Episode 118, April 5, 2025 - Jean Shepherd Show Marathon, Part 12 - Airchecks

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Welcome to air checks. Here is more of the Jane
Shepherd Marathon on w o R in New York City
from February fifth, nineteen sixty four, the story of a
kid who shot down an airliner with a point to
the myth of marrying a Japanese woman. Americans don't listen
to shortwave radios.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Asssssssssssssst ss st.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
St st.

Speaker 4 (01:34):
St st stssssss.

Speaker 5 (02:53):
Hey, did you hear about that guy that shopped down
the helicopter.

Speaker 3 (02:56):
With the with the arrow? That's one of the.

Speaker 5 (03:03):
You know that somehow that has great overtones and ramifications
and everything else that I hadn't even tended to talk
about this, but I heard it on the news, and
that reminded me of a thing that happened about, oh
maybe it was eight or nine years ago, maybe a

(03:24):
little early, maybe about ten years ago, but it is
a thing which was reported widely on the news.

Speaker 3 (03:30):
And there was a guy out in Iowa.

Speaker 5 (03:34):
Someplace, and he was laying in a cornfield and he
was a kid, and he had a twenty two, just
a twenty two rifle, you know, the kind that you
shoot crows.

Speaker 3 (03:45):
With that they that they shoot a clay pigeons with
at Atlantic City and that kind.

Speaker 5 (03:50):
He's laying out there, flat on his back in a
cornfield and an airplane goes over at about three.

Speaker 6 (03:55):
Thousand feet and it's a commercial plane and.

Speaker 5 (04:00):
He's just lying there and he takes a pot shot
and down comes the airplane, trailing sparks and smoke and
the and the plane. The plane made a an emergency
landing in an airport there, and of course it was
shot down. This guy gets credit for one victory, of course,

(04:21):
and it was a clear cut, recognized and authenticated victory.

Speaker 3 (04:26):
And did you hear about this? Hearing that, well, you
know that's that's not so funny. Actually, uh, we had.

Speaker 5 (04:33):
When I was a kid, we had this is this
reminds me of a lot of wild stuff like that.
I as a kid, we had BB guns, which are
now illegal, I understand in most states. But these were
BB guns and they shopped little babies and.

Speaker 3 (04:48):
The best baby.

Speaker 5 (04:48):
I'll give you the brass figuity dad with oak leaf palms,
if you can tell me what the best baby.

Speaker 6 (04:53):
Around was, right right, there's a BB gun man.

Speaker 5 (04:59):
Well, there was there was a great rumor you see
that if you if you could, if you could calculate
the lead right, and if you could calculate the windage properly,
you could bring down a DC three.

Speaker 6 (05:12):
And and ohies.

Speaker 5 (05:13):
And once in a while, guys, and you feel terrible
guilty about it. You say, here's a plane flying overhead
about ten thousand feet, and you'd hide behind the tree
and you get the properly you want to go, and
then you'd lie, you'd wait. You know, kids, chrise, you
always have the expectation of it wouldn't have surprised any
kid the shot a wing right off of one of

(05:34):
them and down it comes into the lake, and it
wouldn't It just would have been part of it. But
this kind of thing I remember, I remember one day
along that line.

Speaker 3 (05:44):
I remember one.

Speaker 5 (05:45):
Day Flick is standing by the street car and there
was an interurban you.

Speaker 3 (05:49):
Remember the interurban cars.

Speaker 5 (05:51):
They were real fast electric trains the South Shore from Chicago.

Speaker 3 (05:54):
They went about one hundred miles an hour.

Speaker 5 (05:57):
And Flick is maybe seventy five yards away from the
train and the train is ripping along and one hundred
miles from how it. Flick winds up for just one
of these instantaneous nutty moments. He winds up and lets
go with a rock, which I deplore. But unless he
did it, he throws the rock, the rock curves. It
was a beautiful shot. You never saw anything like it.

(06:18):
And he hit the thing right at the top where
the trolley goes. He hit that thing right on the
vital spot.

Speaker 3 (06:24):
It blew a fuser shoe like that.

Speaker 5 (06:26):
The smoke flies out and he's right in the middle
of the street there the trolley shoe.

Speaker 3 (06:32):
It stops. What a sinking sensation of your way down
deep inside. But this guy shooting.

Speaker 5 (06:39):
Down a helicopter in the middle of a modern war
with arrows.

Speaker 3 (06:46):
There should be more made of this. I mean, this
is a really Yeah, that's a really interesting story. Though
I wonder what of course the guy must have thought
that he could do it if he's shooting arrows, and
it probably didn't surprise him a bit. He shot it
on a game, just another shot, you know, well you
hit it in the vital spot.

