Episode 115, March 15, 2025, The Jean Shepherd Show Marathon, Part 9

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:34):
Welcome to air checks. Here is more of the Gene
Shepherd Marathon on w O R in New York City
from April twenty fourth, nineteen sixty two. The Literati Today
discussed films not Books, Chicago Chop Suey Joints.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
We'll be here until midnight, The Truth Verification Corporation. Mister Keener,
mister Keen trace s have lost lies, mister live trace No,
what was his name, mister Keen Tracer of lost people,
mister Trace Keener of lost traces? What was that anyway?

(01:10):
What are they de? No? DoD doded, dodd edy blood,
dud do blood. I'll grow with your garden of truths. Well,

(01:35):
everyone has a few weeds here and there. Don't let
the weeds bother you. They are but natural consequences of
tilling the soil. One tilleth not one groweth not. I
always say, of course, we all love our fellow men,
don't we. That's what sets a society, you know. The

(02:01):
things in the field. Right, It's like the other night,
oh maybe seven eight o'clock in the evening, just when
the sun is going down, falling below the western horizon.
On the other side of the long, thin buildings that
overlook the river. There. I'm walking along and I see

(02:22):
this barbershop on Lexington Boulevard Avenue Street Long, one of
those long barbershops, about fifteen chairs. There's about four old
guys sitting in the first four chairs barbers, one dozing off,
one reading the racing form, the other one paring his fingernails,

(02:46):
and the fourth one just staring at the ceiling. There's
this big sign in front. It says no waiting, plenty
of chairs.

Speaker 3 (03:09):
Yeah after yeah, here after that, yere la, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
Who stopped its insanity? Who is that person in there?
Please move her to the left a little bit, will you,
just a little bit? Please? But that's that's not that's

(03:48):
not easily done. Actually, you know, no, man, please the
other way right now. Joe, you stand over there, now,
go on. That's your job. We can't get anyone to
do anything for us here tonight. But on the other hand,
you know, if you look carefully, you will find that
there must be at least three quarters of the population
sitting out there at night. And there's a certain kind

(04:08):
of person you know that I think, I think is
like a mushroom about to burst through the soil in darkness. Now,
there are many things that will that will affect this
mushroom's growth. I have noticed several little traces of things

(04:29):
going through our atmosphere. I don't know how to a
sort of a litmus paper, you know, just reaching out there,
changing colors and varying a little bit when things move through. Now,
one of the things I have detected is that there
must be at least oh, i'd say, two hundred thousand
people under the age of twenty five will have a

(04:50):
terrible yearning to make a movie, to make a movie,
to write or now, to act in a play, to
act in a movie, to to express, and to be applauded.

(05:17):
Each one of these things, by the way, involves a
large amount of applause. That's very important to be applauded.
Would you make a movie if they wouldn't let you
put your name on it? Really? I wonder how many

(05:38):
actors would act if they would not allow them to
use their name. Have you ever read the fine print
at the bottom of an acting contract? Now? Do you
know they specify the size of the type to be
used in the billing as opposed to the size of
the type to be used by other people? One sixty
fourth the entire page one thirty second of the entire

(06:00):
Oh it gets as complicated as that until finding nobody
appears in any play, movie, hopscotch game without being given
some kind of building. And way down at the bottom
of the little guys used to be the also rans.
Now they have what are called cameo billings. Little cameo
things come on appearing as mister Glott's Charlie Brown shoom

(06:23):
also starring, also starring, starring, starring. Are you starring in
your life? By the way, you wanna make a movie?
Really really want to see that big thing up there
on the screen, all of that stuff going past us,
those wonderful, deep, warm, dark feelings you have about life.

(06:45):
I could see this guy lying on a beach with
his chick, and the moon is hanging out there over
the ocean. The breezes are blowing quietly past, and you
can hear the sound of the waves laving the shore.
Shoom sh you know that nice sucking sound. Shooe sh

(07:08):
sh And the wind is just ruffling the sand gently,
ever so softly and so easily. And she turns to
him and in his ear she whispers, darling, darling, no, no,

(07:32):
i'shy no, I'm not no, not yet. Too late. Now
we have missed the point. I'll have to do that
again some other night. So I'll tell you kids about
making movies. First thing you gotta have is technique. That's

(07:52):
a nasty word, and you gotta know something about doing it.
And so she lies there in his arm and the
wind is blowing past them. Oh, it's wonderful one. It's
all part of the whole thing, you know, it's all
part of the gutsiness of being alive. And suddenly she
turns to him and with her eyes alight, whispers in
his ear, darling, let's let's darling, let's let's let's make

(08:19):
a movie. All it there crying out loud, What a
kick in the I'll tell you this has actually happened
to a friend of mine. You know, of course, this

(08:45):
is this is this is not to beat, This is
not to be vilified, because it's all it's it's our
time and it has to be recorded. You know. It
is not J. D. Salingerville. It's our world, and it's
it's a wonderful Someday, I imagine, I imagine it's gonna
go full circle and some chick is going to say
to a guy with her eyes alike, Darling, let's produce
a spectacular on TV. I feel it inside of me.

(09:07):
We can get Mary Martin, I get Richard Rodgers, we
get this thing really going, and it'll be really love
love love, and everyone will love us TV. Guy will
love us, Darling. Let's let's let's produce a spectacular, a
big one.

Speaker 3 (09:20):
Really, although.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
You know, hold it there. I wonder if you know
that people who do these things really do feel that
they're doing an active love. You know that it's it's
it's an active it's an active affirmation of something. Can't
figure out what it is, but it's affirming something, you know.
I think that that I have seen I've seen most

(09:47):
of the late movies. When I say the late movies,
most of the movies that have been that have been
touted very highly in the last four or five years,
the whole Italian series, the French New Wave series, and
even a few of the American highly touted movies. And

(10:09):
there's one theme that runs through almost all of them,
and that's the theme of the emptiness of modern day life.
Have you noticed that it's that one theme. Well, the
Italian series certainly Ventura, the whole series of the so
called impressionistic neo realistic films. All these words, by the way,

(10:32):
cancel each other out if you know what the words mean.
But they're always used impressionistic, neo realistic. I wonder what
the old realism was like? All this realism is always
called neo realistic or new realism. What was the old realism? Like?
I wonder how that was? How long has it been
since you've seen any of the old realisms art? What
were the old realism? All those all those Priscilla Lane movies,

(10:55):
Is that all those Jimmy Stewart pictures and all that,
was that the old realism? Or what? Anyway? That the
whole thing revolves around one point, and that is the
emptiness of life. Now, I can't, I can't entirely. I
can see that this is true. I mean that there
are a lot of empty areas in life. But has

(11:16):
this never been untrue? Hasn't this always been an obvious
thing to millions of people? Or do you, like most
people believe that all other times were great, that it
was the past that was so wonderful. People had real
values in those days. I heard a guy the other
day on the Long John Show. And he was a
clean bearded youth of twenty two and one of these

(11:38):
clear eyed kids you know from Princeton who speak for
the young American for freedoms people great kind of freedom too.
That therefore, it is in a sense the freedom to
be allowed to kick you you know where I mean,
if it's my desire to do it, well, By George,
that's freedom, you know. And I remember him saying something
that was pretty interesting. He says, you know, one thing

(11:59):
about the people of the past, they were happy. They
were happy because their lives were simple. They had a
kind of truth in their lives. I couldn't help but
think of old Uncle Carl sitting on the back porch
with his banjo in the rain. You know, he'd of course,

(12:19):
Uncle Carle didn't know that he was one of the
people of the past. And on the other hand, I
couldn't help but think of the eighty seven million people
that lie out there in that dark underbelly of the Midwest,
stretching from here all the way to God knows where,
out there with that deep, simple truth of honest lives
all around them, and the sound of the TV sink

(12:42):
buzzing occasionally the sound of the plumbing roaring out in
the back, all of this going on, and yet somehow
there's a deep, simple tooth. And yet there is a deep,
simple tooth. But it has nothing to do with the
Conservatives or the liberals, or the Democrats or the Republicans.
I don't know what it has to do with. But
it doesn't have to do with any of these things.
And I'm curious about that. I suspect that the mechanization

(13:05):
that we have in our lives, all the means of
communicating so quickly with one another having a sense, destroyed
our sense of being ourselves. Really, it's easy to become passionate,
you know. It's a fascinating thing to think of eighty
seven million people all being thrilled at the same time

(13:27):
by Mary Martin at the same moment doing Peter Pan
at the same instant on a gigantic coaxial cable. Isn't
that a kind of a warm thought in a way?
Is it? Really? And the next day we are applauded
for it the papers. I'll say, a magic moment last
night was experienced by eighty seven million people. The rating

(13:49):
was a fantastic one. And whether this is good or
bad is not the point. It changes people to the
to the final to the final end where they all
all are secretly aware of an emptiness in life, and
no wonder all the pictures about the emptiness in life
are really very important. They are really in particularly to
younger people. I'm interested in some of the misconceptions that

(14:14):
we have in our business. One of the things is this,
most people think that the kids watch television. You know,
in our business at television radio, they always talk about
the kids monopolizing the TV set. Get it out of
your skull. I know who the TV people are. The
TV people are, roughly today in America, the people between
the ages of oh, I would say, I would say

(14:38):
roughly thirty five and sixty. I would say, these are
the real TV addicts, perhaps even a little older than
thirty five. These are the people who every night approach
the TV set as another free show. And the rest
of the people you see, who are younger than those

(14:59):
ag just approach it as television, which is something that
they've already rejected by and large large numbers of them
have and that's one of the hopes of our time.
They've rejected a lot of these artificial forms of entertainment
and rejected them very hard and strong. And it's interesting
to note that I will get I will get dozens

(15:20):
of letters from kids, and the kids will often say
this one thing. My old man makes me go to
bed early, and I have to sneak the radio up,
and I have to hide it under my pillow, and
I have to buy batteries every couple of days to
keep it going, because the old man thinks I'm wasting
my time unless I'm watching television. When you're watching television,
somehow that's wholesome. You're not wasting your time as long

(15:42):
as you're watching Doctor Brothers, or as long as you're
watching some late film. But this is an interesting problem
in our day. It doesn't really have much to do
actually with reality, or in fact, it does it have
to do with conscience or morals. It just has to
do with the free show. And there it is in
the time, and it's very bright, you know, speaking of

(16:05):
free shows and that problem. We've come. We've come, in
a way, a kind of full circle of vicarious life.
I'm always intrigued by the number of people I know
who have stopped talking about books that no longer do
the literati I talk about books, today they talk about films.
Films have replaced books. Are you aware of that? That

(16:30):
that The amount of insight you can bring to a
Fellini film is your measure of hipness. The amount of
put down you can apply today to an Ingmar Bergmann
film is a measure of your hipness. The amount of
scorn that you can, of course, the scorn is not
even is not even no longer necessary upon Hollywood products

(16:52):
is another measure of your your literary attainments. And the
way people used to talk, in fact, they used to say,
I remember guys who read great. They used to say,
I just can't help, but I read two three books
a week. Well, today now you're measured the same way
by the number of hours you clock in a waiting
line in front of an art movie, the New Yorker

(17:14):
of Paris, you name it. You know, it's the number
of hours your clock in front of these various houses.
And so it's it's it's it's a kind of a
it's a kind of a new kind of neo vicariousness,
if if there is such a word, a neo vicarious existence. Now,
now I don't know, I don't know about I just

(17:39):
I just can't accept any principle that says life today
is more empty than it was. I cannot believe this.
I think we're becoming more conscious of a large number
of the gaps that there are no answers for in existence.
I think man one hundred years ago was just his
life was just as I think a thousand years ago

(18:01):
it was just as empty over large stretches. Except for
one interesting thing. That is, hardly anybody ever recorded that.
Nobody was writing about that phase of life. Nobody was
putting it down. Certainly, the Age of Heroes did not
touch the great number of people on the street that

(18:22):
if you're over there watching King Arthur and Camelot, you're
watching Guinevere and Lancelot, you don't see all the people
that are not there inside Camelot. Camelot was an island,
and yet we like to judge the Middle Ages on
one island. We like to judge of France on Paris.

(18:44):
We like to judge America by New York. But there's
a lot of stuff out there in the darkness beyond
those flats, and no one really quite ever putsuff down,
no one ever quite puts it in the form so
that you can understand it, or see it, or even
care about it. And yet when we do it, we don't.
We never do it honestly. Marty, for example, was one

(19:06):
of the most honest, dishonest pictures I've ever seen. Hate
the way Marty is because there was an element of
sweetness in Marty that is rarely ever found in the
Martys of the world ever, And there's a kind of
an understanding and a poetic justice in Marty's life that
is rarely ever found. This can be a biological or

(19:27):
sociological sport. You can accept it for that, but you
have to ignore large areas of truth and reality to
do it. And it's there now. On the other hand,
on the other hand, have if you have come out
out of some kind of darkness and you see a
little light, and go back into darkness and go back
into light again, Eventually you will begin to see that

(19:50):
it's almost all the same that six and one half
a dozen of the others. The old canard has it
that you cannot you cannot say today's life was any more,
was any more terrifying or any more paralyzing than any
life at any other time. And people keep yelling, they
keep writing letters, indignant letters to me, and they say, well, yes,

(20:11):
but we've got now that we've got the problem of
total war. Now they never had total war before, the
problem of total all. Come on, that's a total, that's
a total. That's a total. Ridiculous statement, because a war
is always total for anybody who's in it. A man
who was running up the up the hillside on d Day,

(20:31):
that war was just as total for him as any
war could possibly be. And a man who was caught
in the Battle of Hastings that was just as total.
And of course we like to put we like to
put all kinds of value judgments on death. Somehow, it
is not as bad to be killed by a mace
as it is to be killed by a shell fragment.
And again it's not quite as bad to be killed

(20:51):
by a shell fragment as it is to be killed
by fallout. And then, of course we like to pretend that, well, yeah,
but this is the first time that civilians are involved.
Oh boy, you've never been in Europe. If you say that,
I would like to know the number of civilians that
died in World War Two. And interestingly enough, we almost
always refer only to Hiroshima or Nagasaki. We hardly ever

(21:11):
talk about all the other civilian populations that never saw
an Adam bomb. How many people do you think, for example,
died in Cologne in the night bombing rates there? Do
you know anything about that? You'd be interested to know
that more than died under the atom bomb. You know
that it's fascinating, but you never hear about these things.
So somehow each kind of death becomes either worse, are

(21:33):
better in between, and so on, of course, never accepting
the fact that it's all death. And somebody keeps raising
a big sign that says ban the bomb. I wish
it were possible, but it's an intriguing thing then to
to to really realize in your own life all this.

(21:55):
Huxley wrote a beautiful essay on this subject. Speaking of essays,
we have a commercial here, we better do it. It's
for Mandarin House, and if you haven't tried Mandarin House,
I would just like to recommend it respectfully to you.
I don't like to talk about people's food habits, you know,
that's a very interesting thing. The other day a group
of kids came up here and somehow I got tangled

(22:18):
up with him. A whole group of listeners from Wake
Forest down in North Carolina came in and they wanted
to go to the Mandarin House. And I could see
that clean scrub apple pie look that you get out
there just beyond the just behind the Jersey Shore, where
the average American believes meat and potatoes and apple pie,

(22:39):
and once in a while at Coke when he's really
feeding racy on a Saturday night, and maybe I'll have
a glass of red wine, and that's really going way out. Well.
I don't like to recommend. I can only say this
that if you're interested in really fine Oriental food, I
would like to recommend the Mandarin House. In fact, I
have a note here. I get all kinds of letters

(23:02):
from people, and here is a letter from a listener.
He says, Shepherd, thank you for calling our attention to
the Mandarin House. The food is indeed excellent. But here's
the line I wanted to read. He says, if you
tried the fresh leeche nuts, wow, let me tell you, wow.
It's easy enough to go down and get all leechi
nutted up. Oh boy, Yes, I would recommend this if

(23:23):
you've never had leeche nuts. They're not nuts, by the way,
case you're interested. They are a peculiar kind of ice
cold fruit that's served on chopped ice, and you cannot
describe what they are unless you you know, just impossible
to describe it. Is it impossible to describe them as
it is to describe let's say, papaya, and this has

(23:43):
nothing to do with papaya. So it's an Oriental delicacy.
And if you go down to the Mandarin House and
you want to superb dessert, order leeche nuts. I suspect
they're expensive because they have about a three week growing season.
Did you know that? Well? Anyway, this is the Mandarin
House and it's on thirteenth Street between sixth and seventh

(24:05):
in the village, thirteenth Street between sixth and seventh and
they're open every night until about oh, i'd say midnight
one o'clock in the morning, and they're open on the weekends.
They have a bar. It's a great place to go
for Sunday dinner. The Mandarin House one of the finest
northern one of the finest northern Oriental restaurants in this

(24:25):
entire area. When I say northern, there's lots of kinds
of food out of China, you know, this happens to
be Northern Chinese, very different. And don't ask them for
chop sue They don't sell it. Get it out of
your skull, and forget the egg for young, No egg
for young, forget it, no choo main. I remember my uncle.

