. And

(02:21:57):
you can reverse the charges. In fact, they want you to,
so no matter where you're calling from, Philadelphia, the Lost Continent,
no matter where you're calling from, just reverse the charges
and they'll pick up the tag and they'll send you
a bill and you're in business. It's Watkins four four
six six nine. Three dollars per a year. The Village
Voice WA four. And while we're on the subject of

(02:22:18):
the Voice and the village, right down the street from
the Voice, just around the corner and a couple of
little jobs over the village, you know, is a solid
little community. Within our community is Ying and Yang Yin
and Yang, which I believe is one of the one
of the finest, one of the finest Oriental restaurants in

(02:22:39):
these United States. A matter of fact, one of the
gourmet magazines recently is we've pointed out to you many
times designated the Ying and Yang restaurant as one of
the five top Oriental restaurants in the East. In fact,
they said what they said was in the entire United States.
But that's playing it pretty big even I won't claim that.
But it's a magnificent restaurant, and they are open Saturday night,

(02:23:03):
they're open Sunday, they have a bar, they're open seven
days a week, and it's a great place to go
for lunch. If you are a businessman type and you
go out for lunch, you will find that Ying and
Yang is a really interesting place to take somebody where
the prices aren't high and the food is magnificent and
they'll really dig it because it is unusual. They're open

(02:23:24):
every day at twelve noon and they close about ten
or eleven, or sometimes as late as one and two
o'clock in the morning. They're open usually after the theater.
You will find them open tonight after the theater, for example,
at Ying and Yang at eighty two West third Street.
Ying and Yang the old Chinese philosophy of dark and

(02:23:44):
light and sweet and sour, which is embodied in their food.
Ying and Yang. And I'll tell you one thing that
they do specialize, and they specialize in Northern Chinese food.
Most places that you eat in what we generally call
a Chinese restaurant, most of them have Southern Chinese. But
this is a kind of a combination of Polynesian, Northern Chinese,

(02:24:06):
Southern Chinese, all sorts of interesting stuff. Ying and Yang,
eighty two West third Street, and above anything else, ask
for their chicken wing appetizer. I mean, I mean being
a wing out of chicken, being a wing out of chicken.
You know, that's a funny thing about about that, that

(02:24:29):
whole mystique, that whole mystike of of food. Have have
you noticed that in our time food and eating food
has become a major social event, a reading major socially.
I mean, this is the social event of the day.
I mean, even if you're just sitting at your desk
and eating a sandwich, somehow, it's a social event. It

(02:24:52):
has become a moment of importance. And and you walk
up and down the streets on the on the East
side of New York, can you realize that one of
the major industries in this town is the lunch industry. Now,
when I say, I don't mean food industry, I mean
selling lunch, the whole business of lunch. Some of these

(02:25:14):
places have rotten food, but they sell lunch, and I
mean lunch in the sense of the credit card. They
sell the whole business, you know, the whole You know
that I know some guys who don't even wear hats
or coats, but will not go into a restaurant unless
there's a checkroom. I mean, you see the point what

(02:25:35):
I mean about selling lunch. I remember one time I'm
speaking of eating, and since this is a habit that
all of us have been trying to break, I'm sure
did I ever tell you about the guy I met
in Chillicothe, Ohio. There is a guy in Ohio, who
has not eaten in over twenty five years. He broke

(02:25:56):
himself with the habit of eating seriously. I'll say, you
know what he he no, you know what he does.
How he gets He drinks water. He says, there are
minerals in water. He drinks well water. It has iron
in it, you see, has iron. It has a sulfur,
it has calcium. He drinks a lot of well water,
and he breathes deeply. And he lives. He lives within

(02:26:17):
maybe four or five blocks of a big stand of trees.
And he claims that these trees give off very slightly.
They'll give up oxygen the trees. Will you know the
smell you smell when you get near to leaves and
folly inage. He says, this is the same the essence
of the same vitamin that you get out of green vegetables.
It's there. And so he breathes deeply, and once in

(02:26:38):
a while, for dessert, he goes down and stands in
front of the Planter's peanut shop and breathes, or he walks.
He walks into an ice cream. Really, he hasn't. He
hasn't Everyone to say, oh, come on, shepherd, no, this
is true, he has not eaten in over twenty five years.
And he's you know, he's sure. He's rather thin, he's

(02:26:59):
a tall he weighs you know, you'd never know it.
But it's fascinating to see this guy having lunch. It's incredible.
I mean, it's an intriguing thing to see this guy
just standing there just and it's funny when he invites
you out to lunch. He invited me out to lunch
one there. We stood around for a while and we
went down and he says, it took me for a

(02:27:19):
real tree. He took me down to this fruit stand
and we stood in front and just breathed, and you know,
they had to walk past a wine shop, breathed a
little bit and went home. But I felt clean, you know,
I felt wonderfully clean. And so this whole business, you know,
this whole mystique of eating has has it's really largely habit.
Speaking of habits we have with us, LUFTONSA, Hey, I'd

(02:27:42):
like to tell you something about eating, and I ever
tell you about the place that I know next. Oh,
it's about a block and a half away back on
one of the side streets, back of the Biroshoe hof
in Munich. I'm sounding very much like a world traveler type.

Speaker 7 (02:27:59):
You know.

Speaker 2 (02:27:59):
It's I'll tell you, one of the greatest sensations of
world traveling is to travel to the point where when
you arrive in a foreign country and a foreign city,
you go back to a restaurant that you have gotten
to know and you have been there several times, and
it is as familiar to you as let's say, need
it's at fortieth and sixth Avenue. That's a great feeling,

(02:28:22):
it's a wild feeling. And the last time I was
in Germany, I went into this restaurant which I happen
to know there. I've been in there a couple of
times on several previous trips. And I went in. I
walked right in. I knew where the door, you know,
the whole thing completely at home. I walked in and
I sat down, and the waitress came over and spoke
to me in English. She says, Valve, I've pleased to

(02:28:42):
see you here, and how are you again there? How
wherever have you been? And I says, oh, you know,
and she went away after I had made my order,
and I sat there and I thought shepherd for crying
out loud. You are a world traveler, a bon't bevont,
a sophisticate, a member of international society. And I ordered

(02:29:05):
my cartoppenhulfm with with with a little whipped cream on
the side, and she brought me my coffee and I
sat there. It's a beautiful restaurant. The point that I'm
making here is at three o'clock in the afternoon, all
the fat house brows and all the the the fat
businessmen all gathered to drink this magnificent coffee with magnificent cream.

(02:29:25):
And they have pastry, pastry, whipped cream and cakes that
just make your eyes, you know, your eyes spin, You're
break into a coold sweat thinking about them. I can
point this out to you that if you're planning to
fly the coop, I suggest you take a trip directly
to Munich. There is no more beautiful city via Lufthansa,

(02:29:46):
and do it early. I mean, if you're gonna if
you're gonna make the luft Hansa run, you better contact
them very early in the game because they're they're they're
you know, they're real booked up. H I look, you
have that thing out there, don did you put that
thing away? Hold it. I'm you know, it's a sad thing.

(02:30:06):
But our lives are largely vicarious lives. Do you know
that most of us hardly ever feel any excitement in
our lives, real excitement. We watch other people pretending to
have excitement on the stages, We watch movies watching other
people pretending to have excitement. We listen to the radio,

(02:30:27):
and we listen to Ed and Peggee talk about these
glamorous parties at the wald or if you know, it's
ser Joe Bolenski, and again you see vicarious living hardly
any of us. And do you know one of the
reasons why there has been a great growth of classical
music collection in America is because more and more people

(02:30:48):
are living vicarious lives, le and having vicarious emotions which
music gives them. You know that this is the fact
that if you were really living these emotions, you wouldn't
need them. If you really lived like this, you would
not have to say hello, soler Hi. Put it on
the high fiet standard, you know, in front of this

(02:31:09):
gigantic wolf.

Speaker 21 (02:31:10):
Speaker, and suddenly Thesians are riding again. My brick on
Indian Panga Pando was just about the return. Put another
sheet of silver bullets hill Solar high.

Speaker 2 (02:31:40):
Never Never, Let's let's use that as a theme today.
Don come on Never. In the annals of the Old West,
was a man so equipped, was a man so ready,
a man so willing indeed to ride out to to
to come on, let's go, hell Solari before we go? Hey,

(02:32:08):
don quick, Hello, Hello, before we go. It's all illusion.
It's just music. It's it's just music. Remember, is there

(02:32:31):
a rancher's daughter listening? Who is being who's being given
a hard time by the sheep herders anywhere? I'm ready,
I have the silver bullets. I'm ready to ride heo
silver Hello.

Speaker 6 (02:33:31):
This is WR Radio, your station for you.

Speaker 1 (02:33:35):
From July thirtieth, nineteen sixty The foot Trace of Life
in New York at the dog Track, Chasing the Rabbit
of Life, shep reveals the source of alligators and the
sewers of New York City.