Speaker 5 (07:06):
Of course, there's been there have been a lot of
stories of guys shooting down airplanes with one shot. In fact,
several happened at Pearl Harbor. One of the most famous
stories that this is a guy running out of his
house and he takes a pot shot with a rifle
of a passing zero.

Speaker 3 (07:22):
You remember that story. And the guy was flying right
over the rooftops, and he had straighted the airport and
he was taking off over the roof and the guy
runs out of his house with a rifle and takes
a quick wing shot and gets this guy right between
the eyes, this pilot, and that was the end of
That was the end.

Speaker 6 (07:38):
Of the ball game right there down the game.

Speaker 3 (07:41):
And it was one of the first victories in the
air war.

Speaker 5 (07:44):
But the speaking of the air war, the war of
the war of courses is heating up considerably.

Speaker 3 (07:53):
I mean in many ways. I was listening to.

Speaker 5 (07:57):
Radio Moscow the other night, and it is a fascinating thing.
I wonder why more people in America do not have
shortwave radios to listen to the world.

Speaker 3 (08:08):
We don't. We don't. A short wave is very unpopular
in America, and yet all over the world any place
you go, people listen to short wave. They really do.
You go to.

Speaker 5 (08:19):
Almost anywhere I've ever been. The radios that people have
have two bands, maybe three, and they'll listen to broadcasts, sure,
like the local radio station, but they have that shortwave
brand and they will listen to shortwave the way most
people here listen.

Speaker 6 (08:34):
To WR all over the world.

Speaker 5 (08:37):
Well, I'm listening to Radio Moscow the other night, and
it is wild. They hear this giant battle going out
between Moscow.

Speaker 3 (08:46):
They can't peddle. Now. You could tell they're having a
lot of trouble. You know.

Speaker 5 (08:49):
It's like a playwright who can't tell who the villain
is in this play anymore. And they can't tell whether
we're the imperialistic warmongers or whether the Chinese are deviation revisionist,
ideological splittists.

Speaker 3 (09:03):
Or whatever it is they're called. And so in one
sentence they will they will.

Speaker 5 (09:07):
Blame all everything in the world on one the imperialistic
warmongers and the deviation communist revisionists. And it's getting to sound,
honest to John, it's getting to sound like one of
the best comedy routines I have ever heard in my life.

Speaker 3 (09:24):
And you know what intrigues me is in connection with that,
is that we walk around here and there's all kinds
of guys doing satire, all kinds of people are writing
articles and all it.

Speaker 5 (09:37):
And the chief the chief thing that is the part
and parcel and the meat and the blood of most
of the satirists who work today is what they call
the phoniness of America.

Speaker 3 (09:48):
And this is a great favorite word of the satirists.
I wonder what these guys would do if they ever
heard real phoniness going on. I mean, the real thing,
you know. Oh boy, oh wow.

Speaker 6 (09:58):
I mean it's it's unbelievable, fantastic.

Speaker 5 (10:01):
And yet yet nevertheless, there are large numbers of people
who really believe that phoniness.

Speaker 3 (10:08):
Is an American product.

Speaker 5 (10:10):
In fact, it gets so insane that today it came
over the wires. Of course, you see, the rest of
the world has agreed on that too, and that get
lets them all nicely off the hook, you see, because
Americans are constantly saying it, so you know, they don't
have to say anymore. So it gets so nutty that
in Sweden they had a nationwide poll and they found
out that the overwhelming number of Swedes would like to

(10:32):
get rid of their wives and marry a Japanese girl.
He said, this is the Japanese girl with Well, I
know a guy that married won and believe me, she
made him in the coalslaw with Russian dressing.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
In about twenty minutes.

Speaker 1 (10:43):
February fourteenth nineteen sixty four, The Different Types of Love.
Shepherd announces that he will be broadcasting live from the
Limelight for the first time, playing bass in a really
lousy symphony orchestra during a storm. The romance with six
year old beautiful and wealthy down strict. Part of the
opening theme has been deleted.

Speaker 3 (11:12):
And here it is little did I realize that she
was right? Little did I realize that my mother was right?
These many years ago. It's another Valentine's Day, and I
have not received a single solitary sad Sincere Valentine. Well,

(11:36):
I guess it is true that you sew.

Speaker 7 (11:40):
What ye shall reap.

Speaker 3 (11:43):
I shall repeat that to you for those of you
who might have missed the import of what I said,
as ye, so shall ye reap. I can remember old
Elmer Tuttle, our neighborhood barber Tony, who went into the
evangel business. Tony took a vacant lot in the town.