(24:46):
I had this nutty uncle. This is no more commercial.
Now forget it. You know, this is a funny thing.
I'm so intrigued by one thing that has hardly ever
reported here in America. You know, we're always talking about
the of American cities, but they really aren't. You know
that if you get to know American cities, you will

(25:06):
find that the mores and the attitudes and the ways
of life are so different. For example, in Chicago. In Chicago,
they don't have Chinese restaurants as we call them here.
They call them chop Suey joints. In Chicago, they are
chop Suey joints. They really are. And about every third
block has a chop Suey joint. Now hardly anybody eats

(25:27):
in the chop Suey joint. They send out to the
chop Suey joint to get the stuff there, and it
comes in these these big cardboard things you know that
they put they put clams and stuff, and you know
the like they put goldfish and things in with the
little wire handles. And they always put a little tube
of soy sauce in every everything. It's the soy sauce,
you know, stuck down on the bottom. And there's only
three things that four things you can order from these

(25:49):
Chinese chop suey joints out there in Chicago. And there's
a funny thing about them. There is a close affinity
between a chop suey joint in Chicago, not here in
New York. There is a peculiar fluorescent light quality to
all Chinese restaurants. I don't know why. This is fluorescent
light and oil cloth upholstring of a brilliant red and

(26:11):
a kind of peculiar bilious blue, you know what I
mean about the Chinese restaurant And those awful, those awful,
terrible drawings that are on the walls. Oh, they're the
world's worst. Oriental art finds their way into in the
Chinese restaurants mostly here in New York. Very peculiar, and
everybody loves it for some reason. Right, there's a couple
of months the East Side that are unbelievable for their decorts,

(26:32):
just just unbelievable. I mean it's right out of Woolworth.
I mean, you know you know what I mean by
Have you ever gone down into the basement of some
of the dime stores here in New York any place,
it's no matter where you are, and just walked around
and looked at the ouge dart. That the kind of
thing that the that the man on the street digs
as an art object. You know what I mean by

(26:53):
the big hit for example, the great big gilt panther,
you know, with a with a with a real chain
around his neck, and this panther is and then there
will be a very shiny black panther with a with
a bronze rod coming out of his back and a
great big chartruse green shade hanging over the top. You know,
this kind of art and it's just wild. Some of

(27:14):
this stuff is unbelievable. Well, this is the kind of
feeling that you get in so many Chop Suey joints.
But there's a quality in Chicago that has to be well,
I have to tell it to you because it isn't
the way it is back here. It's not like this
in New York. What's what is that doing? Anyway? He
keeps running back and forth here, what's going on here?

(27:34):
In Chicago? There is a very close affinity between a
Chop Suey joint and a mortuary parlor. Yes, it is
a very close affinity. And I can remember once in
a while being taken into these places and there and
they're they're very silent, and there's a kind of high
backed wooden booth quality about them, and they're dark, and

(27:56):
these little people pad around and always back where they
have the kitchen, there are three or four silent Orientals
who are eating always. They're always eating in the back.
And then you see off to their left there are
these palmettas and palms growing, and it's it's a deadly
silence in the Chicago Chop Suey joint. Well, the things

(28:17):
that you can order in a Chicago Chop Suey joint,
Now this is And don't say, well, they're like that
in the Bronx. They are not like that in the Bronx.
You know, I live in New York, and I have
eaten in many Oriental restaurants and have been around them
here in New York, but not the are different. In Chicago.
They're called chop suey joints. They really are, that's the
phrase for them. And the food in them consists of

(28:39):
egg fool young. And then you can get two varieties
of egg fool young and get egg foo young with
chicken egg foo young with shrimp with soy sauce. Then
you get chop suey. You get vegetable chopped suey or
beef chop suey maybe on Wednesday chicken chop suey. And
then there's another interesting one called chow main. You got

(29:00):
chicken chow maine, or you can get a plain plain
chow Maine, or you can get beef chow Maine. And
then the final most interesting one is a horror known
as wormain. You can get wormaine. There have you ever
heard of wormain worms? Wormain worms very strange, awful stuff.
And there used to be on a Sunday when you'd

(29:22):
come around this one nutty uncle we had. Uncle Al
was the guy that played the violin and was considered
the artist in the family because he once went to
a Rubinstein concert and he took his son there and
they talked about that for years in the family. It
was a long story. And Old Uncle Al used to
on a Sunday when you would come to his house.

(29:42):
His house was entirely paved with linoleum. Entirely. It was
a complete linoleum house, blue and white checkered linoleum. Everywhere
it was linoleum. In the front room and every place
there was this linoleum. Well, Old Old Uncle Al used
to always say, how about a tree, I'm going to
send out to the Chop Suey joint, and I'm gonna
spring for chop suey. Okay. And his aunt. By the way,

(30:05):
this is an unreported aunt. I should report this aunt.
Very interesting. Aunt Aunt Kate, she was another one on
the fire outskirts of the family of the revolving out there.
And old Aunt Kate, Old Aunt Kate would say, oh,
come on, now, they're so tired of Chop Suey. All
the time. He'd say, come on, who's tired of who
can be tired of chop Suey? And Old Al would say,

(30:26):
all right, of course, what are you going to say? Well, actually,
nobody really was tired of Chop sue Everybody was ready
to go all the time with his stuff. And he
would say Okay, what'll it be. Now, let's let's get
the orders done. And so he would start ordering this stuff,
and of course, inevitably what he would really want to
order is war maine. The one thing nobody liked, but
al liked warm maine. It was the only guy ever
heard who liked warmine. Have you ever heard of warmine?

(30:48):
You heard of it? You have heard of it? Well,
of course I'm interested because I never saw it on
any menu here. It's not war maine. It's worm maine.
W O R M M E I N. That's it. Then, well,
then I'm glad to know that this was not a
figment of OL's imagination. And about and about forty five
minutes later, three of us, the kids would be sent

(31:09):
down to this joint to pick up the worm maine,
the chopped suey, and the egg for young and we
would come up there and he would give us each
one an almond cookie. For you, an almond cookie, let's say,
for you an almond cookie, and foyo an almond cookie.
Three of us would go back with this with this
fourteen pound load of glue that were glue with soy

(31:32):
sauce in it, and we have returned from the chop
Suey joint. This is a Chicago phenomenon, another Chicago phenomena.
And in case you're interested in the world of the
Chicago eating habits, is Chicago was great for baked ham.
About every third restaurant says and a great big thing
in the window says our specially Virginia baked hab And

(31:53):
you get in in this, you know this, a great
big chunk of greasy stuff is floating around there with
a little For some reason, whether they always cook it
with with brown sugar and pineapple, I guess that's to
protect you from the ham taste, which gets pretty gamy
when it's three or four weeks old. Well, it's you know,
it's Chicago. You know you live the way you live.
It's it's real. It's Harry. Let me tell you all right,

(32:15):
So you're laughing, the White Sox beat the Yankees today.
Wise guy, I'll be so smart. And then there was
another thing called called the chili parlor. Let me tell you, dad,
the chili parlot. It was the kind of stuff that
if you dropped it on the counter, it would hiss.
But it's s sh served in pure lava bowls. It

(32:37):
was It was sixteen cents a thing. And then there was,
of course chili mac. You know what is a chili mac?
None of these things have anything to do with New
York life. You don't know what chili mac is. Oh,
let me tell you chili mac. I thank you. And
we used to have all kinds of honky restaurants, Paul
Locke restaurants, Paul up and down the street, all sorts
of things. One thing they never heard of there though,

(32:59):
they didn't have Kosh your hot dogs. One great thing
that they had in almost every restaurant in Chicago was
was Polish sausage. Oh yeah, yah, ain't pass Capoula sausage.
Oh ah, oh, I got the whole thing down. Oh.
It all comes back to me in all of its stardedness,
all of its sorrowness.

Speaker 4 (33:29):
This is wr Radio, your station for news. Help your
country as you help yourself. Buy United States savings bonds.
Your savings bond dollars underwrite your country's might help keep
America freedom in your future. And savings bonds are a
great way for you to save. They're safe and they're profitable.
United States Savings Bonds. This is WRM and FM.

Speaker 1 (33:52):
You are ka Oji from September nineteenth, nineteen sixty two.
Here is elephant Foot.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
Over the weekend, I spent about three hours watching these
canned television shows, you.

Speaker 5 (35:33):
Know, the realistic kind where during.

Speaker 2 (35:37):
Always stories, there's there's a scene where where the cops
wind up chasing the guy around the roof Have you
ever seen you know, around the roofs of the buildings
up and down the west side there over by the docks,
and they shoot it out, and the lovely girl who
winds up getting you know, getting involved. In the third reel,
he's tearing down the fire escape and he jumps into

(35:59):
the room.

Speaker 5 (35:59):
There he's always in the room with her, you know,
this beautiful guy.

Speaker 2 (36:02):
Well, I saw at least seven of those over the weekend,
seeing they're running around on the roofs, and I came
to a conclusion there. These are called realistic television shows
because they're shot on real fire escapes and on real roofs.
Wouldn't it be fantastic if if life really was like that?

(36:22):
I mean really, wouldn't it be if if every twenty
minutes you hear him shooting it out up on the roofs.

Speaker 5 (36:26):
You know, you go over in the forties there or what.

Speaker 2 (36:29):
Pow pow pow pow, and Roco the Lip. You see,
it's swinging up and down the fire escape. So there's
a beautiful girl wearing a shawl. Oh Roco, Roco, Please,
I love you? Wouldn't it be? Well? And think of
the great headlines, and think of the wonderful newspaper stories.
Every day you could pick up the newspapers, you know,
and there would be there would be all those stories
in the paper about all these fantastic things. And invariably

(36:52):
in every story it would say that Roco the Lip,
while he was being chased up this alley, ran into
this beautiful girl who had just come in on the
boat from Italy some places. She was a beautiful girl,
had a strange, striking resemblance to Elizabeth Taylor, and she
fell instantly in love with him, and she didn't know
he was a crook.

Speaker 5 (37:12):
But nevertheless, in the last oh wasn't it pitches?

Speaker 2 (37:16):
Oh what? But once in the great while, though, something
pomps up right out of the paper that makes all
of that jazz look like kids stuff, but kids stuff,
and you never know where it's gonna happen. Now, Oh yes,
by the way, Before we go any further, I would
like to say that tonight's text is not for women

(37:38):
and children. And if you fall into either one of
those categories, I suggest you go down to Old w Pat.
Maybe they've got some nice, nice ear to ear music.
I imagine QXR now has a nice hide and string
quartet on a couple of other stations got these gigantic

(37:58):
recorded fist fights with these guys into the nose.

Speaker 5 (38:00):
You might like that, and you know you've got a
lot of things you can do you.

Speaker 2 (38:03):
Don't have to do, so please without kicking chairs over,
and please leave now. Now getting back to our text here,
did you read that wild story over the weekend? Now,
I tell you how I happened to read it. I
was walking along Third Avenue, and you know, along Third
Avenue way over there on the east side, there all

(38:27):
kinds of little places where they sell used Victorian lamps
and elephant's foot umbrella stands.

Speaker 5 (38:35):
Hey, by the way, did you ever see an elephant's
foot umbrella stand?

Speaker 2 (38:39):
A real one? Well?

Speaker 5 (38:40):
One time I'm in an auction and it's a great auction.

Speaker 2 (38:45):
And I really did go into auctions, especially auctions when
they're selling some old recluses estate, and you know, they've
got all this wild stuff there and they're selling it
all out. And the auction here is trying to make
everybody believe that it's wonderful stuff. And I'm sitting down
in the crowd on the camp chairs, you know, they
have these little stories with the camp chairs all sitting there,

(39:06):
and up on a little stage is the auctioneer, and
he's selling the estate of this well known, very ancient
and very eccentric recluse who lived on the outside of Cincinnati,
and he made all kinds of dough in the East business.
So right there, you know, he's got a lot of
stuff going. You could tell it right he made yeast.
So this old gentleman had passed into the great Beyond,

(39:27):
and he'd left behind him a collection of effluvia, the
like of which the average pack.

Speaker 5 (39:32):
Rat could not even comprehend. And here's all this stuff.

Speaker 2 (39:38):
He had a chandelier that must have been seven stories high,
just the chandelier, and it had cut glass crystal balls
and little cut glass crystal fringe hanging, and each candle
and this was the final of the little philipe, each
candle with imitation candles, you know, with a little light
bulb at the top.

Speaker 5 (39:58):
Each candle was held in.

Speaker 2 (39:59):
A brass fist. I get that sticking out of this great,
big pile of glass, But you haven't heard the end
of it. On each brass fist. Right below each brass fist,
on each brass wrist was a brass cuff, and sticking
out of each brass cuff was a rhinestone cufflink. About

(40:21):
that this thing was seven stories told.

Speaker 5 (40:23):
I almost bought it for my pad. Oh boy, three.

Speaker 2 (40:27):
Hundred and seventy eight bulbs going all at once held
the loft of a brass fist with a brass cuff
with a rhinestone cufflink. George, And what I say, you
cannot give up on mankind, that he's capable of this
kind of stuff. I'm just talking about mankind in general.
So anyway, I'm sitting.

Speaker 5 (40:47):
There and there they got this big chandelier up there,
and the auctioneer is up there. He's he's pounding away
with a.

Speaker 2 (40:54):
Gabble, you know, and all of his assistants are bringing
stuff up, and he says, now we have number one
seventy two, number one seventy two on the kind of log.
Number one seventy two in the catalog. A genuine pacaderm,
A genuine African packad dirm mumbrella stand. A genuine African
pack of dirm umbrella stand. This is a pure piece
of Victorian artwork, a very rare piece of Victorian artwork,
and probably the lack of which will seldom be seen
again on the face of the earth. A beautiful piece

(41:16):
which undoubtedly will go for one hundreds of dollars more.
Then we are asking for it this afternoon, Number one
seventy two in the catalog. Will you please bring it up? Well,
they put up on the stand there an elephant's foot,
actually it was an elephant's leg, boy cut off at
the knee, and there is this elephant's leg standing with
the toenails, a real elephant's leg, and sticking out of

(41:38):
the elephant's leg. There they had hollowed it out somehow,
and you know, they hollowed it out, and they had
a brass things set down in the middle of it,
and sticking out of it were a couple of sample canes.

Speaker 5 (41:47):
And he's number one.

Speaker 2 (41:48):
Seventy two, Number one seventy two, Number one seventy two,
Number one seventy two A genuine packet dirm umbellowstand, genuine.

Speaker 5 (41:54):
Pakat rm umbelowstand.