Speaker 2 (02:34:00):
You can tell by the looks on their faces as
they go scurrying through the rain. Maybe we pushed it
too far this time. Maybe we have pushed it too
far this time. And finally, that gigantic, that tremendous sledge,
that hammer is going to come right out of our boom.
New York is gone. You know, it's a fascinating thing

(02:34:22):
for an outlander, for someone who lives way I am
an outlander, to observe what New York does during the
slightest indication that weather might be glowering just a little bit.
Could it be possible that New York has a fantastic
case of conscience, that New York's great abstract life? You know,

(02:34:43):
we're constantly writing about New York, talking about New York,
writing hot Fields to live in New York, and people
like people like Truman Capote, people like what's this guy
from The Times? People like what's this guy from Esquire?
What's this guy from Playbook? All these people are writing
constantly about the mystique of New York, and of course

(02:35:04):
it has become increasingly abstract. More and more New York
life bears a relationship to no other life. It is
New York life. There are people who are alive, you know,
way out there, wandering around the hills and bumping into
each other in Chillicothe, way out there in the dark
fastnesses of for want of a better word, the outer

(02:35:27):
darkness out there in the boondocks. I might use a
better known phrase way out there in the well, you know.
And here we are, we're all gathered together, huddle here,
if you please, in New York, and somehow we have
gotten the ingrown feeling of a faculty. You know, you

(02:35:47):
know what the what faculty life is like in a
college that's way off on the hills, someplace of let's say,
out and Princeton, their dartmouth or somewhere. The ingrown life
of the faculty. It's an interesting, sing very interesting thing
to observe. It grows, it grows kind of well, it's ingrown.
It's like this toe within a sock, within a shoe,

(02:36:09):
within an overshoe, within a drift of snow, and it's
all by itself. It has no context that lives beyond
the context of its own little leaves and its own files.
It has no real contact with the outside world. Once
in a while, a new group of students will come
in and they will absorb those students. But the students
are always on the periphery, just as the tourist is

(02:36:33):
on the periphery here in Manhattan. He comes, he goes,
for a while, he sings and dances with us, but
never is part of us. And then he departs, but
we stay. We are the faculty of New York. And
as we grow more and more ingrown, we become more
and more insular. We have our own moras, our own

(02:36:55):
mode of operation, and so we write our own literature. We,
of course, and I'm not even speaking of Damon Rundon,
who did not, who never wrote, as far as I'm concerned,
the literature of New York run you wrote, run y knees.
But nevertheless, we have our own. We have our own literature.
It pours out of the news, it pours out of
the indignant pulp pages of the Post, always angry of

(02:37:18):
our things. Which ah, and then you have the good, calm,
vaguely fuzzy voice of the New York Times, ponderously moving
along a concrete highway. That's a circular highway, of course.
And we have our own literature. We're our own mores,
our own world, our own way of being. That the

(02:37:39):
let's say, the mystique of horn and hardeart is always
and will forever be lost on the tourists. The man
from Cleveland, I know, you know, the man from Cleveland
comes Nicholson. Well, always what I heard about the automat,
you know, but it isn't the automat. You hardly ever
hear it called the automat to people living in New York.

(02:38:01):
It's something else. But here is here's this, this mystique growing.
It's a it's a it's an inner circle. And once
in a while, you see, this is where we get
to the point of this thing. Here. Now, sit up straight,
will you, I mean, just because on Saturday, sit up

(02:38:21):
and awfully tired this whole miserable business. You're getting a crimp.
I'm getting a crimp. We're all crimped. And so we
sit here in this little this circle, this sewing circle,
that is Manhattan, and once in a while from the
outer world will come the slight suggestion of a wind.

(02:38:45):
What was that? We turn, look over our shoulders, or
maybe a little rain will come down broad Oo's this
this wet stuff. Of course, we're used to wet stuff.
I was over on on the east Side the other
day in the sixth Let me tell you, have you
ever pulled up, say about two o'clock in the morning
in the sixties, somewhere in the east side over around

(02:39:06):
second over there in Tristville, you know where all these
big new fancy apartments have gone up and all these great,
big fancy balconies are out looking out over the river. Oh,
this is this is Expensiveville. This is this is expense Acconville.
If I ever saw it. See, and it's over there.
You pull up about two o'clock in the morning and
you get out of a cab or you get out. Incidentally,

(02:39:27):
only cabs are fitting in that neighborhood. It's the trenchant world,
you know. And do you have you ever had the
feeding that you're going to go to hell in a cab,
you know, paying the fare and the meters ticking all
the way, and so you get out of a cab.
I did this just just the other night. I get
out of a cab over there in the East sixties.

(02:39:48):
It's two o'clock in the morning, and I hear this
and it's it's all around me. Not a soul is stirring,
not even a mouse. And there's there's a faint moisture
in the air. And I had just left the west

(02:40:09):
side where all was pristine and calm and quiet, and
I couldn't figure what it was. I thought it was
that the river flowing past. What is it? And then
it dawned on me it was air conditioner veil, and
the whole world there was air conditioner. And I looked
up and all these sleeping apartments you could hear humming.

(02:40:30):
It's a frightening thing, really, it really is. You can
hear it. It's getting more and more. At three o'clock
in the morning, all the apartments go. And once in
a while you hear the little metal flaps of the
of the what are they little ventilators on the side
of these things. And then you'll hear a rattley old
air conditioner that's about nine years old somewhere, or some

(02:40:54):
guy hasn't quite made it up there on the seventh floor,
and he's in a rent control apartment. And they all
get out before the first of the year, you know it,
And they're all spitting this little moisture, spitting it out
at you. And you stand there in the middle of
the street, and you begun. Really, you begin to realize
that you are now living in the contained, transistorized good

(02:41:16):
life of the twentieth century. That these these are the
truly insular people in New York. We like to think
that out in the Midwest they are isolationists. Oh, oh,
you have no idea how isolation this New York is.
It's even isolationists about New Jersey fifteen feet away. And

(02:41:36):
we're living in this little faculty, all of us together.
And once in a while there'll be this little breeze
come down the street and somebody will say, whoa, what
was that? And the guy next said, that was a wind.
I think wind, wind, wind, wind, wind wind. And then
ten minutes later there will be an extra large drop

(02:41:57):
will come down. Oho, is that somebody's the air conditioning?
That's rain. And within five minutes, all over the dial
you hear nothing but a constant hullaballoo television radio. All
they're talking about is this thing that came from the
outside world, this rain. Have you listened to the newscast today?

(02:42:19):
This piddling little rain we're getting here, this miserable little rain.
And I'm listening to the newscast fifteen minutes of time.
On forty sixth Street there were over two inches of water,
and on twenty third Street there were seven inches of water,
and fourteen old ladies how to get out of their car,
and oh it's terrible, Oh it's so awful here. You
have no idea what it's and ladies and gentlemen, The

(02:42:41):
barometer is going up and down and sideways, and the
multiple square no da da da, and it goes you see,
and it sounds like a fantastic disaster has hit Manhattan.
What it is is the outside world has hit Manhattan,
which is a disaster in itself. And we are becoming
aware of something. You see that out there is that

(02:43:01):
world and it goes on and out and on like
this in this little faculty world. You know how the
how a faculty is. I'll give you a little insight
into the faculty world that the slightest little ripple causes
gigantic waves in because they've got nothing else to do.
You know, they're all sitting around there on their depths,
all looking at each other suspiciously, all waiting for somebody
to move into the department. That that sharp young man

(02:43:23):
from Dartmouth who wrote that monograph idiotic thing that you
know that, And and they're all waiting for for for
this this thing to happen, just as we are in
our wonderful little insular world here. And it it's fascinating
to me coming coming from Have you ever seen what
kind of rains they get in Omaha? Oh, buddy, have

(02:43:45):
you ever seen Every every every three weeks in the
winter in in Circleville, Ohio, this snow suddenly is up
to the roofs and and during the summertime plagues of locusts,
one after the other, gigantic thundering, the tornadoes. I remember
a tornado that went right through a little town in Michigan,

(02:44:06):
and ten minutes after it went through, knockdown seventeen houses.
Nobody said anything about it. I don't know what they
would do in New York if a tornado ever struck
Times Square. I mean, it would be the biggest thing.
We would be talking about it till well into January.
We fantastic. And the only point that I'm making here
is that most of the decisions about that outside world

(02:44:27):
are made right here in this little insular world along
Madison Avenue and Lexington. There are thousands of guys who
are sitting there figuring out what to say to the
people in Circleville, Ohio to make them feel even more insecure.
And they're sitting out there stolidly in Circleville. The tornado
goes past, and after a while they can hear the

(02:44:49):
buzzing of the locust wings. They can hear the chewing
of the cutworm out on the tomato vines, and he
knows about the real world out there, and hear, you know,
we live in this wonderful, soft, warm we're all sitting.
You know, I had this feeling, there's a funny feeling
about this. I just got back from a cruiser, from
a missile cruiser, and we're sailing one hundred and fifty

(02:45:12):
or two hundred miles way out into the Atlantic. We
took off from Boston and we went out into that darkness,
that that eternal sea out there, and you see the
porpoises rising and falling, and you can see a whale
blowing way off the starboard bow, and then night falls
until finally there's nothing but that dark, inverted bowl, that

(02:45:32):
eternal night. And let me tell you, I'm standing up
there on the flying Bridge, and I can see nothing
but darkness, billions and billions and billions of skies all
as far as one can see, and all the stars
that you could ever imagine. And the ship is cutting
through that black water at about thirty knots. You can
hear an occasional banging somewhere way down in the hold

(02:45:55):
of this thing, or a creaking sound, not a single
light going cutting through that water. You could feel the spray,
and it's a strange feeling. You say, I don't know
which is the real world, this world of the ship,
which is as insular as anything you can imagine, or
that crazy world that I have just left. And as

(02:46:15):
the ship comes steaming back and slowly I'm getting drawn
into this. I can hear the cacophony rising. You can
hear the trumpeting and the bellowing and the booming and
the crashing and the banging and the shrieking and the
wailing and the moaning rising from the eternal, the eternal
squadrons of the damned. As I moved back into Manhattan,
and I'm once again in this fantastic, strange whirling vortex,

(02:46:37):
the whirlpool I remember this story about. Now, I don't
know which is the real world, you say. We're scuttering
out there in the darkness and there's nothing but sky
and water and this steel hulk. Speaking of hulks, this
is a w R A M at FM New York,
speaking of hulks. As long John would say, it's time