(12:04):
Who's about three blocks away, a vacant lot, which, by
the way, had as one of its major features down
at the far end of it, back by the alley,
an underground fire. I don't know whether you've lived in
the immediate proximity of an underground fire. But let me
tell you, the flames of hell are very close to
an eight year old kid who feels at any minute

(12:26):
now if he steps wrong near second base, the earth
is lockless. Swallow him up, and he will turn out
not only to be out at second base, but a tinder,
a mere ash of his previous pulsating, live, vital passion itself.
And so Old Ruggles, you want to hear the story

(12:46):
of him, Old Ruggles. One night, Ruggles used to hang
around the pool room, the Bluebird pool Room.

Speaker 7 (12:53):
Old Ruggles one night went down.

Speaker 3 (12:55):
To Tunnel's evangelical emporia, and in the middle of a
particularly stirring passage, got up and threatened to fight Ernie
right up there on the platform, because you see what
had happened. Ernie is up there saying, ye shall reap,
and ye shall reap as ye shall. So as I

(13:19):
stand here before you, I look down and I see
the faces of unmitigated sinners, and I can see the
devil fighting within the very hellbound souls of each and
every one of you. Well, Old Ruggles, who had a
wooden leg and a rotten, crummy temper, any bad teeth

(13:39):
on top of it, Ruggles stood up, and it was
a big night because it was Wednesday night, and it
was at a particularly important part of the ritual period
in that Northern Indiana community. Got up and went up
right up to the front there over the sawdust and
started a fistfight with Elmer the barber up there, because
Elmer the barber represented the Ruggles the devil out because

(14:02):
Ruggles had heard that clarion call, you shall reap ay
shall so? I repeat, yes, you plant the seed, and
that's what's going to come up. You plant radish is
dead and they ain't gonna come up, nothing but radishes,
horse radishes the boot. As as you read so well,

(14:29):
show you can be read, and.

Speaker 6 (14:32):
You can get all together, guys, you can get on.

Speaker 3 (14:36):
I want you to listen carefully tonight. We take this
as our text. Listen careful.

Speaker 8 (14:42):
I only have the rain.

Speaker 6 (14:43):
You can go.

Speaker 3 (14:49):
That's right, that's our text for tonight. You can't get
loving when there ain't any love. And there's all kinds
of love in this world.

Speaker 7 (14:59):
It's everywhere now.

Speaker 3 (15:00):
Now, of course, there's the dynamic love.

Speaker 7 (15:02):
There's the love that spelled l U V yes.

Speaker 3 (15:06):
Friends, it's the kind of pulsating, moving dynamic love that
each and every one of you feels for. Let's say
your favorite TV channel, it's the kind of love that
you feel for. Well, let's say, uh, Sophia Lauren. Well,
let's say a top, hard hitting, dynamic playwright. That's the

(15:29):
kind of love. And it's the kind of love you
feel for New York.

Speaker 7 (15:32):
Oh, it's love, man.

Speaker 3 (15:34):
I you are right, one thousand miles deep, and these
great old arms of Columbia, this the gem of the ocean,
rich out to envelop each and every one of you
in its large, beneficent way. Oh, come to me, Come
and I shall find I true loved.

Speaker 9 (16:01):
Left.

Speaker 3 (16:06):
Yes, there is no no country on the face.

Speaker 7 (16:08):
Of the globe.

Speaker 3 (16:10):
You just keep that up there for a second, Tony,
don't put that away. That is more hung on love
in all of its forms than America. In fact, I
don't know of more than a half dozen novels that
are turned out a year that do not pivot on love.

Speaker 7 (16:24):
Of one kind or another.

Speaker 3 (16:25):
Almost any kind of love you can mention, even when
they don't mention love, it's about love. Usually it's a
simple poet who finds that the unloving, hard, crummy, rotten, silly,
macabre idiotic and absurd world is not capable of the
kind of fantastic, unbelievable, all encompassing, beautiful, pure love that

(16:48):
he is capable of. It's called the hard hitting, dynamic,
absurd novel. And the best word, of course is absurd.
It's the key word. But nevertheless, that's another kind of love.
That's the the world is rotten and doesn't love me
kind of love novel.

Speaker 7 (17:04):
Let's see, I can think of a dozen.

Speaker 3 (17:06):
Well Salinger he specializes in that kind of love. And
of course Chris is a new kind of hero that
is part of that love epic. And this is the
hero that is designated by definition as fantastic. This is
the Calico Man by JP Donald. We we've got to

(17:27):
accept them on faith that he is beautiful, incredible, almost
almost unbelievably potent, and in addition to that, he is irresistible.
You know, it starts right out, Jeff screwed like a
young lion into the So there we go. We're off

(17:47):
that Jeff, believe it or not, is that little thin
guy sitting in the corner there with the black room
glasses and the bad skin. He's the guy that's writing it.
And of course he is Jeff. Remember that. That's another
and another thing about Jeff. You see in the new novel, Jeff,
you see, never really loves any women. They all love him,
but of course they fail to measure up to his

(18:07):
unbelievably high standards. And so he strides off in the
general direction of Dublin there to look for what appears
to be reality and true love.