Speaker 2 (41:55):
I guess he was using the phrase packad dierm because
he figured that everybody, if they didn't look really sharply enough,
would think it was teakwood or or something else equally
acceptable outside of an elephant's knee if you ever looked
at an elephant's knee really cut off there at the
top with an umbrella sticking out. So he's going, well,
I I'm looking at this thing on it, Bye, George.
You know, you can't give up hope. You just can't

(42:20):
give up hope. And over the weekend, I'm walking along
on Third Avenue and they got all these shops where
they're selling stuff like that. You know, they're selling little
paddle wheel steamers, and they're selling all kinds of of
of just a fluvi, you know, all the junkie. Can
you just can you imagine what it would be like
if mankind somehow disappeared from the face of the earth
tomorrow and left all his stuff behind him, just left it,

(42:45):
you know, just e Even better than that, I would
love to see a pile of all the junk, just
the junk of mankind piled up. I wonder how high
it would reach this pile, how big the base would be,
how much it would weigh, and how many hopes it
would contain, how many distorted, wild, strange, beautiful, exquisite, circumscribed

(43:10):
dreams all piled up there with those plastic street cars
and those leather whales and those elephants toes.

Speaker 5 (43:19):
Oh boy, Well, I'm walking down there, I'm looking in
the window seeing I.

Speaker 2 (43:23):
Figure, well, this is a part of man that has
no relationship to his action. You follow me here. It's
the stuff like you drip off, you know what I mean.
It's just sort of it's the slop off of man.
It doesn't have any real relationship to what he does.
When I'm walking along Third Avenue and I come to

(43:43):
this little newstand, and there on the newstand is a
pile of newspapers, and I'm walking past, and suddenly a
story just came right out of a page I don't read.
I'm not a nipper. You know what I mean? By
a nipper's a guy and a guy you know that
walks over and reads the front page of the and then.

Speaker 5 (44:00):
Goes on, This is a nipper, and boy, they are
the main of.

Speaker 2 (44:02):
The newspaper sellers. You know that the newspaper sellers learn
very quickly in the game just how to place that
iron weight. So the headline sort of catches you, but
you can't read it, you know what I mean. They
place it at just such an angle so you can
get just a suggestion of gigantic this is and that's all. No, no,

(44:24):
this is seventeen hundred sol x and that's it, you know,
with the big red thing at the top of and said, whoa,
what's this? And you go over there. You can't just
take the thing, you know, and lift it off and
look because he's looking. He's there, right, So you wind
up by popping for it, and then all you get
is the true life story of Marilyn Monroe. So anyway,

(44:46):
I'm walking passing, there's this story. I stopped and I
bought a newspaper for one story. It was this story
that came out of Saint Louis over the weekend. Did
you read this thing? An unbelievable story. It told about
an incident that happened at night in the Saint Louis Zoo.
Have you ever been, first of all, in the Saint

(45:07):
Louis Zoo? You have to understand. The Saint Louis Zoo
is not like the zoo here. It's not like it's
not like Central Park. Central Park zoo is a is
a comparatively cidified zoo. You know, there are buildings all
around it and things are are pretty much under control.
But the Saint Louis Zoo is a big zoo, and

(45:29):
it's it's in set in trees and so on, and
it's almost as though it's removed from from well, let's say,
from civilization. It's it's a big zoo and it's a
good zoo. But at night, this is what happened. The
guard just on the booty there, fooling around, sees a man,

(45:51):
a big man. This man weighed over two hundred pounds,
big tall guy, and somehow he walked with a strange word.
He was walking very stiff like it, and his shoulders
didn't move. He walked the way the guard put it,
he walked like a zombie. Well, you know what a

(46:11):
zombie is. The zombie is more than a phrase. A
zombie has to do with all kinds of Caribbean voodoo cults.
A zombie is, in effect a dead man who has
been re animated and who has been set into motion,
a kind of Frankenstein. Well, anyway, here's this guy at night,

(46:33):
and the guard sees him and he says, you know,
it looked a little suspicious, and so he went over
and got a policeman, And just as he got the policeman,
the man started to walk up a hill toward the
reptile house. Now this is kind of a hill, he zoo.
It's built on planes and angles, and there are slow

(46:55):
rolling hills with trees.

Speaker 5 (46:57):
All around, and it's all set in and must have
been pitch black.

Speaker 2 (47:01):
But he walked up up this sharp inclined plane and
the policeman is being summoned, and the guard leaves the
policeman area where he had called up for a cup,
turns and runs after the man. Now you got the picture.
The man arrives at the front door of the reptile house,

(47:21):
and with fantastic strength, he tears the brass bars down
that had barred the door, tore aside a screen, and
ripped open the door and walked right into the reptile house,
carrying with him a long metal pole like a pipe
or something. He walked right down the middle of the

(47:44):
reptile house, smashing the reptile cages one after the other. Well,
the man behind him, the guard is clinging to his
back and hitting him on the head with the butt
of his pistol, banging him on the head, screen at
him to stop this. The man paid absolutely not the
slightest aid to him, and the blows didn't even seem

(48:06):
to affect him. He's just banging him on the head, screaming,
And a policeman arrived and they're struggling with this man,
and he just kept walking down the center of the
reptile house, smashing cages as he went, until finally he
smashed forty six cages.

Speaker 5 (48:24):
In that darkened house. With that, he turns, moves the
right up the aisle.

Speaker 2 (48:31):
Out the front door, down through the bushes, over a fence,
and into a car he had waiting, and was gone
without a word. And of course the snakes are all
out and writhing, and half of them were poisonous snakes.
One of the guys rushed in, grabbed the hole of
a rattlesnake by his head and shoved it right back

(48:52):
in and slammed a box over it. There were forty
six cages busted open. Luckily, he missed the deadly African
black mamba, which would have really gone to town had
he gotten out.

Speaker 5 (49:05):
But what a story, What a story?

Speaker 2 (49:10):
What makes this story even more probably frightening? Speaking of
a speaking of the frighten, this is w R A
M and FM, New York and speaking of snakes in Charge,
this is w B A I, New York.

Speaker 5 (49:27):
And we're forty years old here w O R is
and we show every year of it. But nevertheless, I.

Speaker 2 (49:37):
Don't know right in this is I'm just talking about
w R. Now they know what I mean, and I'm
one of the family, so I can say it. Shut up,
so they You know, what makes this story more grotesque
than just perhaps it's it's a thing that's beyond beyond

(49:57):
your your your imagination. In other words, what psychological dilemma
was this man in that made him break open the
cages of snakes at night in the Saint Louis Zoo.

Speaker 5 (50:14):
He did not attack people.

Speaker 2 (50:17):
We can understand man attacking people, you know, we can
understand men attacking animals. This we can understand. But a
man seemingly possessed, seemingly somehow with a great fixation, moving
through the dark, breaking glass cages to rectose is almost

(50:41):
It's the kind of story that you don't know whether
if it were written, you want to know what now?
What now? And there was immediately a great search was instigated,
was set into motion in Saint Louis. But as far
as I know, there has not been another word on

(51:02):
the story. Have you heard any more about it? Did
you hear the story? Is that a wild one? Well? Now,
if you're confronted with a thing like this, how can
anybody say, now, this is one person, one human being.
Rem this is a human being just like you are. Now,

(51:23):
how can anyone try to pretend that there is some
kind of absurd logic that man follows in his convolutions
through time and space. I'm talking about all of man kind,
and I'm not even attempting to in any way shape
or form apply a a an overall or a universal

(51:48):
meaning to what this man did. He is a man, though,
and he did something beyond the imagination of man, even
beyond fictional imagination. Really, now you can say, well, he
he was uh, he wanted to set the snakes free.
That's what. No, that's a very bad explanation because from

(52:09):
the from the stories, from the way it came out.
He seemed to be doing it with a ferocity that
had little or nothing to do with snakes themselves per se. Now,
I'm I'm sure as somebody who is an animal lover
would say, well, I've felt like that many a time
going to the zoo.

Speaker 5 (52:27):
Oh no, not quite.

Speaker 2 (52:30):
And apparently this was done with forethought. There was a
car way. Mm. You know, I've I've often regretted not
buying that elephant's foot. I really have, because if I

(52:50):
had that elephant's foot, I would put it next to
my desk. It would cause great consternation here at WR
but it would remind me of something. It would remind
me of of of of s of snake cage smashers.
It would it would remind me of of of chandeliers

(53:11):
with phony candles being held aloft by brass hands.

Speaker 5 (53:16):
Yes, all lost, oh gone, oh Peggy.

Speaker 2 (53:21):
But but here we are. We're we're faced with the
reality of it. And yet yet you know, you can't,
you can't you you you you can't slough it off.
You know, people say, well, that's just a nut. No,
that doesn't answer it. What do you mean just a nut?
You can't just say it that way. People had these
beautiful little pat phrases that seem to be applied to everything,

(53:43):
like oh I love, I'm in love, that's the end
of it. Or uh oh, you know, uh he's a man.
Have you ever heard that phrase? Is if that covers it?
That says something? Or uh, well, what are you gonna
do these days? What do you mean?

Speaker 5 (53:57):
What are you gonna do these days?

Speaker 2 (54:00):
What would you do any days? What if you were
living in eleven sixty six or ten six? Yeah, what
are you gonna do these days? They're fighting all the
time out there the arrows and jazz trying out loud.
That doesn't answer anything. Half of the things we say
don't answer anything. So don't come back and say he
was a nut. That doesn't answer it at all. Speaking

(54:20):
you know, all right, now, I'll give you how about answer?

Speaker 5 (54:23):
Please add number two? Yeah, yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2 (54:26):
Answer this one now, but you know this one, no,
no call it there, boys, that's better. I hold it now. Now,
Now we have great respective course for all the story knowledge,
the the uh well, let us say the assembled attitudes.

(54:49):
By the way, you know, speaking of the assembled attitudes,
any of you ever read a book by Angus Wilson
called The Anglo Saxon Attitudes, a magnificent title for a book,
The Anglo Saxon Attitudes. We dip.

Speaker 5 (55:07):
Peer peer peer.

Speaker 2 (55:16):
Altogether, here's the last peers of the realm. Last night
pondered the case of a noble lord who said his
mother in law got rid of rats by talking to them.

(55:37):
The House of Lords snapped to the alert as Heir
Chief Marshal Lord Doubting ride out of Lewis Carroll hater.
Chief Marshal Lord Dowding announced his belief in the vocal
method of scaring vermin. Lord Doubting, as seventy year old
spiritualist who masterminded Britain's heroic fighter force in the World

(55:58):
War II Battle of Britain, recommended an American book describing
the system. He said, the book Kinship with All Life,
tells of a man who cleared his house of ants
by telling them of his admiration for their industry and
their communal spirit. My wife's mother, said, Lord Dowding had
a plague of rats in her chicken pen. She practices

(56:23):
cure and the fowl runs the chicken coops were kid
of rats. We ourselves have cleared our house of rats
and mice by similar methods out all out the lords

(56:48):
sat up and blinked, all them assembled in the House
of Lords itself up rose Earl Bathurst, under Secretary of
the Home Office, who allows that some people do have
extraordinary powers over animals. But us, if we are set
about acquiring the powers of Lord Dowding, we shall merely

(57:11):
push our rats in other vermin upon some other individual
who does not have these powers.

Speaker 5 (57:19):
Oh, the wonderful spirit of fair play that exists among
the English.

Speaker 2 (57:25):
A boom. Lord Dowbting confessed that alas such was the
case on the last occasion that my wife's mother cleared
her her chicken coops as she found that next day
her neighbor. He said, I cannot imagine what has happened.
My garden is swarming with rats. Hold up, hold up,

(58:01):
hold up, stop it. Just cut it out, all of
you guys.

Speaker 5 (58:10):
Now look it. If you really, if you really.

Speaker 2 (58:16):
Examine the case of the elephant knee, you will realize
that there is a logic to it. There is a
logic to everything. Everything fits. Don't you understand that there
isn't a single it' see bitsy wee tiny drop that
does not somehow fit into the overall scheme, and as

(58:40):
you're probably aware of, the British long ago uh in
many ways explored this theme itself. Oh yes, boil and bubble,
toil and trouble. Oh no, oh no, thous shall not
push me beyond the cleip, so spake Indeed the lord,

(59:02):
withdrawn from it scattered his long thin war saber. O,
you shall not push me beyond the cliff. I shall fight.
I shall fight with my back to the white cliffs
of Dover. I shall fight. Tell her LA's blood home
on one we have here news item dateline London War fifteen.

Speaker 6 (59:45):
A court in all the short rule today that if
you want to drive your bed through the streets, you
must display l or learner plates, obtain proper automobile insurance,
hang license plates at either end, and install all.

Speaker 5 (01:00:00):
A braking system.

Speaker 2 (01:00:02):
Richard Brown, a nineteen year old student who did not
follow these rules, was fined the equivalent of thirty six
dollars and suspended from driving beds or cays for one month.
He drove his bed powered by a motorcycle engine, for
two and a half miles through Farnborough five months ago.

(01:00:25):
The processional committee that find him was also held for
aid and a betting mister Brown. Coincidentally, today, the student
who is now in the Royal Aircraft Establishment is the
only known bedstead driver in the country. He was barred
from the road. However, we were watching, and we'll watch

(01:00:47):
this youth's procedure in the future with a great deal
of interest. All together, now, all together, hold it there,
hold it all there, all it, stop it stop now.
Now it's just emotionalism will get us Nowhere did I

(01:01:11):
tell you about the time the lady? Of course, this
is this is the kind of thing that you don't
like to tell children. If there are any children awake,
I just all I have to say is that you're
going to learn it somewhere. And there was this lady
who lived out in Cincinnati. I'll just tell you the
true story of it. I might as well lay it
right out here in the line. There was a lady

(01:01:33):
one time when I was working in Cincinnati, and I
saw the incident happen. I will never forget it because
it was one of those things. You know, it wouldn't
make the reader's dieest, but let me tell you, it
made my psyche. It also made my day I was walking.
You know, Cincinnati is a very hilly town, you know,
very you know, uptown so on, and I'm going uphill

(01:01:55):
one day on Vine Street. And you won't believe this,
but I saw a lady who seemed to be otherwise
normal and all right, writing in an automatic washer down
the middle of Vine Street in Cincinnati, going downhill against
the wind.

Speaker 5 (01:02:12):
This chick went through two lights and didn't do anything
but just sit and wave at people. Well, I saw
her go past, you know, and yeah, it was oh.

Speaker 2 (01:02:21):
You're interested in Well, it was a maytag and I
waved better when she went past, and she was sitting
in the clothes dryer compartment. You know, they have two compartments.
She's sitting in a clothes dryer compartment. And somehow I
had the feeling that she had had a companion when
she started out, and he stopped off somewhere and I

(01:02:41):
just went right on, disappeared in the distance, and I
never heard another word about him. I saw it happen.
I was expecting me to read about it in the paper.
But you know, they hush up the real stuff. Everybody's
covering up. By the way, are you covering up? Stop

(01:03:02):
cutting out trying to speaking of covering up. Oh, well,
I you see the reason I told the women and
children to get out, And I feel very good.

Speaker 5 (01:03:15):
About it now, since it's quite obvious that the theme
that came out, of course, the thing that we had
calculated would all along.

Speaker 2 (01:03:23):
And that's that that thin thread of the divinely absurd
which runs through all of.

Speaker 5 (01:03:30):
The actions of all of us.

Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
You don't think for a minute that that that countries,
big countries, big countries, I don't care to name any
big country really wants to disarm, do you really, Well,
that's that's all that history has ever been about, is
wars and what happened just after them. No, seriously, it's

(01:03:55):
it's like telling it's like telling some guy whose whole
world has been based on killing cockroaches that from now
on he's got to give up killing cockroaches. Stop it.

Speaker 5 (01:04:05):
No, seriously, it's not going to work. And it's interesting
to note.