(02:46:57):
to take care of a bit of business. Filter. Now,
can you tell me which is the real world, would
you before you put that away, Jimmy, just just just
one second here, now we're talking about the real world. Now,
now'll hold it there for a second. I'll give you
the cue. I remember this. I am standing on the
flying bridge of a steel gray cruiser, like a long

(02:47:22):
like a long sullen greyhound, cutting through that black sea
of the Atlantic, rising and falling, rising and falling eternally
the ways risening, falling, up and down, rising and falling,
and reaching. Oh yes, reaching, always reaching, always reaching. Joseph Conrad,
you know, I'm standing on the bridge of this thing,

(02:47:43):
looking down at that black water and is scuttering past
us at thirty thirty two knots something like that. And
I'm looking at this water, and I realized that if
I ever, if I ever somehow was washed over border,
if I was walking along one of the one of
the rails and and just slipped and skidded under the
rail and out, I would be gone forever. There would

(02:48:05):
be no coming back. At this time of night, at
this place, and at this very instant in this ocean,
we were on the edge of the Labrador Current, and
it was bitter, icy cold water, and you could feel
that that steely ice pick kind of wind that cut
along the side over the over the bridge, and back
over the Conning Tower, and finally out over the fantaire,

(02:48:29):
and you could hear that wind kissing and whistling through
those radar dishes just above us. S up and down
we're going. I'm looking out over in that water, and
I can see an occasional white cap kicking up. You
can hear the sea, and I'm thinking about what Joseph
Conrad said. Conrad said, in effect in a short story,

(02:48:52):
a magnificent shortster. No one ever wrote about the sea
like Conrad, with the possible exception of Herman Melville. In
all the all the British writers, all the all the
European writers wrote more about society. The American writers in
the early days of American letters dealt almost almost conclusively

(02:49:12):
and eternally with those those dark forces that lay just
outside the guttering hiss of the campfire, and Melville was
one of them. But Conrad, a British writer, also dealt
with the sea, and his remark about the sea that
anyone who loves the sea, and I'm wildly paraphrasing, anyone

(02:49:32):
who loves the sea is crazy. Just the sea does
not love. The sea knows no passion. The sea is
purely mechanical, purely and utterly and thoroughly mechanical. It's like
it's like saying, I love this piece of sand, I
love this rock. But with a difference. The sea is
not only mechanical, but is a killer that rises and falls.

(02:49:56):
And I'm standing on that, on that that flying bridge,
and I can feel just the touch of spray and
that fantastic darkness, and those billions stars above us, and
I can see way over somewhere in my mind, only
way over somewhere, this wild, cacophonic, fantastic rising and falling hoopla,
brew aha, roar and pitch and steam of the thing.

(02:50:19):
I had just left New York, that little faculty, that booming,
bellowing faculty of which I have been part of, caught
up with and snarled with, enmeshed by for so long.
I can't remember anything else now. And I'm standing on
this flying bridge, and I'm looking down at this water,
and I realize if I go in that water, there
is no more ever. And there's a guy standing next

(02:50:40):
to me, says, I would tell you about the time.
This guy knew that was on a British freighter. They
were out in the South Seas and got to talking
about falling in the water. He said, was this guy
who was a third mate on a freighter out in
the South Seas, So I know the guy. And they
had they had just left an island port and they
were heading east and they were in the darkest, deepest,

(02:51:04):
most shark ridden part of the Pacific. The water was
warm and soopy, but oh so deadly. And it's four
o'clock in the morning and the third mate is the
officer of the day and he's making his rounds of
the deck, just quietly walking around. He gets around to
the fantail and there were maybe two or three men
awake on this ship. This little old freighter was beaten

(02:51:26):
their way. And he looks down over the fantail. He's
examining the screws, he's making sure that he's making a check,
he's making sure that everything is working fine. When suddenly
the ship took a slight roll when he didn't expect it,
and he was pitched right off into that darkness, over
that fantail, into that hissing, steaming, boiling, shark ridden Pacific water.

(02:51:50):
And he saw nothing but the lights of that ship retreating.
He was wearing a white T shirt. He was wearing
a pair of white shorts and a pair of those
low cut gym shoes. That's all he had. He's floating
there all by himself, in that eternal grave, and he
sees he sees that ship going off into the distance.

(02:52:12):
And he knew, he knew that they wouldn't find out
that he was gone until they changed watches four hours. Hence,
he knew it, and he knew that when they found
this out, they would be four hours away. And he
knew that the moment they found it out, they would
probably turn around and steam back to where they thought

(02:52:33):
perhaps he might have been lost four hours back or thereabouts.
So hence he had a minimum of eight hours to
float in that deserted sea on one of the lesser
used way off the beaten track, little known sea routes.
It would be as if you're lost on a gravel
road one thousand miles away from the turnpike. Don't expect

(02:52:56):
them to come and find you here. And so he
lay back and looked up at the stars and just
lay there. He knew that it was eight hours. He
set his mind for eight hours and just quietly paddled
and tried to stay above water, and that sea heaved,
and sure enough, within ten minutes his shark came nosing

(02:53:19):
around in the darkness. Can you imagine a shark at
four o'clock in the morning in the darkness and an
unknown sea. And the first indication he had of the
shark it was so dark, was that it nuzzled him,
moved up and just went boomp with that great, big
leathery nose up against his ribs. Boomp, and he stiffened.

(02:53:41):
And the instant you stiffened, when you're trying to float
on your back, you sink down he went. He relaxed
again and floated to the surface. Boomp. This thing hit
him again, and he lay there. He moved his left
hand casually easily, trying not to trying not to startle anything,

(02:54:05):
trying not to tip the boat. And then when he
got in a position, he just shot out with his
foot sockle, and he kicked the shark between the eyes,
just boom, and the shark moved back and began to circle.
And every ten minutes thereafter the shark would move in
and just sort of nustle him, he would kick again,

(02:54:27):
and then the shark was joined by a second shark,
until finally, as the rosy finger down was quietly, quietly
trickling its fingernails over that eternal grave, he saw that
there were at least ten or twelve sharks just circling
around looking at him, and the sun began to beat down,

(02:54:50):
and then suddenly, without wanting, the sharks disappear, which was
even more frightening. All together, they just It's now about
seven o'clock in the morning. He's looking up at the
sky and he says, well, they'll find out about it
in just about an hour. I've been here three hours now,
and he's getting sick. Have you ever bobbed up and

(02:55:10):
down in a rowboat, lying on your back, looking up
at the sky twenty minutes of that, and you're getting ready,
you're getting ready to let go of every meal you've
ever had in your life, every meal you ever had.
And he's lying there, nauseous and sick, bobbing up and down,
bobbing up and down, and the water is beginning to
sting him. You lie too long in salt water, and

(02:55:32):
that Pacific salt water is even saltier than the salt water,
and you begin to get that crawley feeling on your skin,
that feeding is death itself is somehow sneaking up on you.
And death has a rough skin. Death is rough like mohair.
And you lie there and you look up and he's
looking at and suddenly he sees this great hulk coming

(02:55:55):
up beside him, an enormous hulk, something black is coming
up out of the sea. I'm telling you a true story.
And he looks and it's a turtle. Have you ever
seen pictures of these giant Solomon Islands turtles. Here's this
enormous sea turtle with great flippers. Now, these things are
not carnivolous, rarely just sort of you know, they're just

(02:56:19):
sort of like a ward healer, kind of friendly and
a little sneaky and untrusting. But at the same time,
big oh, they throw their own weight. And this great,
big turtle just bobbed up next to him and swam
slowly over and looked him right in the face, raised
his old head out of the water and looked at him,

(02:56:39):
and then stucked his head down and bumped him like
a great, big, fat, two ton beach ball. Boom, don
he went in the water again. Wow, now he's really sick.
He's got another mouthful of salt water. He bobs up
and the turtle just continues to nudge him along a
little bit like this, and he realizes that three more

(02:57:04):
bumps like this and he is done. He is done.
He is water log he is soaked. He will not
be able to come back. So he hangs on to
the side of the turtle shell so that the turtle
can't get around in front of him again. And there
the two of them are out there in that giant
eternal ocean, that sea. He's clinging to the side of
the turtle and he realizes now the turtle is giving

(02:57:26):
him a little rest. The turtle is just quietly flapping
his flippers once in a while, going, you know how
turtles doing this problem. This is the diet problem. It's
an awful, awful bad diet. He's flapping his flippers and
this guy is hanging on to the flippers out there,
and by this time the sharks are back again, but
they see now he has a friend, and he is

(02:57:49):
clinging to the turtle, and the turtle is just quiet
and goes and once in a while the turtle submerges
a little bit, he goes under, looks around, and this
guy just quietly flows to the surface like a bobber,
and he waits and the turtle comes back. And this
continues for about another hour and a half, and then

(02:58:10):
just as suddenly as it began, they disappeared, turtle, sharks
and awe, and that sun began to crack down. It
was now about ten o'clock in the morning. He was
so sick. He couldn't see the sky, he couldn't see
the water. He just lay on his back. He's been
in the water now for six hours, only on the

(02:58:32):
hope that this ship might come back, only on the hope.
That's a very slim one. And he didn't trust the
skipper anyone, really, it's no good type. And so he
lay on his back with that sun beating down, and
he began to feel the skin peeling off of his
forehead and his cheeks. The salt water was working on him,

(02:58:54):
the sun was working on him. And once in a
while he would see high overhead way way eye overhead,
a flight of seabirds. You don't call to the turns,
you don't call to the Kisstrass and occasionally an albatross
goes slowly moving across the horizon, and he lay, and

(02:59:14):
sure enough, twenty minutes before the eight hours were up,
he sees coming over the horizon a tiny dot. It
is his ship. And for the very first moment, he
felt a tremendous, overwhelming, completely engulfing panic. He really felt panic,

(02:59:38):
panic because now he saw he saw the very glimmerings
of something that might save him. He saw that they
might not save him, even more possibly because the sea
was a heavy, heaving sea. And if you've ever tried
to see a tiny, bobbing single head on a sea, this,

(03:00:00):
you know, this business of needles and haystacks, his chicken
feed and kids stuff. And he's bobbing. And he began
to panic. And as he began to panic, he began
to struggle, and as he began to struggle, he began
to be sicker. And as he began to be sicker,
everything began to spin and get blue and green, and
he practically passed out just because of the panic. And

(03:00:25):
then he saw that the ship was slowly beginning to
come about. They were giving up the search. They had
searched for four hours back over that route. They says, no,
he's gone, let's go. We're losing time. And then just

(03:00:45):
at the last instant, believe it or not, somebody, a
seaman walking along the rail who wasn't even on lookout,
looked out over the horizon and saw that tiny dot.
They put down a boat and they pulled him out
of the water. And the instant they pulled him out
of the water, he broke down completely, thoroughly, utterly and completely.