Speaker 7 (18:17):
And so we march on.

Speaker 3 (18:18):
Now, Chris, there's another kind of love, and I think
you've better bring on that one too. There, now, there
we go, toting tut chatting, chut chatting, chut challo. This
is the love of oneself for oneself and for oneself alone.

(18:46):
This love is found particularly in the pages of the
lady magazines. And this love is the love of the
lady for herself, for her self's sake. T t yes,
dear McCalls, we s a little d tonight and all
thy pristine togetherness, good housekeeping, the magazine that loves you,

(19:12):
all of you in partia. I hate to see that
cigar blood stuck there in the pages of McCalls.

Speaker 7 (19:21):
Just doesn't fit.

Speaker 3 (19:27):
Had those beer glass rings on the cover of seventeen.

Speaker 10 (19:30):
Duc tuc tu, duc tu.

Speaker 3 (19:34):
No no no that's another kind of love. And it's
a very dynamic sort of love. And uh, don't put
that one away either, because no, no, now I think
we're gonna.

Speaker 7 (19:44):
Have to keep it.

Speaker 3 (19:44):
Oh yes, go on, you get just just sneak that
one up there, and I'll show you, by definition, another
type of love. Uh, you can show these things without
even talking about it, Chris is nobody, nobody is more
hung on about it than we are. I we might
as well just come right out and admit it. And uh,
this this is another kind of love now and now,

(20:04):
uh it's pretty early yet. And there are women and
children with us, and there's friendly littlettle ladies out in
Staten Island. But nevertheless there isn't a single one of us.
But therefore the grace of God and maybe a good
set of glands. Maybe you don't cut it out?

Speaker 7 (20:27):
When do I got all this stuff that they were
gotta work throw?

Speaker 3 (20:31):
Come on, now, come on, now, come on, can't you
wait and laugh a while? When that a prairie guys?

Speaker 9 (20:45):
H listen care?

Speaker 7 (20:54):
Yeah, I.

Speaker 3 (21:07):
Quit fight my ear and I had.

Speaker 10 (21:08):
A lot of work, you know, all right, gang.

Speaker 3 (21:33):
Uh gets Friday off to a good start there, and uh,
of course Uh, this this is a problem. I mean
you you've got to you've got to got to realize
that it takes many forms. Now, now we'll return to
the stars and stripes there, tony quickly, the stars and stripes,
that's the one over here on this table. There's another
kind of love. Uh, there is the kind of love

(21:56):
that is so encompassing and so blind. You know, they
say that love is born and all this, it really
is literally just just seriously, have you ever seen some
of the people that some of the movie fans are
hung on. Well, obviously love must be blind. Have you
really ever seriously looked at some of those centerfold outs
and playboy? I mean, love has to be blind. I

(22:18):
mean it's either blind or it's got something else going there.

Speaker 7 (22:21):
But that's for later on. We'll discuss that.

Speaker 3 (22:23):
Now. The blindest kind of love, though, is the self
love of a person or an entire nation for itself
that blinds itself even to the obvious faults or defects.
And in fact, it sometimes gets so dynamic that the
love becomes so all encompassing that the very defects are

(22:45):
loved for themselves, almost above the.

Speaker 7 (22:49):
All set a gang.

Speaker 3 (22:52):
Okay, we have here Now, example number one comes from Dallas, Texas.
Dallas' city not particularly noted for its sublime humility, and
in Dallas, Texas. Here I'm going to quote to you
from an editorial from the Dallas Morning News. And Dallas,

(23:14):
of course, is talking about one of the chief problems
that has faced most cities in the United States, and
not certainly excluding Dallas. And we'd like to read to
you this little quote from their editorial from the Dallas
Morning News. Port we continue on this early morning program
to get you up and around in the Dallas.

Speaker 7 (23:32):
Fort Worth area.

Speaker 3 (23:33):
Here is our editorial for today, folks, might interest you
to know, all you guys that are driving along that
Dallas Highway on your way to Fort Worth, that Texas
ranks second in the nation in traffic deaths. Well maybe
sometimes you might have looked at this the wrong way,
but if you ever looked at it this way, fella Texan,
this is because, according to the Dallas Morning News, Texas

(23:54):
drivers show the same human qualities that made America great,
the willingness to risk, driving, energy and rucket individualism. So
get out there and kill them, Dallas driver. We want
you to add to that prot and next year We're
going to be first by God and now our spiritual moment.