Speaker 2 (01:04:10):
That every time there is a disarmament, any kind of
disarmament talk, everybody gets all flustered. Everyone suspects a trick
on the other guy's part, of course, and so naturally
people disarm even you know, the disarm in the mind,
and then they are more in reality to prevent any
such tricks like this happening. It sort of piles up

(01:04:31):
one after the other until finally we wind up with
tiny little bursts of impatience that have nothing at all
to do with with disarmament or armament. It's just kind
of the bubble festering to the top of the boil
on the of the psyche just pops like that, you know.
And there's this little thing, you know, comes out of

(01:04:54):
the news of me just as you know, the letters
to the editor it says Mark Lunn want the trance
Authority do something about them fans. Why don't they do
something about them fans? And the new I, R T
and b MT cards they've been in operation all winter
signed a frozen starting. Rotten bombs? Are all that all,

(01:05:24):
your guys, all of them all they're rotten bombs.

Speaker 5 (01:05:31):
I don't blame you, dad. Well are they going to
get on this?

Speaker 2 (01:05:34):
So when is that?

Speaker 5 (01:05:35):
Oh, of course this is all. This is all part
of the same thing.

Speaker 2 (01:05:38):
It's like it's like the other day I'm listening to
short wave and uh, I don't recall what country was,
it was Romania or one of them. They have all
these English newscasts and you listen, you listen, really care
for you this, and you begin to note that in
the voice there is the sound of a man or

(01:06:00):
a woman, usually women. You know, there use a lot
of women newscasters over there. These people really believe it,
you know, which is really frightening, because we really believe
what we say, you know, and yet nobody really does.
You know what I mean, if you carry it all
the way to the furthest extent, it's just a lot
of talk. I mean, all over the world is in

(01:06:23):
fact composed of talk. So everybody, we're gonna shoot this
rocket up now, you know, with a guy in it,
and so everybody talks about all scientific information, where that
isn't why we're doing it.

Speaker 5 (01:06:32):
We want to see if we can shoot a rocket up.

Speaker 2 (01:06:34):
It's like kids. You know, when a kid is going
to do something, when he's gonna throw a rock up
in the air to see how high it goes. He
doesn't try to pretend, you know that what he's doing
it is to measure air currents on rocks. You know,
he just throwns the rock, you know, he throws it,
lets her go.

Speaker 4 (01:06:50):
You know.

Speaker 5 (01:06:50):
Well, as man gets older, he does the same thing.
He throws rocks up.

Speaker 2 (01:06:54):
In the air, or he you know, or he breaks windows,
which is the equivalent of war. But as he gets older,
being mature, he has to learn all kinds of ridiculous
rationalizations for it. This is the kind of maturity, you know,
we call it maturity. So he invents all these economic things,
and he invents all these these wild, beautiful stories like

(01:07:14):
we have to have we have to have the information
on the upper air currents.

Speaker 5 (01:07:19):
On the sporadic e layer there up around Van Allen Belt.

Speaker 2 (01:07:21):
We've got to have that information. So we wind up
nobody knows why, you know, but we wind up well,
putting eighty seven billion dollars into into a gigantic rock
to throw. And I can only say, fine, I can
say there's nothing wrong with that, actually, because what else
is there to do on the earth anyway? Really, because
this is the kind of talk that women I'm not.

Speaker 5 (01:07:43):
Quite sure understand, you know, because I don't think they
have the same kind.

Speaker 2 (01:07:47):
Of itch that men have.

Speaker 5 (01:07:49):
That that the that the itch that men have to
to throw things as far as they can be thrown
to to fly up as high as you can fly,
to jump as high as you can jump. All these
things tied.

Speaker 2 (01:08:00):
Up, Oh, boy, wow, biologically, psychologically, and everything else with
the problem of being male. Women don't have this problem,
obviously they have others. But what they have You see,
men do not understand in an equal measure. Now, I'm
sure that all the women who listening. So why is
he mean I understand men? Oh? No, no, you don't

(01:08:20):
any more than the man really understands your basic motives.
We have a few little areas of common boundary we share,
men and women, few areas of common discussion points. But
it's like, it's like, too, do you understand what I mean?
It's like it's really like two races sending notes to

(01:08:40):
each other, written in two different languages, but vaguely written
the same way. You know, So hear what? We're going
to send these things up? And I think I think
that more and more. Of course, it's not a matter
of thinking. I know this is a fact that more
and more psychologists are becoming interested in mankind as a

(01:09:01):
whole rather than the individual ill and more and more
at they're beginning to impinge or to dissect that little
area there, that that little itch that mankind has had
to throw things up as high as it can throw
it to see what will happen, just to see what

(01:09:22):
will happen? You know that that explains a lot. If
you say, if you do something, he said, well, I
just wanted to see what would happen. That's right, But
what does it explain? You see, it doesn't really.

Speaker 5 (01:09:35):
Explain why you want to see what would happen.

Speaker 2 (01:09:38):
And so this, this incessant, insensate drive for knowledge and
for understanding of the physical universe has led us into
some very interesting paths. But we've never really explained why
we want to know these things. Really now, there can
be some very very loose broad generalizations and I'm say rationalizations.

Speaker 5 (01:10:01):
For example, it better is the lot of man on earth?

Speaker 2 (01:10:03):
Do you really believe that? Do you really believe you're
happier than say, somebody who lived five hundred years ago
really happier?

Speaker 5 (01:10:13):
On the other hand, you see, the guys who live five.

Speaker 2 (01:10:15):
Hundred years from now are going to have things you
don't know about. Are you unhappy about it? Do you
feel a terrible sense of being cheated because you don't
have the instantaneous telepathic method of non communication which people
will have in the year twenty seven fifty. Do you

(01:10:35):
think Washington felt cheated because he never saw a gun smoke.

Speaker 5 (01:10:41):
Seriously, you know, but we like to think they did.
You know that the poor old Jefferson left this mortal.

Speaker 2 (01:10:47):
Coil feeling cheated. Hi, George, he just missed out, just
missed out on dia vision.

Speaker 5 (01:10:54):
We just stuck around. He might have seen it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:57):
And yet you see, the the interesting problem here is
one is one again of time and space, the time
you occupy a certain amount of cubic inches of space
versus the time and space occupied by somebody else at
another at another point on the graph. Just it's a
big long line there. But nobody quite understands why we

(01:11:20):
have this this, No they don't. They really don't know.
A lot of people are going to come up with
glib answers, but no one has really explained that one
interesting facet of all of us, and that's this, that's
this thing to know everything to to uh just see
what it would do, you know, just see what it

(01:11:40):
would do. No one really knows about this. And if
you're going to tell me, come up and say, well,
they're doing this because you know, if they if they
find out how it is on Saturn, they will discover
how they can better the lot on Oh, come on,
everybody wants to go to Saturn. You see what Saturn's like.
That's why don't we just admit it. We want to

(01:12:01):
see what's there. Why do we have to come up
with all this, you know, this jazz. Maybe they figured
if we said the truth, no one would pay for it.
But I suspect they would pay for.

Speaker 5 (01:12:12):
It quicker if you laid it out.

Speaker 2 (01:12:15):
You know, they said, we want to shoot a rocket up.
See how high we can shoot one up. Let's get
the dough off here. We're gonna shoot this.

Speaker 5 (01:12:21):
Big one up there as far as it can go.

Speaker 2 (01:12:25):
I would pay. But if they come up, you know,
they want to tell me. We want to find out
about the cosmic rays and about the number of times
the gamma ray bounces off.

Speaker 5 (01:12:32):
The number three E prime two shield. You know, come on,
lay off. I mean, I mean, after all, my life
is short.

Speaker 2 (01:12:41):
I just want to see how high you can shoot it.
I'm sorry, that's my attitude towards it, which is a
terrible attitude.

Speaker 3 (01:12:49):
You know.

Speaker 5 (01:12:50):
I suppose I should have the.

Speaker 2 (01:12:51):
Proper twentieth century attitude, which is the non romantic or
the academician attitude, where I could couch you all my
secret yearnings in very involved technical language which when all
boiled downces we want to shoot it up in the air.
That's what it really boils down to.

Speaker 5 (01:13:09):
We want to find out.

Speaker 2 (01:13:09):
Of course, we explain we have gamma rays into we
go into quantum mechanics, we go into the whole routine.

Speaker 5 (01:13:15):
You say, to kind of hide the whole thing's it's
like a giant speakeasy way running of the mind.

Speaker 2 (01:13:22):
You know that that everybody pretends everything else is going up,
but what he really wants is a drink. That's a
hot of drink. Very rationalize all over the place. And
I'm of course, on the other hand, if people ever
would admit why they have wars, for example, we might

(01:13:44):
begin to have make some progress towards not having them.

Speaker 5 (01:13:48):
You know, any good psychologists will tell you that the minute.

Speaker 2 (01:13:51):
A man who has got a fixation, say, for example,
an alcoholic, admits that he has one, I really admits it.

Speaker 5 (01:13:57):
You know this as well. I know, whatever you go
from here, then there might.

Speaker 2 (01:14:02):
Be a chance of going But no, no, no, no,
there's no obviously no guarantee of a cure, but there
is a chance. But we never admit this. I mean,
you can't get anybody, hardly ever to admit that why
all would what do you mean to go to war?
We get a kick out of that, all at shooting,
all that holler on, all the fireworks and people yelling

(01:14:23):
them fist fight and all that. You know, is there
one among you here who who.

Speaker 5 (01:14:27):
If you saw a fist fight across.

Speaker 2 (01:14:29):
The street, wouldn't be strangely drawn toward it. Huh. And
don't come up and tell me, well, it's because you
know you're you're against war now because you're afraid you're
gonna get.

Speaker 3 (01:14:41):
Hit in the eye.

Speaker 2 (01:14:42):
Oh no, I don't think so either. I think it's
how you get hit in the eyes. And isn't there
one one among you who who never to himself has
said you can see yourself charging up the hill there
at San Juan Hill, you know, and and uh Teddy
Roosevelt's hard charge, and you're running up there behind him,
you know, and you take this ball through your shoulder
and you continue to struggle up there carrying the flag aloft.

(01:15:04):
Come on, you know it's true. You know it's one
of the saddest sights of all. Is this little ninety
seven pound weekling standing on the library steps saying how
much he hates football players? Does he really or does
he hate non football players even more? It's very complicated.

(01:15:27):
You know, it gets a why don't they turn them
fans off on the BMT? Who's covering up? Wagner? Wise guy?
I know how this works, boy, I nobody's gonna tell
me how it works. I don't it works. It are
covering up. They're not telling you nothing. You don't think
they're gonna tell you everything about what that thing is

(01:15:47):
gonna do when it gets up there? Do you let
me tell you they're covering up? Who's cover all them
guys in washing done? Everybody? The big shots? What about
that match? You heard about that match that they invented?
You light it once and in fact so you can
light of all the rest of your life. It's a
match at last of lifetime. They bought that one up, boy,
and stuck it away in a safe. You listen, you
heard about that guy that invented the motor that runs

(01:16:09):
on water. They bought that one up, stuck it away
in his safe. They're not letting nothing out, them guys,
not giving you nothing. They're smart. How do you make
all her doe? How can they sell her gas. The
wise guys, let me tell you fifteen cents fair on

(01:16:30):
a subway. Let me tell you, jacket, it's gonna be
twenty cents for forty years out. And why who's getting
all that dough? Who's sticking all that dough in his pocket? Huh?

Speaker 5 (01:16:39):
I'll do it tomorrow, Yes, I will.

Speaker 2 (01:16:44):
Well you think not? You watch me? Now. This is
a common attitude, you know, the attitude. Is there anyone
among you who hasn't heard about the carburetor? It gets
forty miles to the gallon of gas, and they bought

(01:17:05):
it up from this inventor. They bought it up. Yeah,
I know you got it in a safe. Speaking of
the safe, boy, I'll tell you wh's got a loaded one?
You ought to drop by down to the Mandarin House.
Why's apple the Mandarin House on thirteenth Street between sixth

(01:17:27):
and seventh. Who are they? Who are they? What do
you mean? Who are they? All them guys in Washington,
the big guys, big shots, guys are all a doll
Who are they? You know who they are? Mandarin House
so the best Chinese food and this whole man's Eastern seaboard,
and they're open every night. Why George till midnight. They

(01:17:48):
are they got everything down there. I got gnall the
whole works there. They're open seven days a week. You mean,
who are they? You know who they are?

Speaker 5 (01:17:59):
Stop pushing again, say I'll tell you nothing.

Speaker 2 (01:18:04):
Mac Bryan out loud. Keep your knees loose some night
some nights.

Speaker 5 (01:18:12):
It's awful, awful guard you know.

Speaker 2 (01:18:16):
Just just remember that, Just remember that elephant's foot, and
from time to time remind yourself of a man in
the snakehouse, and maybe you'll understand this.

Speaker 1 (01:18:33):
From March fifteenth, nineteen sixty three, Goldwater, Romney and Rockefler
are also not running. Shep hasn't much patience with his engineer,
Walt or anyone else in the studio. Underdogs that's pure
or well a broadcast showing the darker side of Shepherd.

Speaker 2 (01:18:48):
It is beginning to creep up. And I noticed yesterday
on the newscast three non presidential candidates made it clear
that they are not running for the president, and in
spite of the obvious fact no one asked them, three
of them held press conferences and announced that without any equivocation,

(01:19:10):
they are interested in the work, the great work that
they have laid out for themselves in the great Sovereign
State of Sylvania, and that under no circumstances am I,
nor will I, nor have I ever run for the
office of the Presidency of the United States. And I
want that, Nat Claire. I want that carry to all

(01:19:30):
corners of the civilized world. I am interested only in
the great work that lies ahead of me, the work
that has been placed in my hands, the great trust
of the peoples of the state, sovereign State of Sylvania.
And for that reason, I am making it very clear now,
in spite of the talk that there has been in
certain circles that they are going to draft me at

(01:19:51):
the nineteen sixty four presidential nominating Convention of the Great
Sovereign Party of the Republicans, that I I am not available.
I am absolutely not running. Not running. You here, hey,
you on the back there, get that note for coming. I,
Jay Wellington Witherspoon, am not running for the presidency. The

(01:20:12):
name is Jay Wellington Witherspoon. I want you to know
that not running for the office of the Presidency of
the United States. That office again is the presidency of
the United States. Me now, no, no, not me, thatt right,
I am not running. And even as he is saying
that for maybe five hundred miles away, another candidate is saying,

(01:20:37):
and I am taking this opportunity to clear the record
and my work here in the great sovereign state of
New York is of such import that I want it
made very clear that I am not running, nor have
I contemplated at any time in my career, one of

(01:20:57):
the office of the Presidency of the United States. Jay
Chiever Low Paul here, I want to clearly understood, is
not running for the Office of the Presidency of the
United States ever.

Speaker 3 (01:21:11):
Ever.

Speaker 2 (01:21:12):
Will I be wat watch me, don't watch that disc
You've seen records before. Now put your hand on it
and hold it there. Okay, now you know this this
Uh Now I just said, well, watch me, not the record.
I don't care. What comes on to the man is
what's important on this program. This is not the John
Gambling program. We were not worried about whether the Norman

(01:21:33):
lou Buff choir comes up instead of the instead of
the Prissy Faith Orchestra. It doesn't really worry. Yes here,
but you know this, this is getting to be very interesting, this,
this this ritual. Uh. I can think of three guys
who have just announced that they're not running. Very Goldwater
has announced he's not running. This guy out in Michigan,
what's his name, Romney, He's not running. Absolutely not running.