(03:01:09):
Didn't regain his senses for maybe ten days, three days
after they've been in port, and for weeks after that
he was still out at sea. For weeks after that,
he was still getting bumped by turtles and nuzzled by whales.
Which is the real world. Which is the real world.

(03:01:30):
I'm out there on the flying bridge and I see
that black water scuttering past, and all I can hear
is New York in the distance. All I can do
is New York. This is it. This is the real world.

Speaker 16 (03:01:41):
This is what we want.

Speaker 2 (03:01:46):
That's the real world. Boy, it's good to be back
here where it's real. Who glad to be back? Glad
to be with you, folks. I'll award you the brass
figligy with bronze o leaf palm. If you can tell
me who it was who said, grahat we could get together? Folks.

(03:02:09):
You know I saw a cartoon speaking of that. You see,
the point that we're trying to raise here is that
we are living a life of such complete abstraction here
in Manhattan, such complete abstraction that anytime anything that even
smacks of the reels sneaks down Broadway and gets our
pants legs wet, there is a fantastic panic that goes

(03:02:31):
through us. What is that out there? Oh, we're pushing
it too far. We're pushing it too far, and a
giant male fist one day is going to come. Can't
you just hear that on a newscast like a gentleman
from the wr R newsroom. We just haven't received reports
that an enormous golden chariot was seen four thousand feet
over west Babylon Long Island, driven by a man wearing

(03:02:54):
a gold helmet, shooting bolts of thunder and lightning from
his left hand as he drove his golden steeds in
the general direction of Montop Point. When we get further information,
we'll return to this point. Stay tuned for further notes
from the w r R newsroom about the Golden Chariot disaster.
And now back to the top forty favorites. Precise do

(03:03:33):
you right.

Speaker 12 (03:03:39):
Time?

Speaker 2 (03:03:40):
Gold and Bristol in so wonderful to be back here
in the real world. Solid Uh, it's good to be

(03:04:15):
back here in the permanent world, you know, speaking of
the permanent world. Uh, there was this friend of mine
who said, you know, when I was young, when I
was a kid, he said, when I was a flaming,
idealistic youth, I used to listen to the to the

(03:04:37):
politicians speak. And incidentally, I'd like to make a point here.
I think that one of the prevailing sicknesses that we
have is to suspect deeply, thoroughly and completely the politician.
And we have this thing, you know, all the time
people are all politician. No, they are just us. So

(03:05:01):
don't put I mean, a politician is just us. And
he has no more phoniness in him, and he has
no more goodness, he has no more omniscience in him
than ninety percent of the rest of us, poor fellow
treaders of this yellow brick road in the eternal search
for the Emerald City. He's no more phony, I know,

(03:05:25):
a thousand business men. I wouldn't trust. I wouldn't trust
beyond the site, beyond the next bend, just past the
water cooler. And they're the first ones to say, you
can't trust a politician. I'm sitting there with a cab
driver who has just yucherd me out of fifteen cents
change by a neat, quick movement of a palm. He said,

(03:05:47):
you can't trust I can't trust those politicians. And that
phony has been knocking down ever since they took the
tax off, all up and down the line. And this
friend of mine, you know, he's he's, uh, it's interesting,
you know, how we how we identify or don't identify

(03:06:10):
we want somebody made the point in the village voice
of that. I thought it was very well taken. I
hope that somebody, I hope that somebody picks this up.
But that's that's beside the point. Well, we'll save that
for tomorrow night. This friend of mine was, we're talking
about the whole thing. You know, I'm I have I
can't recall any time ever that I have become more

(03:06:33):
deeply embroiled, or more involved, or more interested not involved,
And unfortunately, I you know, we're we're only involved by
just sort of standing around, but more interested in what
is happening in the world than today. I think we're
living in historical times, really historical times. All times are historical,
but sometimes are are are more than others, mean more

(03:06:54):
than others. It's just like your daily life. You might
have four or five moments in your day that are
much more significant than the other moments that have led
up to it and that follow it. And I think
that we're living in a momentous truly a momentous period. Now,
there's no question about it. It's been it's been moving
this way for probably forty years, and now it's it's

(03:07:14):
kind of coming to a climax, and we are we
are in battle, and we don't know which way to turn.
If you notice that hardly any any political man, any
politicis really talks about the fact that hardly anywhere in
the world can you find a real friend, That everywhere,
every place you look, backs are being turned down us,

(03:07:36):
in spite of the loud assurances to the contrary. Now
this is this is a fascinating thing to see, not
so much that backs are being turned down us, because
at every point in history there has been a Patsy.
We're Patsy number one right now, and ten years from now,
I'm quite sure that there will be another Patsy that

(03:07:59):
the world will turn its back on. Because always, always,
man has had to have something to stick pins into,
to to somehow give him a sense that the rottenness
that's happening in his life is somebody else's fault. Always
have had to have this thing. It's a patsy. We're
the patsy now. But have you noticed that hardly anybody
really talks about it, except in the broadest of generalities,

(03:08:23):
because we're living in such an interesting dream world. We're
living in such a fascinating world. I was listening to
a politician the other day talk incessantly about how many
more cars people have today, how many more television sets,
how many more breezeways. Now, what are you people complaining about?
These professional bloom dealers are constantly he says, and he
goes on, and this is a great leader, a great leader.

(03:08:48):
And I kept hearing the echoes of some guy standing
on the side of a limpid pool in Rome, and
he's he's standing up there with his long robes hanging
around him and he's waving his hand in the air,
and he's saying, what are you complaining about? What are
you talking about? These the sore heads are always coming
up talking about these barbarians. Look, you had more grapes

(03:09:10):
per capita last year than ever before. More men can
afford three or more Nubian handmaidens today than ever before.
What are you complaining about? It? Under my administration? And
it goes on and on. I keep hearing the echoes
of the same thing always, And this friend of mine
is listening to the speeches going on, and he says,

(03:09:31):
you know, when I was young, when I was a kid.
By young, he means in his teens, in his early twenties.
He says, when I was a kid, I used to say,
isn't it wow? He says, isn't it Isn't it terrible
that these politicians don't believe what they say? I mean,
isn't it awful that they don't believe what they say?
And he had the feeling that all this political talk,

(03:09:52):
you know, was just talk, you know, they didn't believe it.
And then he says, now I listen, and I say,
wouldn't it be awful if they believed it? Isn't terrible
if they really believe this stuff. And so, I mean,
it's all part of the wonderful dream world in which
we're all involved. And hardly any of us who know,

(03:10:13):
really feel an involvement. We all feel as though we're onlookers.
And so we've come to the point now where we
have great crowds of comedians quote going over the scene.
Who are the so called this passionate onlookers, who just
you know? And today, of course, that's the easiest kind

(03:10:33):
of humor. You can take any situation, any condition, any man,
any moment in any man's life, and since all of
us are frail, and since all of us have the
inadequacy of the ungodlike, you can make humor of any
moment in any man's life. It's a simple, easy process.

(03:10:54):
I remember seeing a cartoon, in fact, it's in the
Courranity Show, a beautiful cartoon, one of one of the
few really meaningful cartoons that I have seen in in
Esquire in a long time. And it's it's a full
page cartoon. It's in the August issue. I have cut
this out and I it is going on my wall

(03:11:15):
of my office, and here it is. It shows the
raging fires of hell, the inferno, great roaring flames and
dark blackness, and you can see the lost souls sailing out,
and and they're in the foreground. In the foreground, you
see a boat crossing the river stinks, and you can

(03:11:36):
see those angry waters, and and and and those those hooded,
shrouded souls, those damned souls weeping and wailing. And you see,
you see this fiend pulling along on the back and
sitting in the front, sitting up there in the bow
is Dante looking very looking, very cool, looking very casual,

(03:12:01):
and he's watching he's sitting back and he's looking at
those damned souls moving into the eternal darkness. And he's
sitting back there on his duff with his legs crossed.
And one of the poor, one of the poor, blight
and unfortunate, is looking at him with a harassed face,
and Dante with a slight smile of saying, oh, I
don't mind it, really, I'm I'm only here to gather

(03:12:24):
material for a book where the goes Indeed, Oh, thou mankind,
it's like, you know, speaking of Dante in the inferno,
and all, did you read this little news though? This

(03:12:46):
is symbolic of our time. We have this great desire
to do it, and nobody knows why. All of mankind
has and occasionally one poor soul will do it. Listen
to this one from San Francisco. San Francisco Everett Wong.
Everett Wong beat the odds on July sixth, his car

(03:13:07):
plunged over Devil's Slide, an ocean bordering cliffs south of
San Francisco where many a motorist has been killed in
the past. Wong's car rolled over and over and over
for one hundred and seventy feet and ended in a crumbled, smashed,
massive metal, a terrible misshape and heap, but Wong painfully

(03:13:30):
crawled out alive. He should have been killed. An officer
at the scenes that I've never seen anything like it.
Wong's wife, Alice, noted that he became despondent immediately after
the accident. Monday, the body of the thirty six year
old real estate man was found in a cement courtyard
below his apartment. To gain death, he had cheated. Wong

(03:13:50):
had jumped thirty five feet, hopping over his air conditioner
as he left over. W o R Radio, your station
for news.