(24:20):
From Atlanta, Georgia, the State Chamber of Commerce of Georgia
says George's spiritual atmosphere is conducive to good industrial relations.
In nineteen sixty four industrial survey, the chamber reported the
seventy eight percent of all good Georgians we're church members,
and we quote an incident, but important byproduct of such

(24:41):
a spiritual atmosphere is its relationship to favorable industrial conditions.
The survey went on, it is difficult to arouse animosity,
and we certainly want to salute this from the bottom
of our southern hot It is difficult to arouse animosity
between employers and employees who work closely together in their

(25:03):
church and Sunday schools. And so that is a salute
to all good Georgians where spiritual atmosphere is at its highest.
And so now we were all seeing number one seventy
four in the Big Book. All together. Now they can

(25:24):
think of the Kaduna reckon the ka dum dum dum.

Speaker 7 (25:27):
I can dun dum dum dum dum.

Speaker 3 (25:34):
Dumpt come out all together now game for God. Since
you're slowing up there. Let's go keep it going. God
sitting there. We got pick it up there over the
other day.

Speaker 9 (25:54):
Well, well, hold it all it there, hold it there.

Speaker 3 (25:58):
Want the in the Gala moffry, which reminds me this
is war Ay mt FM, New York, silly idiotic radio station.
By the way, speaking of silly idiotic radio state, did
you see that ad for the Limelight Show? Did you
see it? Did you see that ad in this morning's

(26:22):
Times for the Limelight You didn't see that ad? Oh gee,
that's too bad. It was right there on the whole front.
The thing there on page something of the Times for
the Lime Lunch is a great ad. Yeah, And as
a demonstration, I would like to have at least ten
percent of you out there tomorrow to show the wr show.

(26:42):
In spite of that ridiculous ad, you'll still come out.
I'll tell you this. Ten minutes after that ad hit
the paper, my lawyer was on the phone. Idiotic, ridiculous.

Speaker 7 (26:55):
Did you see that ad? You didn't?

Speaker 3 (27:00):
Really crying out about eighty seven million dollars for an
ad and nobody saw it.

Speaker 7 (27:06):
All I have to do is make one booboo on
this microphone and.

Speaker 3 (27:09):
Eight thousand guys will call up. I can win the
pupil surprise. The Peabody warned.

Speaker 7 (27:14):
An Emmy here nothing.

Speaker 3 (27:17):
That's right. Hit it again, dad, And for those of
you who know it was a great ad, it was
seriously speaking friends as bird Park so beautifully put it.
If you are interested, though, tomorrow night, at ten o'clock,
we are going to be on for two solid hours,

(27:39):
emanating live, pulsatingly from the limelight down in the village.
And if you want to come and make that scene,
you better get down there early.

Speaker 7 (27:49):
They have room for seven people in that place.

Speaker 3 (27:51):
It's a roaring joint and it's on Sheridan Square and
we go on the air at ten and we're there
until midnight and it will be live, and it will
be every weak too, by the way, So if you'd
like to, it's probably going to be the cheapest day.

Speaker 7 (28:05):
In town and and we'll be there.

Speaker 3 (28:08):
And what am I going to do? Well, that's what
they're all asking around here. Well, I don't know what
we're gonna do, Tony. I have an idea. I know
one thing that they're setting up the tank down there
for my underwater ballet and I'll be on with that
I've got my time. No, I've worked up a lot
of choreography and things. It's gonna be all right. Don't

(28:28):
just don't worry about it. I got a couple of
things going on. I've got this little table that I'm
going to set up. I haven't used it since the
fall of forty eight. It's this little table with the
green felt top. And I got three walnut shells. A
lot of interesting things that we're going to do down there.
And I just suggest you bring a couple of bucks
and we'll have a few games of chance, and we'll
talk over old times, and we'll stir up a little

(28:49):
action there. One thing I will say, though, ties are
not allowed.

Speaker 7 (28:56):
No, that's that's true. That's that's true. I promise.

Speaker 3 (28:58):
But but you know, as speaking of the problems and
the St. Valentine's Day, as long as as long as
we're of the subjects, we might as well go all
out and admit to a few things. And before we
do that, let's get a couple of commercials off the
log here. First of all, we have the pottery of
all nations, And if you have not visited the pottery
of all nations, I would highly suggest a visit. They

(29:20):
have pottery from all over the world. And if you
don't have a pot too, well, they've got pottery.

Speaker 7 (29:26):
Of all kinds there.