(01:21:55):
I'm relieved at that one. Uh and and uh. There
have been even inlations that mister Rockefeller is not running.
Now I feel very good about that. I'm curious, though,
who is running now? I'm just curious. Well, I'd like
to go on record right now, in spite of the
fact there's been some obvious talk down around Bleaker Street,
that Shepherd is also not running for the presidency of

(01:22:16):
the United States. And I'm also going to take it
on my back right now to say that Jules Pfeiffer
is not running either. Now. I know that Pfiffer hasn't
said it yet, but he will come out. I'm sure
neither one of us are in favor of running. And
I feel that my great sovereign work here has entrusted
in me by the great peoples of Staten Island, Staten

(01:22:37):
Island and parts of Queen's and also certain communities in
the southern New Jersey. My work is such that I
have no interest in anything else other than that. What
do you got there? That thing is skipping. Well, then
just set it in a little bit. Just you don't
have to queue it up. Well, just set it in
a little bit. That's all. That's very easy. Terrible. I

(01:22:58):
used to be in the engineer know. Well. Anyway, the
hogwash is getting higher and higher. It's getting getting deeper
and deeper as we go further into our life now,
for example, speaking hogwash, since the newspaper strike, I'm sure
that a lot of us have been compelled. Since many
of us are compulsive readers. I happen to be one,

(01:23:18):
we have been compelled to read all kinds of stuff
that we wouldn't ordinarily be reading. I have read the
backs of Castoria bottles. I have read I have read
labels on the bottoms of Prestone cans while just sitting
there quietly reading them. I have read. I have read
horse sheets. What's running at Hialiya? I have no interest
at all and horses running at Highalia. But I've sat

(01:23:39):
there by the hour and gone down just just read
all those names. And for that reason, I have read
a lot of magazines which I ordinarily would not read.
For example, there's one magazine which just came out speaking
of that stuff, that's creeping in through the underneath, the
underneath the doors, and it's coming in over the windows
and all that stuff. Tell them you don't have time
to argue with them. Right aloft there. We can't hold

(01:24:01):
up the line for sore heads. If you're a sore head,
write a letter, don't call. We're not interested, all right,
And I'm not being an American. I'm sorry. It's interesting
that it is becoming Unamerican to speak to your mind,
if you notice that. Very interesting, that's fascinating. Somebody pointed
out in one of the recent magazine I think was

(01:24:22):
the reporter, No, by George. It was not the reporter.
What was it that I was reading? Oh, Punch magazine.
They're having that trouble over there too, you know. They
say that there must be a compact little group of
protesters who the minute anything is said that has any
substance at all on any public medium, radio or television,

(01:24:45):
they immediately call and protest. Does this outfit is far
more organized than any other organization that we happen to
have in our midst today, and they always protest in
the name of right. Of course, they know what's right,
and whatever it is there against is wrong. Obviously, So
please write your angry letters. Please do not call, because

(01:25:07):
I'm not going to stop everything and get on the
phone and argue with a with a seventy four year
old man with the mind of a twelve year old
living out in Staten Island. I am not interested. I
would like to pretend that I am, but I am not. Okay,
all right, now, getting back to the problem at hand,
I inadvertently I picked up a copy of magazine, this magazine,

(01:25:29):
which I don't ordinarily read. It's one of these magazines
that takes a dynamic attitude towards sport. It's really a
magazine for people who hate sports but who like to
read about sports for some reason or other, but only
very obliquely or oblikely. As they say in the Army,
for example, they would be much more interested in let's say,
Joe DiMaggio's full lard tie collection than in his batting average.

(01:25:54):
They're much more interested than that. It's that kind of
a thing that says, what kind of a welts rare
bit does Willie Mays really serve after the games? To
his intimates? The recipe will be found in the special
four color fold out in this fantastic sports magazine. You
know that kind of thing, Yeah, that kind of sports magazine. Well,
they had a they had a recent issue which indvertently

(01:26:16):
fell into my hands, and it gives you the idea
of the kind of dynamic glop that's around called special issue,
special issue, the special underdog issue. Who among us does
not feel that he's an underdog? Well, I would like
to suggest almost the enormity of the glop that's among us.

(01:26:37):
Can you imagine who this magazine relegates to the underdog category?
Get ready with that bombastic movie you've met, that fantastic
music in their world. I'll set with it now, I'll
give you the cue. There. Here is their underdog number one,
Wilt Chamberlain, Yes, Will Chamberlain, that's roughly tatam out the

(01:27:00):
calling King Kong an underdog, and he is, I mean underdog.
You want to hear an another one of their definitions
of an underdog, another great underdog of our time. And
I'll even read to you the way he's described Underdog
number two, Stand the Man Musical, a man against time,
his personal and often agonizing war. Stand the Man Musical,

(01:27:23):
one of the great underdogs.

Speaker 3 (01:27:24):
Of our world.

Speaker 2 (01:27:27):
Fantastish. I mean, my George, you know that. But to
all of us, who are you know, all of us
fighting that underdog war that kind of fits. I'll show
you another example of one of their great underdogs. I
don't know whether you know anything about this guy, but
this guy really fits the underdog roll. Underdog Eddie Matthew's
hard hitting, slugging ballplayer for the Milwaukee Braves. Well, don't

(01:27:50):
use that thing that's skip them all over the place.
Just pick any just take it off wall, Just take
it off. That's gonna hold this all up. Now, I hear,
just flip it over wall and see if you can
find uh. Let pray you that's good enough, all right,
that'll give you something to do for the next twenty minutes.
Now while we're involved in problems we have here w

(01:28:10):
r AM FM, New York. And speaking of glop, now
they have a whole list of these wonderful underdogs, all
of them you know, will make you feel kind of sad.
Here's another favorite. Well, just any cut then, any cut wall,
because that'll that'll take you all the way through next week.
I'm afraid it's just any loud one, loud one, that's

(01:28:31):
just any loud one, and if it comes up with
the voices of spring, I'll belt you in those glasses
of yours in spite of the fact you read the well,
all right, let me chew it, let me audition that.
Let's see what you think is loud? No, no, no,
kill it, kill it all. I forget it, forget it, well,
forget it. I'm sorry I brought it up. Take it
off the turntable. Will you for crying out loud? There

(01:28:54):
we go? No, no, what are you giving them? Now?
All right? All right to put that down because we're
world we leve will be now. Oh well, no, you
can put that back on. Walt, put that back on it? Yes,
that all right? That now. Why can't one of you
just look on the list. Why do you all stand
there and look at me with that wonderful open face
smile of those who have been weaned on pablum. Look

(01:29:16):
through there and find left presude. It's even marked in red.
Find it. It's the last cut on one of those sides.
Don't look so so confused. There, did you find it?
We'll bring it in here, honey, I'll find it in
thirty seconds. Come on, where, come on, get up and

(01:29:38):
bring it in. Don't just sit there. Oh boy, oh boy,
come on, come on, come on, move move. You're gonna
be on the stage. You gotta learn how to walk
fast right across the stage. Why why is it the
first one? I find it? Right there? See spelled out
there in clear English. Okay, take it out there, come
out and move. Don't stand in and look at me. Move, move, move,

(01:29:59):
time is moving. Yeah. So many people don't even know
how to walk across the street. They sort of swander
through like whoa, No, do it when you hear you
do it, whether you like it or not. Okay, I'll
set now all right, now you just hold that variance there.
Here is another one of the great underdogs of our time.
Now I want to go a little further and say

(01:30:21):
this that there is a thing sweeping through I notice
it sweeping through our world. And it's a kind of
in a sense, it is the pure quintessence of George Orwell.
I don't write that down pure quintessence of George Orwell.
It is the quintessence of Orwell in this sense. Probably

(01:30:42):
most of you are familiar with nineteen eighty four Well.
One of the precepts in nineteen eighty four in the
novel by Orwell. And it has many flaws, but it
also has some wildly prophetic interesting things that are coming
about even in our time. Is that in the brave
New World, to use a Huxleyan term of the twentieth century,

(01:31:06):
there will come about the total reversal of language and
inno sense values. And so Orwell had he spelled it out.
He had big slogans on the walls of the buildings
in the country that was his hypothetical country in nineteen
eighty four, War is love, War is peace. Rather, you

(01:31:30):
have had big things that war is peace. Another big
slogan he said was hate is love. And a lot
of people, of course laughed at this, thinking that what
he was talking about would be and should be literal. No,
it will never be called love is hate and war
is peace literally. But the call stan musial and underdog

(01:31:55):
is pure or well pure Orwellian concept, a pure Orwellian conmon. Now,
look up underdog. Have any of you got a have
any of you got a dictionary out there? Look up underdog.
Please look up underdog. I would like to have the
dictionary definition of underdog. Now, this to me is the

(01:32:17):
kind of creeping decay of the language that in the
end we'll be able to describe, oh, it'll be able
to describe say say, oh, it'll be able to describe
a mouse as an elephant. If you can describe Stan
Musil as an underdog, it's just as easy to describe

(01:32:38):
a mouse as an elephant. In fact, they'll probably have
more in common a mouse with an elephant than Stan
Musial has with underdogs. Do anybody have a dictionary? I'd
love to have the definition of it. I don't know
what the actual Here's another one. Here's another great underdog
of our time, Ernie Banks. You know any thing about

(01:33:01):
Ernie Banks. Ernie Banks is one of the hardest hitting
shortstops that ever played in the National League. Ernie Banks
has been a terror of National League pitchers for probably
ten years. An underdog, an underdog. Ernie Banks is probably
six feet three. He probably he's built like a wedge.

(01:33:22):
I've seen him play many times. He's a magnificent human being,
and he has one of the most beautifully controlled natural
swings that I've ever seen in a ballpark. An underdog,
it's pure r well, absolutely pure orwell. And this is
a fascinating, a fascinating development in our time. And yet

(01:33:46):
it's going, it's going all over, it's slowly beginning to
creep in. And so today a comic, a comic can speak,
or a or a novelist often that every word he
speaks can be pure hate, can be pure hate. Hate
for this group, hate for that attitude, hate for this, uh,

(01:34:08):
this system, hate for that, pure hate all the way
down the line. And yet somehow his hate is transformed
by some beautiful alchemy of semantical magic, forensic u forensic wizardry.
It's converted into love. Fascinating. I've seen this time and again.

(01:34:30):
I know I know one guy who's considered a loving
human being who spends his who spends his time uh
stabbing his wife with a with a long, thin rapier.
It's fascinating. And yet does anyone have that definition? Give
me the definition. I just sit there, lay it down
and bring it in. Don't don't worry about him. Lay

(01:34:50):
it down, bring it in. That's all okay. Now, anyways,
dynamic people here, uh, but never come on, bring it in.
Don't sit down talk about it, just lay it down,
don't hang up, lay it down. Hey, hello, lay it down,
Bring it in, No, not hang up, lay it down
so they can't ring it again. Hey, smartness is coming through,

(01:35:12):
come on, bring it in. All right, we forget it then.
So here's another example of that stuff. I don't know
what's with my people here tonight. They're all knee deep
in mud or whatever it is that I'm talking about.
Here's another example of the kind of thing that I'm
talking about. Another magazine recently, and they innocently sent me

(01:35:35):
a copy of their magazine. Are doing an entire issue
on New York. Well, you know that whenever a magazine
is having trouble thinking of ideas for its next issue,
it does a New York issue. Every magazine has done
a New York issue in the last three months. I
don't care whatever magazine. Undoubtedly the Police Gazette has too.

(01:35:59):
Haven't seen it, but I bet it has. Always when
you're out of when you run out of things, that's
you do the New York issue. You get out of
all the pictures of the new buildings. Well, now here's
another example of ur or of orwell in dynamic motion.
To look at this article. The issue New York is

(01:36:21):
growing beautifuler and beautifuler and beautifuler every day to use
a nineteenth century There you finally got it written out. Good.
It didn't take more than twenty minutes. There, very good.
The New York, New York is getting prettier every day,
And yet anyone who lives in New York knows this
is this is diametrically opposed to the truth that the

(01:36:46):
new buildings that are being built in New York are,
for the most part, like as alike as the proverbial
peas in a pod, with far less personality than those
peas in the proverbial. They look like most of them
look like they've been put up by the Erector set company,
and they're built to be taken down by next Christmas,

(01:37:08):
when the new big Whoopee package will be open. And
most of the guys who live in these office buildings
have said, on one occasion or another one they leak
their drafty, they're impersonal, the light is bad, they creak
in the wind, and etc. On down the line. But
this article comes out and it makes it sound it's

(01:37:28):
just one big, beautiful sheet of lovely green glass that
we're all living in and it's fontasta pure or well.
In spite of the fact that these guys know that's
not true, because they're living in one of these buildings,
you know, fantastic. I can't understand it. Well, maybe I can,
because behind almost every big article in every magazine there

(01:37:49):
lies the fine hand of the press agent and the
fine hand of some pressure group of one kind or another.
I'm afraid that this is pretty nearly true. Particularly and
you know, very few, very few people say much about people.
In other words, I don't I don't know of any

(01:38:09):
organized group of just ordinary people. You know, what are
you gonna organize? You're just there, you're just walking around scratching.
Let me tell you the real estate organization as an organization, daddy,
I'll tell you that, uh, and various other big organizations
that have a vested interest in knocking down the city
and putting up, putting up ridiculous office buildings one thing

(01:38:31):
and another. They have pressure, and they can they can
wield it. So so I'm curious about this kind of
Orwellian thing. Here's another example of, in a way, the
Orwellian technique in action. A little ad, A little ad
that popped out out of one of the old newspapers
that I have banging around. It's an old magazine. As

(01:38:52):
a matter of fact, are you ready with something really
bombastic in there? Ready? Listen to this one. The the
thing leads off with this comment Parribles in Bible show
Way to Get Rich? Oh, the Voices of Spring? What happened?
I'll pray you. What's the matter with you? Guys? O?

(01:39:13):
Oh boy, I'm gonna wing this right from that. Hang
up the phone, help help Voices of Spring boil boy,
why don't you just lay that phone down and watch
the program? Or no, lay it down, it's gonna keep ringing.
Just lay it down, tell them to quit. There we go,
all right, hold it up there, boy, we're really going.

(01:39:37):
Oh well, anyway, uh, Ribles in Bible show Way to
get Rich? Now, this this is another example of Orwellian technique.
Humility equals dynamism. That's another kind of another kind of
Orwellian technique that I think should be illustrated. One of

(01:39:59):
them interesting kinds of of of the reversal of values
is the value of taking the old Christian concept and
in fact the basic religious concept of well, I suppose
you can say, can be oversimplified. Let's put it this
way of sacrifice of selflessness, of well even the probably

(01:40:29):
the very reverse of avariciousness and converting it into the
opposite camp. Now here's Here's a lovely Here's a lovely
headline that's taken from another one of the dynamic magazines.
Listen to this one at last, an inspirational film for
salesman featuring doctor Norman Vincent Peel what it takes to

(01:40:58):
be a real salesman. There's no art motion picture. It
isn't a class by itself inspirational stimulating, a real morale
booster for both your new and veteran salesman. The films
and here in philosophy of positive thinking as presented by
doctor Norman Vincent Pia, one of the foremost inspirationalists of
our time, is great insurance to ward off the salespin

(01:41:19):
that strikes even the best of salesmen. H truly dynamic
motion picture for salesman that tells in positive terms what
it takes to be a real salesman. Yes, put religion
to work. Watch that sales chart climb climb, climb, Wow.

(01:41:53):
Wow we and uh, I'm just I'm just intrigued by uh,
by that reversal of values values that and that's all
that orwell was talking about orwell said that the day
will come when the language and the attitudes will be

(01:42:17):
so so turned, will be so converted that when one
says democracy, what he really means is totalitarianism. When one
says love, what he really means is kill everybody. And
it is rapidly coming about. It literally is if Stan

(01:42:39):
Musial is an underdog, Dad, I would like to I
would like to give you the definition of the underdog,
which was taken from one of the Unabridged Dictionary loser
in any struggle, especially the victim of social injustice, the
losing dog in a fight. Now, doesn't that describe stance

(01:43:00):
musical to a t to a tea, And certainly that
describes I can't think of anybody that it describes more
clearly and completely than Wilt Chamberlain. Wilt Chamberlain, who only
averaged fifty point five buckets last year in the hardest,

(01:43:20):
toughest professional basketball league in the world, A pure underdog. Now,
this even though what it seems, it seems that what
I'm saying here and the definitions and the examples I'm
given are giving you are trivial. They are anything but

(01:43:44):
we if we have lost control of our language and
our values to such a point where we can describe, say,
stand Musical as an underdog, then how can we describe
who is not an underdog? You see what I'm saying there?