Speaker 10 (03:14:00):
James McCarthy reporting or up to the minute reports. Stay
tuned to the station.

Speaker 2 (03:14:05):
Now the news.

Speaker 10 (03:14:08):
While President Eisenhower was forced to cancel his trip back
east today due to that young lady by the name
of Brenda. That story from Sandford Marshall in New York.

Speaker 2 (03:14:20):
These coast is in the throes of a tropical storm.
Water Logged New Yorkers went to their phones this morning
to discover why and heard this tropical Stormbrend. According Harry
Rain's high winds and high tides until early afternoon, with
partial clearing and diminishing winds and subsiding tides later this afternoon. Yes,
tropical Storm Brenda was moving up the East coast at

(03:14:42):
about thirty five miles an hour, but she is losing
her tropical characteristics. She is now just a windy, wet storm.
But she'll be spreading that rain, rough wind, and high
tides for the next twelve to thirty eight hours. This
is Sandford Marshall in New York. Now back to James
McCarthy in Washington, and we'll have more news in a moment.

Speaker 10 (03:15:06):
On the political scene, pressure is due from both sides
of the congressional fence. When it reconvenes next month, but
the Democrats have made it known today there will be
no stalling round about it. At Zempreneer reports from Kennedy Headquarters,
Cape Cotton, Massachusetts.

Speaker 22 (03:15:21):
Running mate Senators John F.

Speaker 15 (03:15:22):
Kennedy and Lyndon B.

Speaker 22 (03:15:23):
Johnson today singles out medical care for the aged, housing,
aid to education, and mutual appropriations as the key issues
on the legislative calendar for the forthcoming session of Congress.
The Democratic teammates met Huseman at Famausport together for the
first time since the nominations in Los Angeles. Johnson attacked
the administration for what he called its lack of foreign policy, defense,

(03:15:46):
and new ideas. Regarding the GOP convention, Johnson said, the
big difference between eighteen sixty and nineteen sixty for them
is Lincoln. This is at Semprine. Reporting from WOCB, Cape
Cod Matt Now back to Kings McCarthy.

Speaker 2 (03:16:03):
In Washington, Well American.

Speaker 10 (03:16:05):
In case you're rolling around the house right about now
and thinking how nice in calm it is, here's something
that should shake you out of your doldrums. The quiet
wars back on in Korea at last. Reports of South
Korean destroyer escorts tangled with a Kami North Korean gun
boat four miles at sea today and sent the rocks
right down the scent the reds, we should say, right
down to the bottom in a nable gunfight which lasted
about five minutes. The rock craft and gave the engage

(03:16:27):
the enemy. And what is the first confirmed battle and
the first thinking of a Kami vessel since the nineteen
fifty three armistice ending the Korean War. Shortly after the
destroyer sent the gunboat to the bottom of the spray
of three Communist torpedo boats appeared on a retaliation mission.
No reports on that action, though, that's the news to now.
James McCarthy reporting.

Speaker 2 (03:16:45):
Berth, and if the truth were on I suspect that
most of us see most of us understands life as
a kind of gigantic foot race. Billions and billions and
billions of us plunge along, thundering along, charging forward, and
a great cloud of dust that rises up into the

(03:17:06):
sky and glints in the yellowish sun. A fantastically exhausting race,
and a race that seems to have no end at all,
but just a race. Everyone is thundering along together and
once in a while one poor unfortunate or two or
three are thrown off onto the curbstone, the lie gasping
and of course completely out distanced within the next thirty seconds.

(03:17:31):
This is the concept of life that I suspect is
the most valid concept for the New Yorker of today.
A gigantic foot race. And have you ever had the
feeding that if you ever stop to look at the sky,
just to look, you know that they would catch up
with you and pass you, go right on past, thundering
on past. I have this friend who, every time he

(03:17:52):
goes on vacation, has little earphones plugged into his ears.
He's connected to his office by a set of radio phones.
His boat is never out of touch to the world ever,
And constantly they're bringing messages to him constantly because he
wants to stay in the race and at the same
time look at the sky, which of course is a
complete impossibility, because the kind of sky that I am
speaking of is the sky that has no messages being

(03:18:15):
brought to you by runners, And this is the sky
that we're all afraid of. I can't get out of touch.
I have this friend who once in a while is
called out of New York for a couple of weeks
from military service or something. He's the only guy I
know in military service that is in constant touch, night
and day with his agent. He's the only guy I
know who gets permission from his first sergeant to call

(03:18:36):
his agent during guard duty, and his answering service every
two hours has been instructed to call the Post Service
club to let him know whether Xanak has called. He
is never out of touch. The foot race goes on,
and the great thundering herd, the crashing and the roaring.
And yet you know, there are two kinds of people

(03:18:58):
reading the people who once in a while take their
mind away from looking at the sky and try half
heartedly to get into the race. Because you see, there
is something in the air that makes it indecent to
spend your life looking at the sky. Not only indecent,
but vaguely immoral. And so once in a while you

(03:19:22):
look up at the sky and you pull down and
you say, I really should get there, and then you
make a half hearted attempt. You'll call your agent. Is anything, Charlie,
Oh good to hear from you again. Where you been, Well,
I'm around, you know, And of course the implication when
he says, well, where you been, you know, Oh, poor sap,

(03:19:42):
And you can hear the thundering roar of the of
the hoof beats going through his office as you're in
touch once again with the great race, and you know
you can never catch you up. You know. Have you
ever seen a dog race? That's one of the saddest
of all races to see, you know, because the goal
is out in front of them. When you see a
horse race. There's a complete meaninglessness to a horse race.

(03:20:03):
I mean there's a little bit oft they run past.
There's no no meaning. And we like to believe that
one horse has a rivalry inside of him to beat another. No, no, no, no,
come on, now, that's that poor old idiotic thing that
Walt Disney started years ago, that animals are really people
in disguise and are somehow better. No, that's that's silly.
Get it out of your mind, out of your skull pageine.

(03:20:25):
Cats are not people, No, no, no, they are carnivores, dear,
and give them the chance, they will carnivore on you,
which is another story. They're just too small to get
away with it. Now, no instantly. This is another thing.
We have a concept of friends, you know, It's like
all of us think the natives love us because they

(03:20:46):
come up nuzzling up to the little house we've established
in the jungle to hand them aspirins and rock and
roll records. But given the alternative, they would come nuzzling
up with something else. And if you're not, if you
don't believe this, take a look at the Current Life
mag and see all the people being chased over the
velt in Africa, literally being chased. It's just a matter

(03:21:08):
of choice, you see. The cat has no choice but
to be this friendly little thing that curls in your
But given another, say, two hundred pounds, the cat is
another story, indeed, my dear, and another story. But that's
all beside the point, you sue. The horses are just things,
you know, they run, But you go to a dog race,

(03:21:28):
you see. I learned a lot about this problem of
the thundering herd one time when I was inadvertently admitted
to a dog track outside of Miami. At one point
in my career, when I was working for the government,
I had risen to the rank of PFC rapidly by
diligent study, and I was allowed a few hours off
from the tether and somehow or other, I wound up

(03:21:49):
in a dog track of all places when you're in
the army to be I mean, this is more of
I can't tell you how symbolic this was, how meaningful
it became. It was, could very well have been one
of the turning points in my life. Have you ever
wondered how in the world you got to be what
you are? Where the turning points really were? How come
you didn't wind up Harlow Curtis or something. I mean,

(03:22:10):
he's obviously no more brighter than no brighter. Hey, speaking
of that, did you read that fantastic thing on the
front page of the New York Times, The Triumph of
PR over the Truth? Incidentally, you know what public relations is?
You know most people think public relations is is is advertising.
It's completely different. It's the opposite. You see. Advertising takes

(03:22:32):
that little itsy bitsy thing that you think is better
that you have than other people have, and they blow
it up into a fantastic blimp. You see, this is advertising.
Oh No, PR is the opposite. I mean, when you
got this rotten thing that's hanging on you like a barnacle,
PR steps in and makes it good. You see, they
do the opposite. This is quite true. You know, for example,

(03:22:55):
when when there's a strike and an enormous plant, you
don't think the admin step into you didn't take out
ads about No, it's the PR men who say that
there's just a little momentary riffle in our friendly, wonderful,
happy family. But we're already sitting around the same table
pitching the same Oh yeah, that's right. It's all part
of PR. And it was this beautiful story that kind

(03:23:15):
of exemplifies the dream world of our day. There was
the president. Did you see it on the front page
of the Times. I almost fell sideways right into the
right off the curb on fifty seventh Street when I
got this one. It was the funniest piece of Americana
that I've seen in a long time. It seems that
they nabbed the president of one of the major automobile
concerns with four hundred and fifty thousand bucks in his jenes,

(03:23:40):
and the PR men immediately stepped in and said, mister
lb Watanabby has arrived this settlement with the water Nobby
Motor Company for four hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which
apparently came about through a mistake in bookkeeping and a
mistake in aims. We have reached the settlement, mister Water.
Noobby has resigned. I could see the settlement. Can't you