Speaker 3 (29:28):
They're down on Sheridan Square and just go in and
ask Larry, say hey, Larry, I don't have a pot
and Larry will say okay, and reach up on the
upper shelf around the back. They keep those in the
back by over the oven where there, and you'll find
a visit to the pottery of all nations as well
worth it. They let you break things and they have
beautiful Chinese oriental imitation, Mandarin vases, many things there that

(29:53):
they are particularly indigenous to the art attitudes of the
Upper Bronx on the upper areas of Fordham Road.

Speaker 7 (30:00):
There near Tellham Parkway.

Speaker 3 (30:03):
And now they have one store on Sheridan Square in
their open saturdays, one on sixty fourth and Lexington which
only opens when things are looking good in that neighborhood.
And then there's one over on Root for in Paramise. Okay,
pottery of all nations, it's the place to go if
you don't have a pot too. Will you quit cutting

(30:24):
me off, you idiot. If I'm want to get cut off,
it's going to be my problem, that's yours. You're just
an engineer. You stay in there and run that thing.
Will you got two three four off for crying out loud?
That's the only good thing I've said tonight. Well, for
those of you who are interested, we'll get around this clown.
For those of you who are interested in it, send
your name and address to Censor WR AM and FM

(30:49):
New York Censor and you must be over twenty one.
Will include it's especially interesting for art students. Fifty poses
and good lord, you know, speaking of if we better
get with the phil Harmonic before we go any further
with the Philharmonic, Here Sunday at three PMWR invite you
to listen to the twentieth broadcast of the season.

Speaker 7 (31:11):
This is a very very obstinate group.

Speaker 3 (31:15):
They're still on the New York Philharmonic in the direction
of Joseph Cripps. He's going to direct Vaybar's yuriyanthioviture and
proms there's a mixed bag for you. That's a clinker
that hasn't gotten off the ground since they Bar wrote it.

Speaker 7 (31:27):
Why do they schedule that?

Speaker 3 (31:29):
Brahms D minor piano concerto and Sir Walder William Walton
Symphony number one.

Speaker 7 (31:33):
That's Sunday. Oh boy, well, uh be here for a while.

Speaker 3 (31:39):
Yes, I know, my.

Speaker 7 (31:42):
Yury anthe with a clinker. It's terrible.

Speaker 3 (31:46):
Did you ever do you ever play in a symphony
orchestra yourself? Well, I used to play the string bass
in the symphony orchestra. And one of the great high
points of my life one time came when I was
playing in the band Shell on Grant Parks that's right
on the lakefront in Chicago, under the late doctor Frederick Stock.

Speaker 7 (32:07):
Now that is the truth. What happened was they went
around and they they had a kind of an.

Speaker 3 (32:12):
Elimination contest to find out, you know, high school players,
and they had a big high school. Then they finally
they made a high school orchestra of supposedly the top
high school orchestral performers in the city. Well, the reason
I got in there was there were only nine bass
players in the city and they have a twelve man section,
so it was pretty easy. But it was a great moment,

(32:33):
I'll tell you. It was one hundred and thirty five
thousand people out there and we started to wait our
way through.

Speaker 7 (32:38):
Let me think what it was The overture of Martha Ta.

Speaker 3 (32:44):
Ta Tata. And it was pretty good there for the
beginning there, but about a third of the way through
there was a rumble from over in the direction of
Benton Harbor, Michigan. Come on, now, it's a crummy editorial
board here, but from a roun i'd say, roughly around
Benton Harbor, And a storm comes up out of the lake,

(33:09):
Lake Michigan, which was like thirty feet off to our left.
A storm comes up out of Lake Michigan, like I
believe me, like like China across the bay. And we're
going sawing a way, and you should have seen one
hundred and thirty five thousand people melt into the jungle. Well,
we're sawing away there, and poor old doctor Stock is

(33:30):
up there in his arms are flailing. I don't know
whether you've ever seen a top flight conductor trying to
conduct high school.

Speaker 7 (33:36):
Players that is really terrible.

Speaker 3 (33:38):
You know, a really good conductor, he conducts a top orchestra,
really good symphony. It's like a machine. It's like a
sports car.

Speaker 11 (33:48):
You know.

Speaker 3 (33:49):
The control is just so slight, just so subtle, that
the interplay between conductor and orchestra is almost imperceptible even
to the orchestral members. You know, they notice when an
orchestra's playing, they hardly look up at him. They feel it,
you know, it's all there, Oh, not with Stock and
that bunch of clunkers. Stock is up there banging his baton.