(01:44:05):
The language means very little there in that case, If
we can describe the new Jerry built buildings that are
going up all over town in New York City, generally overpriced,
badly built. They're designed to last maybe four or five
years at the most. If we can describe them as beauty,

(01:44:27):
how can we describe ugliness? Then? Interesting? If we describe
an automobile, for example, that is so badly built that
in eighteen months it is ready to be traded in
because it is literally worn out. If we describe that

(01:44:50):
as a functional concept, which has often been done, how
then can we describe non function? Just a just a question,
you say, if we if we take a comic who
is perpetually selling hate for large numbers of people and

(01:45:11):
describe that as love, how then can we describe hate?
Just just just to this is just a forensic question here. Curious,
but nevertheless, this is what's happening. If we if we
describe religion as a way to get rich, then how
can we describe how can we describe, then, the religious experience,

(01:45:37):
how can we describe humility if humility is described as
a way to become successful? Interesting twist, Just a question,
that's all. And so in the end the language will
mean very little, and in fact, it's already rapidly getting
to the point where it really doesn't contain much in

(01:45:59):
the way of a mess. I'm always impressed by the
number of people, for example, who will not necessarily my program,
I'm just talking about programs in general, who whenever an
opinion is expressed on the air that is diametrically opposed
or even deviates slightly from their opinion, will immediately get

(01:46:21):
in touch with the radio station and say that whoever
that is on there is not a good American. In short,
in the guise of Americanism. He wants to destroy the
very thing that makes America unique, and that is the
allowance of deviating opinions in the midst of a majority.
And yet he will do it in the light of

(01:46:42):
being an American, always being an American. You know, that's
another interesting thing. Free speech is a fascinating problem, and
it's a problem that has never really been solved because
whenever we think of free speech. We like to think
of free speech for people we like, minorities that we
are sympathetic to. We like to think of free speech

(01:47:05):
for us. You know, everybody thinks he's a minority. You
know that, don't you. Every every possible group believes that
it is an unbaffled minority. The the If you're a
rock bound Republican, you feel you're a minority. If you
are a if you are a rock bound Democrat, you
also feel you're a minority. You do. I've never known

(01:47:25):
anybody who said, of course I'm in the majority, So
naturally I feel us, and so everybody I've ever talked
to in my life feels he's in the minority. Well,
when when we talk about free speech and minorities being
allowed to speak, we always think of ourselves and our
favorite minority groups. But then it really bothers us when

(01:47:46):
the other minority groups, who we obviously do not like
at all, the rotten ones, take it up and Night
starts speaking too. That's very, very difficult, and in fact,
at that point we say there's a big difference between
frese speech and license. Very intriguing. It goes on and
on and on. This was part of course, of the

(01:48:08):
Orwellian concept of the way man was drifting, and I
suspect in the end that we will drift that way.
I don't see how there's any any real escape from it.
As the population gets larger and larger and gets more,
far more complex and more.

Speaker 1 (01:48:24):
From April twenty third, nineteen sixty three, the date is
only an approximation. As Shep mentions, it's a Monday the
game of Diners Club springtime in northern Indiana. Shepherd becomes
as apprentice in a piano factory, the beginning of an education.
Part of the opening theme has been deleted.

Speaker 2 (01:48:57):
It's Monday, and on Monday they one has perpetually and
almost traditionally fingered the beads of despair and has recounted
ancient wars, has looked back over old traditional defeats, and
has concerned himself if he be the right sort of

(01:49:20):
person with the things of perhaps more the essential spirit
rather than the external chromium and enameled covering pod external.
You know, it's a funny thing. I'm reading the Education

(01:49:40):
of Henry Adams. Now, education is a very difficult subject
to approach with any degree of subjectivity, as opposed to objectivity.
It all mixes up in the you know, kind of
a sort of a rice pudding, you know, with floating
with floating raisins, and you don't know where is start,
whether to spoon it or whether the whether to just

(01:50:02):
lap at it or just leave it go. Now I'm
also in addition to reading The Education of mister Adams,
I notice today speaking of education, and it's all part
of the same thing. I notice in the ad for
a game, and this this game says. The ad says,

(01:50:24):
teach your children the facts of life, teach them how
to live the life that they will be living later on.
And the name of the game is a Diner's Club card. Yeah,
it's a game, you know. It says, learn to live
on credit, spend big money, go to Europe, have a
big vacation, live big and dangerously by a ferrari, and

(01:50:45):
it'll all be fun and the kids will learn about life. No,
this is the truth. Now, I'm not putting you on.
It says it's an educational game. They say that very seriously.
Now it is actually, you know, in a sort of
sinister way. Well, now, how did you learn how to
be you? Now? I think there are at least two

(01:51:06):
kinds of education, as George Aide put it, at least,
there's the one kind of education, you know, where people
teach you about Isosceles triangles. Now, how long has it
been since you've dealt with the program and a problem
in Isoceles triangles? There is the education, you know, where
they teach you about the Battle of Hastings. Well, now,

(01:51:26):
ever since I left Miss Briefold's history class, no one
has once asked me about the Battle of Hastings, not once.
I have not had to refer to it more than
maybe two or three hundred times since that day. Now,
and all the way down the line. You know, this
is one kind of education. But there is another kind
of education, and it's the greatest, wildest kind of education.

(01:51:47):
And it's the kind of education that made me me.
And you have your own, you know, the thing that
made you you. What is it that makes one guy
skulk behind the radiator where in some little office, a
dusty little office in t Neck, New Jersey, just shaking
all the time. He's down there behind the radiator. He's

(01:52:08):
they're not going to pry him out of there. He's
been here at this lumber yard for it's been seventy
years now, and I'm not going to get him out.
What made him that way? When another guy went on
to become zecondorf Isosceles triangles, no quadratic equations, the Battle
of Hastings. Well, let me tell you. I'm this kid.

(01:52:32):
You see one time. This is one of those milestones
that you passed that you don't realize until four hundred
years later that you have passed it. And there's no
going back. And it's in the depression. See, it's in
the last stages of the depression. And all I can
remember for years as a kid. You know, every every
year there is a there is a cartoon on the
front page of the Chicago American, which was a peach

(01:52:55):
colored paper. They even had a peach edition. There's a
very peachy newspaper. In a lot of ways. If you
know any think about Chicago papers. They were against two things.
They were against democrats and vivisection, and at times it
was difficult to tell which one they were talking about.
In the columns. There was the same thing. Well that

(01:53:15):
was the Chicago It was a hearst paper, you say.
And they always had a big cartoon that was done
by somebody named Buris Jenkins, and this cartoon showed the
new year coming in, and this new year was this
little cherub, you know, and he had this big thing
across the front of him, and it would say, oh,
I don't know whatever the year was, nineteen thirty eight
or nineteen thirty six, and a big thing would be
across his gut there, and you would see going out

(01:53:39):
on the other side, you would see old old man
whatever the year before was, you know, all defeated and shaking,
and he's got this this lantern and he's shaking his
way out, old ancient father time defeated. And in the
background you see this guy with this tall black hat,
this long, thin, blue nosed face, and on the back
of his coat it was marked depression and over and

(01:54:02):
it would say the victor again, and then underneath it
in a little subtitle, would say, will this new young
challenger meet me that heavyweight and take him on his
own terms? Will he beat the depression? Well, I'm this kid,
see so, I'm brought up in this atmosphere. No, all

(01:54:24):
the time it was this way. Well one day it's June.
Now it's going to be June for a lot of
you kids. Now I want you to listen to this. Listen. Well,
it's going to be June for a lot of you
kids in just a few weeks, as it always has
been June for kids for centuries over, and it was
once June for me too. And it's June, and I

(01:54:46):
have just I have just finished my freshman year in
high school. I am veritably a bud on that thorny
rose bush of life, ready to ready to pop those
those petels outward, to reach for the sun, to drink
in the elixir that the veritable dew of of passion

(01:55:09):
and existence. There I am hanging there, crammed with my
head full of Isosceles triangles. I had just finished a
year of algebra, and I was very good on quadratic equations,
very good. Mister Settlemeyer was very proud that I made it,
and I had, I had completed all the various I was.
I was beginning to absorb this thing of what it

(01:55:30):
was about this education. And it's now spring. It's June.
It's the depression. And I'll tell you another thing about it.
It has to be said parenthetically that the sun was
very bright and the wind was very was very windy
in those days, and the tumbleweeds tumbled, they really did,

(01:55:54):
and street cars roared, and the lake boomed on the shore.
And living beside a great lake when the spring comes
is a very exciting thing. It's not quite like it
is living next to the ocean, because the ocean, you know,
tempers the season like the lakes don't. And the lakes
are very cold in the springtime. And you can feel

(01:56:17):
that hot wind coming up from the south and it
hits that cold air hanging over the lake, and it'd
be beautiful, just cataclysmic June thundershowers. It would come from
those two pieces of air hitting and they would all
come right down where we lived, right there of the
dividing line, and on the one side there would be
dogwood and the tulip trees blooming. You know, the state

(01:56:39):
flower of Indiana is the tulip tree. And so there
would be the tulip trees hanging over there in the
dunes and the dog wood climbing up the side of
the hills, and those big, fantastic thundershowers would come roaring down.
It's springtime. My god, it's really spring, you knew it.
And that ice that rips that part of the country

(01:57:02):
had broken and cracked away a few weeks before, and
now it was alive again. Things were moving. You could
hear it, and always another thing that you'd hear in
the springtime, you'd hear the very beginnings, Oh frogs. I
cannot describe to you the sound of the frogs at
eight nine o'clock at night in June in northern Indiana,

(01:57:23):
just like it's like the whole earth is singing and
making this one long warbling note, just going on and
on and on. Okay, you got the picture, all right.
I'm this kid saying the sap is flowing, and I've
already got the sense of guilt that all fourteen year
old kids have got. I mean guilt about all kinds
of things, terrible thoughts that could go through my head.

(01:57:44):
I'll never forget one time when Esther Jane Albury went
up to the front of the class in the history class.
It was the first time a thought like that went
through my head and I swatted it like a fly.
Awful thing suddenly popped out, had twenty six legs right
out in my head. There. I had a big black mustache,
was chewing tobacco. This thing, this thought came out and
was spitting all over the place. And I, you know,

(01:58:05):
all of a sudden, you know, I wasn't with it.
We were we were studying, I don't know what it was,
Richard the Lionhearted, And all of a sudden I was
looking at esther, Jane Awberry, and the way I had
never looked at her before. Oh, shure spring. She had
on a flowered dress, and she was silhouetted against the light. Incredible,
it was unbelievable. You see, these these are things I

(01:58:28):
have never lost my wonder about that either. I don't
think most men ever do. You know, as long as
long as we're gonna lay it on the line here
you have you you have this feeling men that you
never are quite over the surprise and the amazement that
there are things like chicks, you know what I mean. No,
you know, it's it's always a surprise that this great

(01:58:51):
thing was there. You know, this this chick was there.
You know. It's a funny thing. Well, anyway, there I am.
You say, I'm this kid, and I'm really, you know,
really beginning feel it. And so we're out of school
and kids, you know, we're beginning to do the things
that kids do after schooling a ball and baseball and
all the jazz going on, we go to the beach
when suddenly a rumor got out that they're looking for

(01:59:14):
people at the Strawby Piano place and they're hiring kids
to be apprentices or apprenti. I don't know how you
pronounced it is a playal of apprentices a pronti. Anyway,
there was a word, you know, a job, well, a job.
I can't tell you what a job was like. And
the appresion of job is just a it is an
abelievable thing, you know. And so about fifteen of us

(01:59:37):
went down to this place. We arrived at this little
little office in front of this long wooden plant, and
they made pianos there. We go into the little office
and all of us are trooping, and they're all fourteen
years old, and the guy says, yes, it is true.
We are looking for some young men that we'd like
to train to be apprentices in the piano business, which

(01:59:57):
meant they'd like to get kids to work for nothing.
But you have to have a work permit. So if
any of you got a work permit, you can fill
out the forms. If you don't have a work permit,
go down to the Indiana State Employment Bureau and get
a work permit, because kids that are under sixteen got
to get a work permit. You can work if you're
over fourteen, but you got to get a work permit.
Go get a work permit. Well, so we all turned around.

(02:00:17):
We never heard of this, you know, we all turn around.
We go back and we find out where the Indiana
State Employment Services and the whole bunch of us, the
whole ball team, by the way, was a softball team.
A mass went to this place, and we're all sitting
in there and they're giving us, you know, they ask
us what school we go to, how old we are?
Take this thing home and get your mother to sign it,
and all that business. Course. This is getting to be

(02:00:39):
very interesting because it was the first time in my
life outside of school that I was filling out forms.
It was another historical moment. I didn't realize that it
was to be an endless succession of forms and there
on in Would you like to see all the forms
you have ever filled out in your life, all piled
up and in the forms that you had in the army,
and all the little things that your name is on,
when all the chips are in, and the all the

(02:01:00):
all the checks have been cashed, and all the dinner
pails have been empty, and you're there and there are
your forms piled up next to you, your poor little rotten,
gone bones. Nothing left but all these requisitions, all the
shoes that you tried to get, all the field jackets
that you made weak attempts to have repaired, all of it,
all of it, all of it there, all the work permits,

(02:01:21):
all the stuff piled up, one after the other. Speaking
of stuff, this is worm and FM, New York. We'll
be here till midnight, well a couple of days past,
and I go home and I take this thing that
my mother is supposed to sign out. Now, this is
about education. Don't lose sight of what we're talking about here.
We're not talking about nostalgia. We're not going to talk

(02:01:41):
about Penny Candy. So don't call up and say, ask
mister Shepherd if he remembers Mary Jane's. I am not
interested in Mary Jane's, nor flexible flyers, nor mumbly peg. Okay,
So anyway, I take this thing home and I show
it to my mother and I say, I got this work, permit, Ma,
I'm going to try to get a job at the

(02:02:01):
Strawberry Piano company. She's going to get a job. I'm
just at fourteen. You know. Up to that time, you know,
i've been selling Colliers and that stuff and had had
a paper ride. I'm getting a real job now. She says,
a work permit. Let me see that. She REases, she says,
you have to be fourteen. Okay, she said, all right,
I'll sign it. So she signed it. She was amused,
just a little vague amusement about this thing. So she

(02:02:24):
signed it. And that afternoon, boy, I take the street car.
I'm in that place and I'm slapping it down. I
want my work permit. Do you know that I've still
got that work permit? Me. It's funny thing, I've still
got it. You never want to let go of security
once you get it. And so I take this thing
back and I go back to the strawberry plant. And
there were about fourteen of us, I'll finally lined up there,

(02:02:46):
and believe it or not, out of the fourteen kids,
they selected four of us to work in the piano factory.
And guess whose name led all the rest? Like abou
Ben Adams. Oh that's right, yes, sir, Hey, and Paul,
Bullets and Flick, all four of it. It's got jobs now.
And they take us into the end of the employment

(02:03:08):
man and he says, all right, now, takes a look
at each one of us, and I was the biggest kid,
Paul was the littlest kid, Flick was in between, and
Bullets were short and squat like a fire plug. And
so he hesigned. Yeah. He assigned us each one to
our different departments. He says, you're going to Goadab. He says,
I want you to go down, and he says, I

(02:03:30):
want you to work for Zudoc. Mister Zudak. He points
to me. Mister Zudak works down in the back department,
and you're going to work with mister Zudok for a while.
And I want you to listen very carefully to what
mister Zudok says, because mister Zudok is a very important
job here and you're going to learn that job and
one day you'll be able to do those things that
mister Zudok can do. Now you're ready to go. And
of course, all we want to know is how much