(03:24:03):
see them dragging this guy in from his pleasure office,
kicking and screaming, two FBI men on each side, and
one guy behind him with a sawd off shotgun, and
they drag him in, and the money is all taken
out of his four hundred and fifty thousand dollars by
a misunderstanding of the bookkeeping methods, and they lay it
on Andy said, all right, Charlie, now what it's either

(03:24:23):
the pokey or hand the dough over. He hands the
dough over, and a settlement has been reached. A settlement.
This is a settlement in our time, he said it.
Somehow sounds like good, solid, substantial citizens have gotten down
and sat down and talked it over. You see. Hitler

(03:24:44):
pointed it out Runeau a long time ago. I must
say he did. Hitler said that the way that big
people can get by with it is that little people
almost always live lives of complete honesty and cannot comprehend
people above them being anything other than they are. Only
in spades. He must be more honest than I am,

(03:25:04):
whereas it's almost invariably quite the opposite, quite the opposite.
And that's how they got there, you see, being a realist.
And by the way, realism is not to be confused
with cynicism, my dear, So don't get don't fall into
that trap. I mean, this is an old, an old
canard that is constantly trotted out by these guys who say, oh,

(03:25:25):
I was gloom professional gloom dealers. No, it's not the
same thing, you know. And so anyway, I'm in this
I'm in this track. I'd like to describe. Most of
you've probably never seen a dog race. Let me tell
you how a dog race works. Whippets and greyhounds run
and they have this track. It's he bitsy track in

(03:25:45):
a way, you see, And there's all those lights and
all these sweating people are sitting around and they bring
the dogs out and they sort of trot them around
back and forth on leashes. And these are just plain
ordinary dumb dogs. And they're very dumb. Oh yes, the
greyhounds and the whippets are the dumbest creatures this side
of an amoeba. And they walk back. I know. It's
terrible to admit that there's such a thing as a

(03:26:05):
dumb dog right there. But there are many dumb dogs,
just as there are dumb people. It's interesting to note
that the porpoise is about fourteen thousand miles above the
dog in the scale of intellectual values, and very well
could be several points above man. Incidentally, in fact, I
was aboard this cruiser and there was a whole school

(03:26:26):
of porpoises going alongside of us, giving us the old bazoop.
Every five minutes they'd come out of the water and
look at this thing and give us the business again.
Man was right back after it. This poor old cruiser
had been mothballed with the best of intentions to cut
out war. And now we've taken off all the shades,
we're back at it again, and the porpoises go on.
I mean, who is right, you know, poor clowns. And

(03:26:50):
so I'm sitting at the dog track, sweating away, wearing
my full dress uniform, my PFC suit, looking out there,
and I have my seventy five cents bet on number seven,
which was a thin, rarely ribby looking creature, very moth eaten,
and they were walking them back and forth out there.
I had never seen a dog race, let me describe it.

(03:27:11):
And all these dogs were brought together in a little
sort of a little mob and put into little shoots
and they're there, their little their little tethers were taken
off and there was a ringing of a bell buoying. No,
it's not cruel at all, my dear, No, No, why
do I tell you what happens. There's no cruelty involved.
I mean, when is there going to be a society

(03:27:32):
called the Society for the Prevention of Cruelly to us?
I mean, to get us out of this crummy race.
I mean, that's what I want. I mean, I'm talking
about the great race. You know what? I know? What
you know? Have you ever had anybody call you on
the phone and say, how is it going, Charlie? How
is it going? Well, I'm going to ask you how
is it going? You know what the it is that

(03:27:53):
I'm talking about? Mm hmm. It wouldn't it be fantastic
if it was taken off of your back, if you
could forget all those miserable things. You know, when you're
three years old, they begin to drum into you that
ambition is the soul of honor. And goodness. And as
a matter of fact, almost invariably, the world has been
undone by ambition. All the worst tyrants in history were

(03:28:16):
the most ambitious people in history, every one of them,
every last single one. Do you remember when Castro came in.
I don't want political office, he said, I don't want
to have anything to do with the art. I'm gonna
come back and study log again. Yes, sir, that's my baby, Sir,

(03:28:37):
don't mean maybe. And each one of us is just
as bad. Give you thirty seconds in the boss's chair
and you would become a fiend, believe me, an absolute,
utter and complete fiend. And since that within every one
of us, don't think for a minute you're any different.
And the reason you're so wonderful is because you've gotten nowhere.
Believe me, you have not been given the chance to

(03:29:00):
the axe. Give them the chance. Look out, Nellie, bar
the door. And if you couldn't wield the acts, you
would never get into that seat. Ever, it's just the
rule of thumb of the nature of the jungle. But nevertheless,
I'm sitting there and I'm watching these dogs, and here
is the significant point. Suddenly up pops in front of
these dogs a rabbit, a phony rabbit. Let me tell you,

(03:29:24):
it was the phoniest rabbit I've ever seen. And I baby,
I've seen some phony rabbits in my day. I've worked
for some. As a matter of fact, I happen to
work now for a genuine rabbit. But a rabbit, you know.
And so nevertheless, I mean, I got nothing against rabbits,
But then again, I've got nothing for rabbits either. I
can tell you this very definitely. I mean I can

(03:29:46):
take rabbits or leave them alone, you know. And so
this rabbit popped up out of the track and started
to run on a track, a little metal mechanical deal.
And these dogs took out like like idiots after this rabbit,
obviously mechanical rabbit. And they're running like mad, and the
rabbit is going and everything is hot, and all the
people jumping up and hollering, and the rabbit is about

(03:30:09):
two jumps ahead of the dogs, And every time the
dogs begin to catch up, the guy advances the speed
of the rabbit a little bit. He's got a control board,
and they run even faster. And then the rabbit goes faster,
and they run like mad, and they're finding they all
go across the finish line and the rabbit disappears into
the ground and they lead him off the track, sweating,

(03:30:30):
waiting for the next heat. Next time they'll get that rabbit.
Each one of them says, he's led into his pen.
Doesn't that sound familiar? Doesn't that sound familiar? Daddy? Whose
life are we describing? Hm? You know what happens when

(03:30:50):
one of the rabbits, When one of the rabbits is
caught by a dog, I'll tell you it happens quite often.
Oh yes. The dog catches up with the rabbit and
he merely gets knocked on his duff. It is an
electrical rabbit that has four electrodes sticking out of the
back end. And as soon as the dog catches up
paw on his keyster. He gets up and shakes his

(03:31:12):
head and starts to run again, which, somehow, you say,
is precisely what we're all involved in. Yes, sir, that's
my baby, speaking of rabbits. This is wor Am at
FM New York. And we will be here until you know,
I mean, you know, you can't you see the point

(03:31:34):
being here? There's no point, Actually, there's no point. I
just told you the story of the dogs. I mean,
I can just see this little old lady out in
stating on him. What is this idiots talking about? Would
you please change the diallelem here and get me some
good music, Give her some good music, please, good American music. Yes, yes, madam,

(03:32:01):
good American music for you. Eh, here we are. Isn't
that better? Madam? Just makes sense? That's good sound sense,
hat Loaier, that's much better. That it's funny. Gotten rid

(03:32:30):
of that idiot, heaven sinks it. And now they allow
people of that kind of get on the radio, these
beatnik types always talking about dog races. I can't state it.
I love dogs that at you, Lota Tatier. Obviously, Madam

(03:32:52):
loves people who utter you and shepherd persists in speaking
of them. And there are senseless rabbits that they pursue endlessly,
endlessly embassy through thousands of miles of Walt Disney film,
with the same scenery going past them, hour after hour.

(03:33:13):
Would you please get that giddy apple keeps interrupting the music, Yes, madam,
poor Volta. Just remember, ladies and gentlemen, in this day,
in this moment of our history, nineteen sixty we are

(03:33:36):
playing the everything is going to be all right, Polka
by the ten million sighing somatic strings, loving you eternally
in a bath of ambiotic flud. Of course you've got

(03:33:58):
more automobiles than ever before, and more air conditioners to it,
There's no question about that. And you're more, of course,
certainly more secure than you ever were. You've made your
third payment already on that plot and that friendly eternal

(03:34:20):
resting place on on Long Island, close to the bus
station where your friends can en it. By the way,
it's non segregated, it's purely democratic. But you I've assured
yourself at preferred physician by buying early. Don't stop, don't don't, don't, don't,

(03:34:52):
don't stop. Oh, can you imagine the terrible sight of
an American who has suddenly been weaned from his mood music.
He was out there on that dark cruel sea. Shall
I tell you the awful truth, my dear, that on
our warships that are plunging out over that dark, that

(03:35:15):
dark styge in Maine, there is a loud speaker in
every gun turret that plays mood music. Yes, I'm telling
you the truth, and they're also playing. The barbarians are
at the gates walks for all of you who have gathered,

(03:35:37):
gathered to dream for just a moment, for a year,
for a decade, maybe for a century another this is
such pretty music.

Speaker 13 (03:35:51):
I mean.

Speaker 2 (03:36:04):
There, let you feel better now. It had so nice
to get out of the rat race. Have you noticed that?
I'd like to point out one thing. Have any of
you ever seen rats racing? And we eternally call it
the rat race? Actually what you're talking about is the
people race. I've never once seen a rat race another

(03:36:27):
rat as long as I've been around, and I've been around,
you know, baby, I've been around. Speaking of being around
and getting there, the next time you fly the coop
or at least make the poor pitiful attempt. You know
you can never do it. Don't think for a moment
you can. No matter where you go, you are you.
And the saddest site is the site of a tourist

(03:36:50):
a million miles away from home, trying to find another hymn.
Trying to find another hymn. You see, he stands and
looks at the Fontana Trevy and the great waters are
rising and falling, and he's wearing his Tom mccanned shoes
and he is still literally thoroughly and completely him. He
will never be anything other than that. He is always

(03:37:12):
an eternal observer, as we all are. And so the
poor Italian coming out of the out of the dank
little doorway just outside of let's say that the square
of Tritone. He comes out, and he has his little postcards,
and he looks at you, and he he himself, can
never escape being himself. We are eternally this way. I

(03:37:33):
would suggest that the next time you make the poor,
pitiful attempt to do it via Luftansa, at least you
will be lulled for a moment fourteen thousand miles above
the sea. No wonder. We love jet flying. It's the
most unreal kind of flying there is. I mean, you
don't even see the ground in a jet. You are are?