(34:09):
He's trying to make us keep and all the while
he's got his left hand up in the air, and
on his right hand, he's got his right hand up
in the air, making like he's still conducting a good orchestra, know,
with the fingers out and all right, And of course
the people can only see his back. And doctor Stock
had a magnificent back, he really did. Have you noticed

(34:33):
the very few little, skinny, non shouldered guys ever make
it as a conductor. Believe me, it's that there's a
lot of psychological involvement with the audience. Seriously, it's all showbiz.
Very few conductors. Ready, it's the showbiz and you're sitting
the orchestra, and it's pretty hard to tell actually in
the end whether it's the orchestra creating this beautiful symphony

(34:54):
or the conductor. Quite often an orchestra. If the conductor
walks off, the music is seventeen percent better instantly. Seriously,
the orchestra just goes on, and there is fantastic when
an orchestra's really good. If you've ever played it, a
good when you know it well put on. Doctor Stock
is up there, you see, and his face was a mask.
You know, he could see forty five years of hard

(35:16):
work the University of Munich stute cut and hoyting and
going down the drain, his reputation going down out the
Chicago River with all the rest of the stuff floating
on towards Juliet somewhere, and he's working a way that
you could just see this mask. And I'm of course
standing up in the back, being a bass player. We
all stood up, and I look around and her six

(35:37):
guys in the base section there, all of us looking
real scared at doctor Stock who was looking up at us,
and his eyes were like twin marbles and just looking
up at us there and his arms were going and
the French horns came in at least seventeen measures early, rack, rack, rack, rack,
and he goes, I'm trying to control it in all

(35:59):
the while, but the storm has come got their damerung
and the storms are roaring out of Benton Harbor and
the crowd is melting down comes the rain. Well, Stock,
you should have seen Stock. You have never seen more
relief come across a guy's face in your life because

(36:20):
he figured, you see, before the fiasco, which was the
last movement of that overture, the last movement is where
Reedy gets going, you know, and this orchestra just wasn't
going to do it. We were sliding down the hill sideways,
clawing at it all the way down, and Stock is
going work. And with that the storm comes down, the

(36:41):
lightning crashes, the thunder booms, and Stock then the wind.
Have you ever sat in a wind tunnel? Well, this
this thing was a shell, you know, shell, wooden shell.

Speaker 7 (36:53):
Well, it caught the wind. I'll tell you it was insane.

Speaker 3 (36:56):
Who all our music just were whoop like that found
the timpan. Well it just slowly petered out the raid
and the thunder and the people are going you can
see the model ais and the forest and everybody roaring
down and the waves are crashing, and Stock is standing
there and in his coat, all drenched all the way

(37:16):
down to his ears. Yeah that gentlemen, I hope you
are satisfied. Look what you have caused. He turns.

Speaker 9 (37:24):
Boom.

Speaker 3 (37:24):
Another lightning crash hits the Richly building.

Speaker 7 (37:27):
Boom.

Speaker 3 (37:27):
Another one cracks at the palm mat building. That old
Knocktor's talk the man, I hope you are certisfied every
last money are rotting musiciansself, I am leaving, turns and
goes boom, and we sit there am the rough.

Speaker 7 (37:45):
All right, gang, it's enough of that. And then why
I told you that story.

Speaker 3 (37:50):
It was dredged out of the infinite test, you know,
speaking of being dredged out of the infant I have.
I have some terrible memories of Valentine's Day. And one
of the really great traumatic memories of my Valentine's Day
career came. I must have been no older than about five,
I know it was before school, maybe six, just pushing six.

(38:12):
And it was this chick in the neighborhood whom I
have mentioned from time to time. That was the first
truly traumatic love of my life. And you know, it's
so I hate to ask, you might as well bring.

Speaker 7 (38:23):
That in, bring it in there.

Speaker 6 (38:25):
This is oh, what are you talking about?

Speaker 3 (38:27):
You're not cut it out?

Speaker 7 (38:28):
Now, that's not the one you get.

Speaker 3 (38:30):
You get that get get Chikowsky up there. I want
a little sentimentality in my life.

Speaker 7 (38:35):
I don't need that jazz.

Speaker 3 (38:37):
Well, you know, I'll tell you this chick had a name,
which I have mentioned from time to time.

Speaker 7 (38:41):
You know, sometimes a name is so corny even hate
to admit it. It's it's it's.