(02:03:51):
money do we get. We want to know this. We
want to know all the things about it because a
job is a very abstract thing to a kid. It's
just a job, you know, it doesn't work, it's a job.
And so finally it comes out. They were going to
pay us nine ninety a week because we were apprentices,
nine dollars and ninety cents a week, and we were
to work from eight o'clock in the morning till four

(02:04:12):
thirty at night every day, and on Saturday we were
to come in at eight o'clock in the morning and
work till twelve thirty. We were to work six days
a week. And I was to work for mister Zudoc
down in the back department. Paul was working in the
place where they finished the tops of pianos, you know,
where they put that glaze and all that varnish and
stuff on him bullets, because he was shortened squat was

(02:04:33):
in the action department. As soon as they said here,
you're going to the action the department, everyone felt real.
This is this feeling of real jealousy about bullets because
action sounded great. Well. Action is just when they put
the guts of the piano in, you know. Because he
was short and squat, he could get underneath it and
hold the handles. Down when they pulled it in so
and then just a minute. Now, this is about education,

(02:04:54):
It is not about the piano factory. I do not
want to tell you about making pianos, which I know
about now, which I do wish to discuss. So that
afternoon I'm down there with Zudac, mister Zudac, who was
a thin man like a crow, and these men I'll
have to breakface. One little note here with the piano world.
These men were handmade piano people. They had all come

(02:05:16):
over from Germany. Have you ever heard of the Strawbery
Piano company strbe Well, it's a famous old German piano
and these were old German workmen, and everything in that
factory was hand done. They would rub and rub and
rub with this memory, and they would rub jeweler's paste,
and they would rub all kinds of powders and elixirs

(02:05:38):
into these pianos until they just gleamed beyond, absolutely beyond belief.
They were beautiful. But there was a funny feeling in
the air. There was a feeling of almost indescribable age.
There was a feeling of timelessness. And I had never
run into this before as a kid, of course, in school,
there's a feeling of movement, there's a feeling of going

(02:05:59):
forward from the sixth grade to the seventh grade, or
from eighth grade into ninth grade, from this season into
that season. But there was no season in the piano factory,
and there was no time in the piano factory. And
all the men were very very old men. I'm sure
they don't make pianos like this anymore, and they don't,
of course. I'm also sure that most of these men

(02:06:20):
must be dead, because almost every one of them was
way up in his sixties and seventies at that time,
very very old men who would sit for hours and
just quietly polish away on the top of a grand piano.
Two of them would work painstakingly, and then they would
take out their glasses. They had big jewelers glasses, and
they would shine lights, and they would work more and

(02:06:41):
more and more, and they'd work and work and work.
This is not a kid world. It's not even an
American world, you know, we don't do things that way.
And all these men had European accts. They had all
come from Germany, but they were from all over. Some
of them were Poles, some of them were Czechoslovakians, but
they were all old piano makers who knew nothing else

(02:07:02):
but pianos. And all the day long, this this piano
factor would ring with the sound down on the tuning department,
your ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding dngdongdong
ding dan dan ding dan dung dong ding dong dingdong,
And then you'd hear a drill press going ding ding
ding ding ding ding. This is the way it was
all day long, but in a quiet way. It wasn't

(02:07:22):
like the steel mill. It was like a lot of people,
elves or something, all quietly making little things and chipping away.
And you could smell that magnificent smell of wood. Oh,
they used beautiful woods in this place. They would use walnut,
antique and ebony. Have you ever smelled raw ebony. It's
a very peculiar smell. And once in a while they

(02:07:43):
would they would use this aged, this age, very very
old English walnut that would come in and it would
be all neuraled and gnarled. And then once in a
while they'd get this, they'd get this wood, some a
very a very tough, hard Philippine wood that I don't
even know the name of it. But it's a it's
a it's a color almost like like oh, like like

(02:08:06):
coffee that has a very thick cream in it. Beautiful
wood with a tiny grain. And they would polish it
and polish it and polish it and carve it with
little tools, all sorts of hand tools and little little
electric grills. Beautiful work. But the smells, the smells of
the shellac. And I was way down at the end
where we made the backs. Now, if you take a

(02:08:27):
look at the piano, I would suggest there's two kinds
of backs. I can tell you technically what backs are like.
On the back is hung the lyre or the harp.
This is this is just a bridge really that Have
you ever seen that big, long, sweeping s curved piece
of wood that lays on the bottom of a piano
and is hung there, and upon that is hung the action, Well,

(02:08:49):
my job was to lay that that big S shaped
piece of wood on the back, which came as a
as a large raw chunk of plywood, which I sand
it down, I would measure, I would lay the s down,
I would drill it out, I would flip it over,
and then I would put the braces, which are longitudinal braces.
You know that that sort of cut the back of
a piano at a diagonal. Have you seen those back there? Well,

(02:09:11):
those are all hung in there to keep that back
from warping and keep it, keep it at a certain tension.
It's quite a trick. Well, old man, old man Zudoc.
First of all, when I came down there, he took
one long look at me, and he says, vere I
I have had a good boy working here. And I said, oh,

(02:09:32):
go ahead, Well I think you'll be all right. Okay,
if you if you learned, if you just if you
just listen to what I say, and if you work hard.
I have to work very hard here because we have
a certain quota, a certain percentage we have to turn
out every day. Else, mister Elsinger down at the end,
they not have enough backs, and it will be very bad.

(02:09:53):
We have always kept up. Yet this is for keeps.
You know. They weren't playing around, and they weren't elves,
and they had to turn out the backs. And so
he took me down to the end, way down at
the end. We worked at the very end, you see,
because believe it or not, a piano begins with the back.

(02:10:13):
Strangely enough, when we were the beginning of the assembly line,
this little assembly line with about forty five old men
in blue overalls and blue workshirts and who had kind
of gray jaws and smoked these funny little pipes and stuff.
But just like out of these pictures, you know, you see.
And so he took me down at the end he says,
here is where you get you get the wood now,

(02:10:34):
and when I gave you a ticket, I will give
you a ticket and it says number seven B. And
when it says seventh B, you get the once onue
this pile and it says three number seventy, you will
bring back three seven B and you walk on the
chart on the wallet you have taken three. Because that
is for the inventory. Now. If on the other hand,
we get one that says we want number two s D.

(02:10:57):
That is the larger one now is for our know
spinnet model. Now, now that is what we're here in
a small pilot. You will market on there and don't
forget to put s D now. Now, I want you
to remember all this because it would be very bad
if we do not get the inventory all correct. Yes,
And I'm feeling like I'm just I'm a human cake

(02:11:20):
of yeast. He is so old, and it is so foreign.
It is it's it's not my father, and it's it's
not it's not mister Settlemeyer. It's something else again. And
then finally he takes me back to where he had
this big sort of a work table. And as a kid,
you know, I had taken shop once in grade school.

(02:11:41):
They always they always teach shop in grade school the kids,
and shop is something I had always liked. But this
was so different. It was a big, thick table, and
it was it was old, very old, and it has
been cut. You know. You can see where saws and
things had cut into it, and years and years of
shellact had been rubbed into it, and hundreds and hundreds
of little ninety bits of board into it. And I'll

(02:12:02):
finding this thing looks like a big bee hive, just
covered with a thick coating of rubber eyed stuff, just
all green and yellow and red and thick and gummy.
And it was his own workbench. And he had this
big vice on the side that he would clamp the
s curves in and we would drill them from the
from the opposite end. And he says, now, then I
will show you first of all, now, huh, we will

(02:12:22):
measure this is a s curve yere. We we call
this the harp or the lyar. Now this goes on
the back of the piano. On this Oh, by the way,
you must always look carefully at the wood. If you
see there it's any cracks, you do not do anything
with it. But you make a big red X across it,
and you take it out and show it to clearance

(02:12:43):
out from the back there and tell him that this
is for him. He takes to all the rejects. Yeah, now,
we cannot we cannot make a mistake. Yeah. Now you
measure this way and you will note here. I have
written down a chart here and you will measure this
way and you will go this way. Now you will
greet it four holes. Yeah, before I will show you
how to rish. And he takes his He takes his

(02:13:03):
hand drilled niggas oep oh, straight as a diep. He
goes like that. Now see you now, but you will
take out you will take out this number seven bit
and you will put in the counter sinc we see
we have the counter sink there now, and that makes
that the bolts go right in and are flat. They
must be absolutely flat. The action will not lay flat.

(02:13:26):
It is very important they must be flat. Yes, okay,
Now would you write the drive run now I will watch.
Oh my god. I go over there and I take
the S thing and I yeah, yeah, that is it
right there. You have taken the right one there. Now
that's the number two SD there is correct. Now, now,

(02:13:49):
how how do you measure that? Now? Look down at
the chart there. See it says seventeen and about a
half inches down to the first hole off there from
the upper right hand corner. Measuring with this great big
T square. I can hardly lift it. It weighs nine
hundred pounds, and it's old, and it's and you can't
even read the numbers. They're all all been worn off
countless hands. Here it is correct there, and I'm mark

(02:14:14):
and I marked the next one. I'm sweating, and he
is standing there and I can smell all that. I
can hear Paul down there. I marked the third one,
and I lay the thing down. He says. Now it
is very important that you hold it. You hold the
brit absolutely straight, or else the bolt were going crooked.
Now now hold it, rach and low. Did you left
it out? Oh? Does it go in like butter. Oh boy,

(02:14:42):
he said, very good, very good. Now, now you watch
counter sinking now, and that is what the Connor sink. Now,
don't forget to tighten the chuck there. Tighten it very good,
or else it's lable to hurt you. It's greet. Oh,
I am beginning to do it. And so he reaches over.
He hands me a box of the long screws, and
I sink one in, I sink the other, and he says,

(02:15:04):
after it is all done, he says, dah, Now look
at it. You have. You have monthed D s Now,
you have Manta the hop. Now the next thing you
do is flip it over and I will show you
how to put on the launchitude and will stays. Now,
these are very important because if you do not have
the correct it must be a very correct tension, else
it will all wop. It will be a very bad piano. Well,

(02:15:27):
this goes on all afternoon, and I am in a
world that I never know existed, and I can't remember
all this stuff. He's telling me about the bolts, he's
telling me about how you drill, and I'm learning all
this stuff and it seems so simple. You know, you
see the back of the piano. There's nothing to it.
Then he takes me in the back where you get
the shellac. He takes me in the back where you

(02:15:48):
get the sandpaper, about nine grades of sandpaper. And then
then you have to rub pummers into this, and then
you rub the sand paper on it. Then you go
on with the cloth, and then finally you come on
with the shellac, one coat after the other, until you
have a back. There is the back. That's a beautiful beck.
And he stands back and he looks it over and
they hang it up on a rack so it dries,

(02:16:09):
and there it stands the first back I have made
all afternoon. And he has just been spending time teaching me. Well,
I go home that night and there was Paul Flick
and Bullus and Bullus's his eyes are bulging, he's cross
eyed and everything, and he's just he's shaken. I don't
know whether you know anything about mounting the action of

(02:16:29):
a piano, but Bullus has just been through hell and
he is sweating. I mean, I could just see that.
And by the way, we are an ex ball team
by now, we are just four very worried kids, very worried.
I was a pretty good third basement when I came out,
came out to that place to get a job. Now
I was leaving a complete hulk, and I can't think

(02:16:50):
all of this stuff. And Schwartz, of course, smelled from
head to foot. He smelled with shellac. Swartz all day
long had been polishing the tops of spinet pianos, and
he he says, I had. I don't know. And so
we ride home on the street car. I've be saying
a word. I get home and my mother is waiting.
She says, well, how is work for me? It's great, Mas,

(02:17:12):
really great. Well did you like it? Tell me about it?
You know, it's very, very, very exciting. I was scared,
I'm telling you, I never it was a fantastic feeling
of fear. Well the next day, right now, now I'm
afraid to go in, and so I do. I go in.
It's eight o'clock in the morning. He's old guys. Let
me tell you, the old men go to work like

(02:17:33):
two hours before work. Something about old men very very
They're very punctual, very conscientious, and they work as sort
of their life, and they at home. I could always imagine,
because I had a grandfather like that they live among ferns,
and they live up, you know, with creton covers on
the tops of day beds, and radiators that hiss, and

(02:17:55):
old ladies that make bread and stuff. But all day
long they are at the piano factory doing what grandpa
or uncle does. And so I am with these people,
and I am one of them. I came in that
next day and I walked back and you could you
could see all the old men are still sitting, but
they're not working. They're just sitting and they're putting little
things together. And one is getting out some nails, and

(02:18:16):
another guy's is polishing a knife or something, and they're
getting ready for work. They've been here for an hour,
these old guys, and finally it is eight o'clock. I
am back there. Mister god Stop says all right, mister
Zudo says, go go weave a now go, you are
going to make the backs. And I am going to
handle this. And I was supposed to work. I was

(02:18:39):
supposed to go right to work now, not stop, not fool,
not start, no false starts. I was expected to start
making backs of this type of upright. He was working
on a big grand piano back of magnificent back that
stretched over an acre and a half. I have been
to work on this one. And if you have any trouble,
I wish you would not make them mistake. Don't not

(02:19:01):
make a mistake. If you have any probble, please ask me. Now,
I am right away here. Don't be afraid to ask.
Don't be afraid to ask. Oh boy, So I start working,
and it is laborious. Oh, it is laborious. Finally, lunchtime arrives,
and it is now maybe noon. Exactly on the moment

(02:19:22):
of noon, these old men quit. It is noon, and
I have finished about a third of a back, and
I'm still trying to get everything right. I don't I'm
so scared. I don't want to make a mistake, and
I don't wanna. I don't want to step off the line.
And oh, mister Zudoc says, finally come, we are going
to have lunch. Let me see what you have been
doing now here. That's not bad, dear, that's pretty good.

(02:19:43):
Pretty good. Now you should you should. Now, I'll tell
you what. You've got to drill him a little lawer.
You must drill him a little deeper. There, you are
very vacer. Now you must get a little courage. But
you're drilling now. Now all of me down now, I
will show you. Now we'll throw these men out. This
one it's no good actually, but we will throw it out.
And I work through a one hundred EU goes like that.

(02:20:03):
I see all of me down to you like that.
We are very fast down. If you do it slow,
you always do it crooked. Oh they ever learned this?
This is just it's like a nightmare. I know I'm
not making It is terrible. And so we all sit
outside in the sun, all the old men and about
ten young kids, among whom are the four guys I
came with me, were sitting out there eating our tomatoes.

(02:20:26):
I had tomatoes, and I had salami sandwich and the
bottle of coke. And we're sitting out there in the sun,
and Bulus is way down at the end, and Paul
is sort of in the middle, and Flick is over
here next to me, and nobody is saying anything, and
the old men are just kind of talking quiet. They
have been sitting together like this at lunchtime for one
hundred years. These old men and these men, it is
their world. They know their world. And the little factory

(02:20:48):
stops at lunch time. No sound are all coming from it,
and they all sit out there on the on the
there was a long shipping platform where the trucks would
come and take the pianos, and they'd sit there in
the sun, and I'd sit in the sun with it.
And I'm sitting with Flick on one side of me
and old Zudac on the other, and Zudak is talking
to another old man, and they just sort of ignore us.
But yet we're with them, you know, you know what

(02:21:10):
I mean. It's like a real adult can ignore a kid,
but a kid knows he's with this guy, you know.
And somehow there was a sense of real security with
these old men. And I'm sitting there and they're sitting there,
and we're eating the sandwiches, and we go back and
I start to work well. At about I'd say at
about Thursday, it began to happen, I'd say roughly Thursday.