(03:37:54):
You are totally and thairoughly in limbo. You are? You
know what I'd like to do? Would I wish some airline?
And I'm going to make this suggestion. You know, I
sat with a Lufthansa executive and we talked about this thing.
And they have some of these these beautiful old DC sixes.
I love the DC six and these beautiful old super
cunnies which I think is the is the most graceful

(03:38:16):
of all aircraft. I wish they were somewhere somebody would
dig out a biplane, a real biplane with open cockpits,
two open cockpits, you know, a biplane. In case those
of you who are completely bred and born in the
jets and don't know what a biplane is, a biplane
is a thing that has I'll tell you. It's like
if you took a piece of the Venetian blind, you know,

(03:38:37):
and you cut it off, and it's got two things
sticking out from each side, and it's got a great
big thing sticking up on the back and wheels hanging down.
I'd like to ride in an airplane again that has
wheels hanging down, you know, and get in the I'd
get in the front cockpit and they'd strap me in,
you see, thoroughly, just strap me in with my leather
jacket and a great big cloud of sheepskin up around

(03:38:58):
my neck. And then I would have my leather helmet
pulled down over my eyes, great big goggles, and I
would sit there and the and the and they. Of
course there would be a white silk handkerchief that would
flow back in the breeze, and I'd sit there and
the and the pilot would get behind me and he'd
say we're taken off, and he'd holler contact and the
mechanic would grab a hold of the product, and by

(03:39:20):
George we'd be flying and away we go. Can you
imagine what what what a sensation it would cost if
one air I don't care what airline it would be,
just name it. Lufthansa t w A KLM announces that
they have a biplane flight now available for the true
aficionados who really want to do it. You know, there

(03:39:41):
would be a line of eight million guys waiting to
fly via open biplane. I mean, I mean the dangerous
kind of plane that could very well be lost off
Greenland forever. I would be the first in line. I
don't know why, but I would be there. Wouldn't it
be a tremendous thing. And I'm sitting there talking to
this guy says, you know, why don't they keep a

(03:40:03):
comfort of these old, these old, these old you know,
the real airplanes on the roots for people who like
to sit for fourteen hours, you know who just like
like like the old steamers. I can't think of anything
better than to take a long one week steamship ride
really seriously, or to fly for fourteen hours over this airplane,

(03:40:24):
this airplane that just quietly flies along. But you get
into a jet. Now I've flown into the interior of
Europe on a jet. It's a strange sensation. To those
of you who have never flown a jet, it is
the most unreal sensation that you can imagine. It is
really indicative of our time that flying to Europe has
been reduced I think to a kind of you know,

(03:40:48):
like throwing away an old used Kleenex, something you don't
even think twice about it. Let me tell you about
the first time I saw cleanexes. You know, it's funny.
I remember these Some of these things make make a
vivid And I had this teacher named Miss Shields who
was very advanced. Miss Shields had already in that period,
given up Winnie the Pool and was deep in Little
Ard Fin Nanny and Annie Rooney. She was. She used

(03:41:10):
to read us out by the hours. She used to
read us raggedy ann and raggedy Andy. And I remember
one day Miss Shields who who had who had kind
of yellow you know, the kind of hair that is
wiry that sticks out like a great cloud from the head,
as she was always wear kind of a brillo pad
made out of hair, and Miss Shields is roomless glasses
and thin and transparent, and Miss Shields's eturn. She was

(03:41:33):
the only one I ever known, have ever known, really
who could honestly weep over Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Anny,
literally weep, and great tears would flow down from behind
her roomless glasses when she's reading the story of the
Balloon Fairies, and she's yeah, I mean, she was the first.
She was really ahead of her time. I mean, she

(03:41:54):
could have been a good she was, she could have
been a woman commentator today, way ahead of her time.
And so Miss Shiels is standing up there reading us
Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy, and I'm noticing that as
she finishes each paragraph that was particularly poignant, she would
take something out of her purse, a white handkerchief, and

(03:42:15):
blow her nose, that lady like nose blow, you know,
that little wiping back and forth. And she had one
of these razor like noses that bent from side to
side when she would wipe. This is a librarian nose,
and she would wipe it back and forth, and then
she would tuck it into her into her purse again,
and she would go and Raggedy Ann said, the raggedy Andy, Ohm,

(03:42:36):
the pirates are after us. Now, please come away with me,
Raggedy Ann. And she would read this, and she would
go on and she would blow her nose again, and
then occasionally she would reach into her purse and take
out another one and drop the others into the wastebasket.
I couldn't imagine what she was doing. I came from
a bandana handkerchief, a real bandana family, big red things

(03:42:58):
and yellow and green. I haven't had a good blue
bandana in years. And this is the kind of fan.
And she's throwing these things away. Do you know what
I did after class? I'll tell you, is that an
awful thing. This is a real confession. I looked in
the wastebasket to see what they were, and they were paper.
I had never seen Kleenex before, and it was kind

(03:43:20):
of a shock, you know. It was the beginning of
the plastic world. And I went home and I said, hey, mom,
miss Shiels blows her nose in paper. I had the
wrong idea. I thought it was another kind of paper. Actually,
and she says, well, yes, she's using cleanex. I said,
cleanex what's cleenex? Ma? She says, she's standing over there
by the sink in a rump sprung bathrobe. And she says,

(03:43:42):
cleanexes paper handkerchiefs. MA said, doesn't Michiels have real handkerchiefs.
She says, cleanexes are real handkerchiefs. I says, mo, they're paper.
She says, but they're real handkerchiefs. I said, but what
about my handkerchief mine? I take my bandana out of
my pocket. She says, that's a bandana. He said, but
it's a handkerchief. She says, no, it's a bandana. Misschiels

(03:44:04):
is using clean axes. My mother was going the way
of all flesh, and little did I know it, and everywhere, everywhere,
every of course, it was the beginning, you see, it
was the beginning of the slow transposition to where today
now you can buy a sweater that is called virgin nylon.

(03:44:25):
You see that it's gotten rid of that old crummy
wool stuff that we used to have, you know, that
old miserable cashmere, and now we have virgin nylon. Can
you imagine a guy who can't afford virgin nylon, and
so please please don't don't don't leave me? Hey, hey, hey,

(03:44:45):
who don't leave me? Don't leave me, don't I need
a little shot of dream here, that's better, Give a
little wild I don't make it though, That's what we need. Love.
You see, the truth comes out in the most unexpected
of all places and tells about our deep seated fears.
As you know, almost all of you are aware that

(03:45:08):
the womankind has almost completely abdicated her role in the
world of today, almost completely, but her conscience will not
allow her to do so. Man himself, and I'm speaking
in the small letter Man, he too has abdicated his role,

(03:45:28):
his role of the slayer of saber toothed tigers, the
cracker of clam shows the ranter and the roarer against
the great bolts of lightning that come out of that
darkening sky. He no longer rants, he no longer roars,
He no longer feels the dark, the dark, cutting surge
of overwhelming anger. This was man's role. Woman's role has

(03:45:55):
to have been abdicated, and so we must somehow gain,
if possible, the vicarious substitute. And so man after man
buys magazines where women fold out in a three color
spread that remind him of the days when he relychased
real women, and he calls it playboy. Women buy magazines

(03:46:21):
that remind them that there were once days when they
were women, and they grated cabbages, and they broke eggs
in the bowls, And so they too, remind themselves by
hanging bronze plated cabbage graters on the walls of imitation
pine paneled kitchens. You walk through the kitchen on your

(03:46:45):
way to the Chinese restaurant night after night. In many
East Side apartments, the kitchen has become a repository for
a kind of museums of consciences, and hanging on the
walls are great bronze plated pans that once were used
for boiling potatoes and are now only used to look at.

(03:47:07):
I even know one chick who has a bronze plated
meat grinder. How basic can you get? The kind that
aunt men used to stand and shove great chunks of
beef in a and grind up the bone and the gristlin,
all for Uncle Carl's hamburger. She did it just to
bug him, because she'd thrown his teeth down the air
shaft months before, and he just sat there. One time

(03:47:28):
he gummed one of her Hamburger balls for over four weeks,
just gummed it and sucked. But aunt men knew what
she was doing. It was a war of attrition all
the way. And I know this chick on the east
side who has a bronze plated meat grinder. It's right
out of the American home, A handy decorating hint. You see,

(03:47:49):
Oh yes, I foresee the day when automatic washers will
become the antique of our time, the automatic washer. Because
there is a man who brings the linens and who leaves.
There is a man who brings the dish towel and
then leaves the dish. I know apartments where the dish
towel hangs only as an old artifact, just hangs on

(03:48:11):
the wall there, and it's beautifully embroidered. It hasn't seen
a dish other than those dishes that are hanging on
the wall for years. It's like the appendix. And so
womankind has two abdicated her role, just as man no
longer finds it possible to be angry, to stalk, the
wary sabertoothed tiger next to the water cooler. We are

(03:48:33):
both abdicated, and the truth is coming out. Please give
me a little more of that truth music Truth American version.
Did you read? Did you read the little news note
that came of all places in the Trenton Evening Times, Friday,
May twentieth, nineteen sixty. I have included this in my
great catalog of how things really were, So the ten

(03:48:56):
thousand years from now when people dig up our art,
no idea what the world is like looking at Henry Moore.
Believe me, they'll get no idea looking at the cossa,
but they will get an idea of how we are
when they read this list of this speaking of womankind
abdicating her place, a mankind abdicating his. We have to

(03:49:16):
have a symbolic, a symbolic conscience. Though that reminds us
of once wee, once we were this we were a
little note from the Trenton Evening Times. I read I quote,
have you ever noticed that more and more of the
gasoline signs hanging outside service stations are oval in shape?