(02:21:33):
I began to have the feeding that I could make backs.
I had the feeding that I now knew how to
do this an old man, Zudac, aren't he ever said
anything to me. And every day at about three o'clock
there would be this fantastic feeling of just almost indescribable boredom.
You know, kids hardly ever really experienced boredom. You know,
a kid is a real free spirit. If he you know,

(02:21:53):
he is. He can scratch, or he can look out
of the window, or he can holler, or he can
just stand, you know, or he can walk around, or
he can lay flat, or he can have a fit.
He can do almost anything. He can break a window,
he can do you know, a kid can get people
mad in that. But when a kid is working, he
can't do any of these things. And we are kids,
and we are just fantastically bored. The sun would be

(02:22:16):
out there, and I'm going deep, deep, and it seems
like it has been forever that I'm in this place.
It has been going on for weeks and weeks. Actually
I started on Monday. It is now Thursday, and I
have been doing this for a year now. It seems well,
finally it happens Friday afternoon. The mad from the office
comes around, mister Elsinger. They all had German names like that,

(02:22:39):
very strange names. Mister Elsinger comes around and he says,
you are a shepherd, and I says, yes, yeah, but
it is your paycheck. And he hands me this envelope
and in the envelope is a check. It is the
first money that I have ever earned, real dough de
ea u x nine dollars and eighty one cents. They

(02:23:03):
took nine cents out for tax. There it was money,
and suddenly it just was great. You know, I didn't
mind being here at all. And Old Zudok he gets
his check and he doesn't say anything. They you know,
the old man, they wanted out pors in India. And
he has all another thing that these old men all had.
They all had these old watches. And I began at
that time to have a tremendous appreciation of old watches.

(02:23:26):
These old men always had a watch. Every once in
a while, Old Zudak would pull his watch out out
of his overalls. He would pull it out. He had
a big long leather thong that we had. Pull it out.
It would be ticking away. You could hear it all
the way through the drill presses and everything. There. Yeah,
I have about twenty minutes then, yeah, now you go
right ahead there, don't you stop now? And he had
a sort of a funny sense of humor, and he

(02:23:47):
knew I was a kid, of course. Well at the
end of the week it was now the weekend, Sunday,
and it was great. I was out and I was
playing ball and hollering. But it wasn't the same.

Speaker 1 (02:23:58):
You know.

Speaker 2 (02:23:59):
You don't go out and play when you were working
man like he used to, you know. So we're out
there tossing a baller on and Flick is out there
throwing them around, and Ballus is thrown. But we were
working stiffs. It was a very different world then, you know,
And it was not We were just not kids really anymore.
And so finally Monday, oh like a second later, comes
and I'm back there again. Hope. I'm going with the drill,

(02:24:21):
and I'm going every day about about three o'clock in
the afternoon. Oh I'm sweating. I'm just oh, just just oh,
just indescribable. Bore them And at four point thirty would
come round. It would be just like just like somebody
had taken a ten thousand pounds weight off my back.
And Flick and Ballus and Swarts and me, we'd all
go out of the door. Oh boy, oh, and all

(02:24:42):
Zudac these old men didn't leave, you know. We would
all rush out like mad and they're all putting little
things away, and they're they're arranging things and pulling shades
up and down and pulling down little lights. And Zudac
would walk around and he would dust off some backs
that we had made the day before, and they just
didn't go like we would. Oh while we go, you know,
like a like a bat out of you know what. Well,

(02:25:05):
this is where the education began to be very, very
very educational. It was roughly, i'd say Thursday of the
second week. I would be willing to guess that it
was Friday. Immediately after I got my second check that
the seed began to blossom. It began to germinate. I

(02:25:26):
came home, I get out on the back porch. I
get on my old bicycle, which was two hundred and
seventy five years old, was one of the early pole
driven models. I get out there. It was twenty third hand.
I start riding around and suddenly the idea comes to me,
I have now got fifteen dollars. Oh, by the way,

(02:25:49):
my mother from the very beginning said I must pay
two dollars a week board. Now, since I am doing
this work, I must pay my board and keep there.
And so I am out there with my bicycle when
it suddenly occurred to me that what I ought to
do is buy a new bicycle, a new bike. Well,
Saturday comes and I tell my mother and father I

(02:26:13):
think I might buy a new bike. My mother looks
at me and says yeah. My old man says no.
My kid brother just stands with his mouth hanging open.
I says, Yep, I think I might do it. I'm
going to get an Elgin. That's a Seers Roebuck bike,
an Elgin bike. Well, one week later, the whole family

(02:26:37):
is down at the Seers Roebuck store on the South
side of Chicago, and I am buying a bike on time.
The bike was thirty seven dollars and sixty five cents.
I can remember every penny of it. Thirty seven sixty five.
It was two tone, It was red and white, and

(02:26:59):
it had chrome fed aft and bow. It had a
small battery case underneath. It had a light on the front,
as required by state law. And it was beautiful, a
magnificent bicycle. I paid twelve dollars down because in the
meantime I had invested heavily in a boy Scout uniform.

(02:27:21):
I was now down to about fourteen cents, and Monday comes.
They delivered the bike, beautiful bike. We put it together
that night, and that night I am flying. Oh have
you ever owned something new when you were a kid.
Have you ever that you bought ten dollars?

Speaker 3 (02:27:39):
I bought it.

Speaker 2 (02:27:39):
It was mine. I had the whole summer ahead of me,
a new bicycle, great big white rubber handle, grips the
whole bit, and I'm out there swinging. I'd like to
tell you that, well, it doesn't make any difference at
this juncture, because the education was now fairly complete. All
we needed was the denoument, which was not very coming.

(02:28:02):
Monday came along, and I am back at the old grind.
I am drilling, but now I have a purpose. I
am drilling because I can hardly wait every day to
get out and get on that bike, that fantastic elgin bike.
Tuesday comes and I am working like a fiend. Wednesday comes,
I'm working like a fiend. Thursday comes, I'm working like
a fiend, and all of a sudden, looking over my shoulders,

(02:28:22):
mister Elsinger, will you please come to the office please.
Mister Zudoc looked up and didn't say anything, just look.
I turned around with mister Elsinger. I thought, think we're
gonna put me into another department. So I walk all
the way down the long aisle there between all the
other people working. I get to the office and mister

(02:28:44):
Elsinger says, we have decided that we are going to
get someone else to do your job. We are very sorry.
But mister Judok says that you are not fast enough
for him. Man, it's just not very good. We are
going to pay you for the whole week. And he

(02:29:07):
gives me nine dollars and ninety cents and I walk
out in the sun broken. I owe thirty dollars. Thirty dollars.
Do you know what thirty dollars is like in the depression?
And I owe it. I am out of work and

(02:29:30):
I got nine dollars and ninety cents and I get
on the street car and I start going home, and
I'm telling you, I'm sweating, so I'm almost hysterical. I
have lost my job and I own a bicycle. And
they gave me a little book. I'm supposed to come
and pay them every two weeks. And I've got this
book and it's allful of coupons, and I've got nine
to ninety, of which two dollars already is owed for

(02:29:52):
my board and room. I have seven dollars. I owe
them four dollars at minuses for my boy Scott hat
What do I do? All the way home? I am dying.
I'm telling you, I'm dying. It's like people are pulling
teeth out of me one by one and they're throwing
them in my ears one by one. I get out
of the street car. I'm walking home. It is only

(02:30:13):
about three thirty in the afternoon. I walk up the
stairs and here's my mother. Just what are you doing?
There's nothing about Well, what's the matter. Are you sick?
What's the matter with you? Come on in and light.
I am white as a sheet. I'm about ready to heave.
My stomach is gurgling and bubbling. I'm really I'm sick.
I'm telling you, I'm fourteen years old, you understand. And

(02:30:37):
I get into the front poom, and I'm just I
don't know what to do. I can't tell her. You know,
the thirty dollars my father is making about four dollars
a week, and you know, it's one of those fantastic things.
And I says, ma, I lost my job I.

Speaker 1 (02:30:51):
Got from April twenty fifth, nineteen sixty three. Crutchev says,
those who believe in God have a moral responsibility to
stop building nuclear weapons matchbook cover from Chris Jaama.

Speaker 2 (02:31:02):
And I'm not saying stick to generalities. I'm saying, if
you get on. A great example of the man who
always uses this the greatest advantage is Khrushov. Have you
ever read Khrushev's speeches? You ever read khushov speeches and
nobody seems to comment on some of the things he says.
For example, the other day Khushov gave a speech that

(02:31:26):
was carried all over the world, and it was a
speech dateline Moscow, of course, and I have a copy
of it. Was it was transmitted all over the world,
and he came home and knew his wires, and that
was on television, radio and the whole business that was
shot at the u N and everything else. And he
was talking about what he called Adam maniacs, a very

(02:31:46):
very interesting speech he went on and he was talking
about the business of knocking out testing in a bombs
and nuclear bombs and so on. And here's here's a
direct quote from from Krushev. He says he himself said, Khrushchov,
I do not believe in God, but those who do, obviously,

(02:32:06):
meaning President Kennedy, have the moral duty not to build
nuclear weapons. How do you like that? If that isn't
an interesting piece of sophistry, what he is in the
sense saying if you keep on testing, What he's really
saying is that I am an immoral person. Therefore whatever
I do is moral. What you guys do is immoral

(02:32:29):
because you have morals, And if you keep testing, you're
gonna burn in hell because you are religious people. But
if I keep testing because I don't believe in hell, boy, boy,
you know this is so true the the righteous, you know,

(02:32:51):
speaking of the righteous, this is of course, this is
a superb righteousness, where a man creates his own morals
as he goes whatever it is assumed automatically to whatever
pushup does this moral by all the people who listen
to them. This is one of the new developments of
our time, too, is the assumption of morality on the
part of many people. Here speaking of scary little things

(02:33:14):
in the wind, do we have no hold that up
per minute? Hold that up per minute? I think there
are a lot of scary little things in the wind.
And I got a match cover the other day. As
an old collector of match covers, you know, I had
over seventeen thousand mass covers once hidden under our basement

(02:33:36):
steps when I was a kid. I had gunny sacks
full of them. After a while, you don't know what
to do with match covers.

Speaker 4 (02:33:40):
You know.

Speaker 2 (02:33:40):
That's a very static hobby. And yet it's a good
hobby in a sense because it gives you a semi
legitimate reason for grubbling in the gutter. And I used
to do a lot of grubbling in the gutter for
match covers. And I finally got about seventeen thousand of
these things. And I'm an old physionado of match covers,
but please don't send me any. I don't want any.
Probably the greatest match cover I ever received, however, was

(02:34:02):
one from an organization in Canada, and I keep this one.
I keep it in my wallet. I never know when
I might need moral backing, you know, I might need
oh once in a while, when a guy a little emergency,
you have to look up at a sign that says think,
and that tells you, you know, bolsters a lot of
things within you but this match cover was an organization

(02:34:22):
and it's a store. It is really it's a it's
a religious store, was what it really is up in
Quebec City, Canada. And there's a picture of their place
on the cover of the match cover and it says
drop in any time when you're driving along Canadian Highway
number fourteen six s J seven on your way to
Quebec City, and there's a picture of their place, and
it says, be sure to drop by and see our

(02:34:45):
wonderful collection and make sure that you have purchased gifts.
Very excellent for gift purchasing. And the name of the
place is christ E Rama. Well I kind of like that,
so I keep underneath it. Of course it says close
cover before striking. Know what's going to happen, you know,
like lightning bolts or things of that nature. Male fists
out of the sky, you know, light that kind of

(02:35:06):
a match. But speaking male fists, this is w O
R am FAF New York and one other great I
think just just absolutely a superlative match cover. Is a
match cover. Did you know that Army posts now are
turning out match covers had advertising their post now as
a matter of fact, when I was at Camp Crowded,

(02:35:27):
they tried to keep it a secret that camp of
what was going on. There are a lot of stuff
they didn't want to have talked much about, you know,
but now it can come out. About that salt pork boy,
you know you talk about sos. Let me tell you
about six straight weeks on fat back. You know what
hog fat back is? Six straight weeks on it? You
spoon it up like ice cream, old ice h you're

(02:35:47):
like for breakfast. Fat back? Of course, you guys, you
New York is only what fat back is. Fat back
is what it sounds like, the fatty backside of a pig,
and you just sort of, you know, just shovel it
up and it's it's it's it's not greasy, it is grease.
It's very different. You see. You don't want to hear
about that as another story. Of course, they had the
decency to serve it with catchup, which made it a

(02:36:10):
little bit better. But this this great match cover that
I have a chose a soldier. He's running, you see
very you know, have you noticed that they're tying in
being in the army now with athletic teams, like it's
fun you know, there's a there's a TV commercial comes
out and says, join the team. You see guys playing basketball.
You see guys scoring shots from way out, and you

(02:36:31):
see a guy hitting the long drive from home plate.
You see somebody plunging them, and then you see suddenly
nineteen guys jumping out of a jeep carrying Bayonets says, yes,
the fun guy, get in there. The proment of action.
Guys that really want to run and jump me out
through the ball game. It's a big fun game, all right. Well,
the sure is athletic crowd. Well, well, on the subject

(02:36:55):
of match cover, is a match cover show soldier. He's
looking very dynamic. He's stepping. It looks like on the
cover he's stepping on somebody's face, obviously the enemy, high
cheek bones, the you know, the funny look on the
face that foreigners have. And he's running along there and
he's got his band that ready. It looks like he's
got either it's a bar or a bay and it

(02:37:15):
looks like B A R. It's a very bad reproduction.
He's carrying it there and he's running and in nice
red letters sort of you know, like the Americana sells
itself like the Home of the Imperial Room, where the
food is great. Well, their match cover says the Home
of the Ultimate Weapon. Yes, the home of the open Weapon.

(02:37:44):
We have four hundred rooms and running water and free TV.
And while on the subject of running water, we have
with us tonight the Limelight. And I would like to
respectfully suggest the Limelight makes it the scene. And if
you're a scene maker and you haven't made that, now,

(02:38:04):
I'll tell you a scene maker doesn't go very well
at the Limelight. Go across the street. There's about three
joints across the street that are especially designed for scene makers. Now,
the Limelight is a very peculiar, difficult to describe place,
like they got mooseheads on the wall, and even some
mooseheads are sitting there drinking Irish coffee, which adds a
little bit to it too. And it's a place I

(02:38:27):
seriously spent the first five years of my life in
New York in the Limelight. And I don't go to
the Limelight much until it's after midnight. And if you
would like a place to go before the theater or
after the theater, it really starts making it about midnight.
The Limelight is on Sheridan's Square in the village. They
have food. It's not a restaurant though, it's not a bar,

(02:38:49):
but they have things, you know, little drinkies. It's just
a place where you can really sit, just sit and
once in a while, guy, I'll pick up a banjo
and hit somebody else with it and it's great. You know.
It's the Limelight. And they have a magnificent buffet on Sunday,
just magnificent, the village type buffet make you sweat at

(02:39:12):
ninety one seventh Avenue, South Sheridan Square, The Lime Light,
all right. And speaking of the village, we have also
with us the paper Book Gallery and this is their
last week with their insane record collection. It's nutty forty
four cents apiece for ordinary people. Their records, and these

(02:39:35):
are you know, they're big LPs. They're round and they
got a hole in the middle and they come in
a cardboard thing that you can carry it with and
just like a real record. You know, you would never
know these from real records. And they've got labels and
everything on them, and you can go down and look
at these and they're forty four cents each. Their stereo
and their monorial and they play. You know, that's what
amazes you. Roller skating records and guys cracking bones. There's

(02:39:59):
one great record of a guy snapping his gum with
the US Military Installation Band. It's a wonderful record. They
do simper for daels and on them all and it's
in stereo and you get tall snap along with the
Marine band. You can do it with your own gum.
It's very good. They have little notes where you do it.
And these are all records forty four cents apiece, and
if you're a listener, two for forty four its own

(02:40:21):
sick and six for one dollar. But get down there
fast because there aren't more than thirteen thousand left. And
it's a green ninety nine six.

Speaker 1 (02:40:33):
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.

Speaker 2 (02:41:04):
That's that's some

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