(03:49:40):
Have you ever noticed that? And many of them are
pure white and glow in the dark? Oval shape? What
does that remind you of a yes, sir, le bomb,
It is no accident. An industrial designing firm applied Freudian
psychology and concluded that since over sixty percent of the

(03:50:01):
customers are female, the gasoline signs ought to appeal to them.
And what does that ovoid shape remind you of? It's
a three letter word that often pops up in New
York Times. Crosswood puzzlement begins with an oh. The second
letter is a V. The oval shape was chosen because

(03:50:27):
it is said to quote, and we are quoting the
industrial firm. A symbol of the mother relationship, the egg
and the hull. As mother whistles down us one in her.

Speaker 13 (03:50:44):
Jag, mother, Mother, Mother resolutely.

Speaker 2 (03:51:07):
Would you please fill her up? Young men, and mother
reaffirms her motherhood once again, to the tune of four
dollars and sixty one cents worth of one hundred and
five proof. Have you noticed gasoline is becoming a Freudian thing?
Have you noticed this? Oh? Yes, gasoline is no longer

(03:51:28):
sold on its octane or what it does. Oh. Indeed,
there is a series of TV commercials that scared the
wits out of me. It shows this desperate looking guy.
He's sitting there, and he's got a crew cut and
a low forehead. Believe me, he's got a low forehead.
Have you seen this guy. He's a desperate one. And
he's got this nervous looking chick sitting next to him,
and he's looking around, very very very impatiently. He's looking

(03:51:50):
for the guy, obviously, he's looking for the gas station
attendant and he's pulled into a gas station. He's looking around, right,
that nervous, irritated, rotten look that you see on the
face of everyone running after the mechanic rabbit. And the
announcer says, men on the goal, men of action, choose
one another gasoline every time. And he's the guy that
I'm always afraid of every time I'm driving. He's that

(03:52:11):
guy that goes, you know what, the cuts, that that
that that fantastic character that leaps from stop signed to
stop signing and from stop street to stop street. He
now has a special gasoline made for him.

Speaker 11 (03:52:25):
Letter that.

Speaker 2 (03:52:27):
Men on the gull and there will be a gasoline
one day. Believe me, that will be so to the
contemplative man chooses Walden gasoline and it'll show a guy
driving along to the countryside thinking beautiful fun love. And

(03:52:55):
then there will be one, There will be one soul
to the concerned man, and there will be this guy
reading he's reading the New York Times editorial, and you
see him and coming out of his TV. Sitting next
to them is the is the grim concern face of
Edward Armour, the concern mag Uss realist gasoline a lot

(03:53:27):
of here. So keep your eye out, baby, for the
gas station of your choice. Be sure it has that.

(03:53:50):
Of course you can't help, but you know, everywhere everywhere.
A guy said to me the other day, Sis, you know,
has it ever occurred to you that that we all
might be the victims of subliminal propaganda of one kind
of there? And he says, wouldn't it be something? Wouldn't
it be fantastic if somebody decided to use this, I said,

(03:54:11):
But we wouldn't know it if they were. Remember that's
what the whole idea of subliminal is.

Speaker 13 (03:54:16):
Jack.

Speaker 2 (03:54:18):
He says, Yeah, Hey, looked at me. Yeah. And he
was wearing his washable wearable suit, and he was wearing
his washable wearable life and he was walking striding into
the sunset on Madison Avenue and you could just you
could just see the You could just see the very edges,
the very tips of the great the great rivers on

(03:54:41):
either side of us. Way down when you look west
and you look east, you can see those eternal waters.
And speaking of the eternal waters, do you remember the
story of that ship, that ship that sank out here
in the East River just a few weeks ago? The
ship was coming along, you know, at three o'clock in
the morning. Get this, Now, this is right here in

(03:55:03):
the heart of good old friendly Manhattan. And you, of
course are aware that the that the Street Department, I
get this, Jack, The Street Department is still maintaining hunting
teams who spend their nights hunting throughout the water supply
system of New York, dark deep under the subways, way
down under your feet, hunting alligators. Do you know that

(03:55:26):
there are alligators living right under the right under the
surface of Manhattan. Everyone's oh, no, it can't be. Oh
yes it is. And you know where they came from.
There was a tremendous fat If you remember a few
years ago, people buying alligators and sending them back from Florida.
You remember those for a dollar and sending them back
to cousin men and the bronx. Yes, well, what happened

(03:55:50):
after you have an alligator around the hospital while you
get kind of tired of the look on its face?
And what do you do with an alligator? You don't
throw them out, you know, you just don'll toss them
out in the garbage. Well, what happened with most people
is where most you know, it's a funny little thing. Yes,
they wound up in the water supply guess how. But

(03:56:10):
the thing about an alligator baby is that he's amphibious,
and more than that, he's highly adaptable. And that water
supply system down under the streets of New York is
kept at a constant temperature. You know, it does not
freeze down there. And so they grew to great size
until this very day, right under your feet, fourteen foot
alligators are stalking and little men with little lights on

(03:56:32):
their helmets are looking for them. Just thought you ought
to know. And so that ship is going along the
East River at three o'clock in the morning, right by
the U N Building, the central heart of the nerve
system of all assemble humanity, When suddenly something on the
bottom of the river, something on the bottom of the
East River, that friendly old river out there rip the

(03:56:54):
bottom of this boat right out. Do you know how
much of a rip it made in it? There were
twenty compartments in this ship, which was almost eight hundred
feet long. It ripped a line right down the middle
of the ship through sixteen of the compartments, like a
gigantic can opener. And at last reports they still hadn't

(03:57:14):
found what it was. Under the East River. All the
guy could say, we're sinking, Charlie. And they drove it
up on the beach right next to the symbolically enough,
right next to the to the un building. We're better
for a sinking ship to be pulled up to remind
the natives, to remind the denizens of what it's like.

(03:57:35):
And the water is pouring in. Speaking of the water
we have with us tonight, the paper book the paper
book gallery, deep out down down dark, in the heart
of seething Greenwich Village, and it does seethe. And I
would like to recommend that if you're taking if you're
taking the village thing tonight, if you've got nothing to do,
I can think of no better place to go to

(03:57:57):
spend you, you know. In interestingly enough, the paper book
Gallery is becoming recognized more as a place to go
than it's a place to buy books, Isn't that sad
I said? Oh I, oh, I went to all the paperwork,
I says, what did you get? He's oh, I don't
buy no books. He just goes and stands around with
Schopenhauer glaring at him, and Kirker guard and incidentally, the

(03:58:21):
one who would understand that most of all is cof
Cut looking down at this poor clown bathing himself in
the aura of books. Well, if you'd like to do it,
it's the paper Book Gallery down on Sheridan Square. And
remember it's the paper book Gallery. They have deliberately placed
four steps in which you go down to get into
this place. It reminds you of the mortality of which

(03:58:41):
you are part of. You can't escape it, and you
will find that this is undoubtedly one of the most
intriguing shops of any kind you've ever been in in
New York City. There are two of them. There's one
on Third Street, and incidentally the one on Third Street,
by the way, the gallery will be open till two
o'clock this morning. The greatest collection of paper books in
the probably in America. But two doors down from the

(03:59:03):
one on third Street. At eighty two West third Street
is Ying and Yang, which, unquestionably to me at least,
is one of the finest Oriental restaurants in New York,
and according to Gourmet Magazine, is one of the finest
five Oriental restaurants in the United States, which I will
not go so far as saying, you know, I'm beginning

(03:59:24):
to have a great unfaith in reviewers. Reviewers obviously are
emotional people. I wonder what Walter Kerr thinks every time
he walks past that Sinus musical I've seen in years,
you know, the one with a four letter word in it,
and it's literally one of the worst. So what happened

(03:59:46):
that night? Anyway? Too many oliphs. But nevertheless, Ying and
Yang at eighty two West third Street is truly one
of the finest Oriental restaurants in America. And they are
open on Sunday. You'll find it's very difficult to find
a restaurant, a good read instant open in New York
on Sunday. And if you're going out for dinner, you'll
find them open to night till ten. You'll find them open, oh,

(04:00:07):
ten eleven, they're open to one and you'll find them
open till two o'clock in the morning most weeknights. And
they open at noon tomorrow and they will be open
until midnight. And this is eighty two West third Street,
Ying and Yang, and they have a bar. They have
a bar. Now, no, no, don't sub You see he

(04:00:29):
jumped over his air conditioner. It was only a drop
of thirty five feet. That's the point you see over
the air conditioner.

Speaker 6 (04:00:38):
Over wr radio your station for new A man with drive, A.

Speaker 2 (04:00:42):
Man with drive. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:00:45):
Well, that's it for air Checks 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 seventy seven. Air Checks is normally a three
hour podcast uploaded weekly and can be heard every Sunday
on the k TI Radio network. See you at the
same time and same channel.

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Episode 110, February 8, 2025 - Jean Shepherd Marathon, Part 4

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.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 110, February 8, 2025 - Jean Shepherd Marathon, Part 4