Speaker 3 (38:46):
Worse than something that the Saturday evening posts would then,
Oh what a chick. She was about six, And I'll
tell you she was at the most new viile stage
of six. She was of every early Lolita. And I
was not an early Humbert Humbert at all. I was
just a very early Skeezis as a matter of fact.
And her name unbelievable. And this is the truth. Bring

(39:08):
it up, please, And I said, fade it down like
they do behind Cornell Wild. They never flowed him out
to see, there we go. Her name was Dawn Strickland,

(39:29):
Dawn Strickland. Blow that one on your nose, flute, Dawn Strickland.
And she looked exactly like her name. The sun coming
up over the Sinclair Oil Refiner was never beautifuler. Seriously,

(39:50):
you know she had she had, you know, it was there,
that was it. You know, there's some people got it,
some don't. And Dawn would walk into the first grade
class later and it just a hush would fall like that,
and missus Mino, the old bag, missus Mino. It's funny
how a lady can be jealous of a six year
old kid, but missus Mino would be bugged a minute

(40:13):
Dawn Stricklan. Of course, we were both s's, you know,
in those very early days of love. The alphabet plays
a great part in kindergarten. You know, you're at the
S sand box. And that's literally true. Well, Don Strickland
lived in the neighborhood. And one thing about Don Strickland,
I'll never forget it, because she was the rich kid
in the neighborhood we lived. We lived in a neighborhood

(40:35):
that was rich as a matter of fact, and we
lived down at the other end where they had the
big apartment house where if you were a phone you
could get a sub lease. And that's where we lived.
You see, we were the non rich people in this neighborhood.
And across the street and down about a half a
block was Don Strickland's house. Have any of you ever
read Booth Tarkington, Well, the Magnificent Ambersom's Booth Tarkington, Penrod

(40:59):
and Sam. Remember I am speaking of Indiana here, friends
and booth. Tarkington wrote about Indiana, it doesn't bear very
much relationship to the Bronx.

Speaker 7 (41:08):
It bears very little relationship to queens.

Speaker 3 (41:12):
I can't. There's nothing really around here that's quite like it.

Speaker 7 (41:16):
Really, I can't. I can't tell you, tell you any
more than that. I can say one thing. Maybe it's
the surroundings. Maybe it's it's the geographical world.

Speaker 3 (41:25):
They have huge cottonwood trees, which you don't see much
around here, gigantic cottonwoods and enormous elm trees and honey locusts,
as well as Indiana toolip trees. Now now you get
you get this all of this together, and katalpa trees
as far as you can walk.

Speaker 7 (41:43):
You know, that smell of those white blossoms and.

Speaker 3 (41:45):
Those things, those cigars that fall down on the pods,
and the white fluff on this is you know, it's Indiana,
and it's it really is not like Norman Rockwells in
New England.

Speaker 7 (41:55):
It's Indiana.

Speaker 3 (41:57):
This is not the Indiana incidentally, of the of the
of the corn fields, that's another Indiana. And this isn't
the Indiana, either of the steel mills.

Speaker 7 (42:05):
This is another Indiana. This is booth Tarkington, Indiana.

Speaker 3 (42:08):
And they have gigantic yards around all the houses and
enormous garages with maybe three and four car garages back
of them, with trees everywhere, gigantic trees, tremendous trees, and
all of these houses have well here, I don't know
what they'd call them here because you don't see them here,
but enormous screened in porches. The porches go halfway around

(42:30):
the house, like a big U shaped thing with the
white with the white poles and the screen all around it,
snowball bushes and the whole You've got the picture now, well,
I don't know whether you do or not.

Speaker 7 (42:41):
You know, you guys from these I don't know.

Speaker 3 (42:42):
There's a funny smell in the air and everything out there,
and when the moon gets in a certain area, and
this is why you know you've heard of the Wabash moon.
There is something in the Indiana air and it's the flatness.
And there is no sea there. You see that makes
this too, That the flatness of the ground, the way
the sun hits the ground, the way that cools off,
and the whole thing. The moon sometimes is half the

(43:05):
size of the sky, absolutely literally, and it's a dark,
burnt orange color. It just covers the whole sky. See
people walk around. It's the moon, you know. And sometimes
the moon is like that when the sun is still
on the other side going down.

Speaker 9 (43:18):
You know, that's a it's a.

Speaker 7 (43:19):
Whole, whole big thing.

Speaker 3 (43:20):
Well, this is Indiana and in this booth Tarkington House
lived Dawn Strickland. And it was a dark brown house,
a real girlfriend house, you know, you know, the kind
of house that you walk past in front of and
you break out the sweat and you look through the
snowball bushes and oh boy, chicks don't know that, do they.

Speaker 7 (43:39):
That is the truth. Chicks do not know that kind
of excitement.

Speaker 3 (43:42):
I just know it.

Speaker 7 (43:42):
It's a mingled fear and excitement.

Speaker 3 (43:45):
Well, Dawn Strickland lived in this house in solitary splendor
with her rich parents. And behind her house was a dollhouse.
In fact, it was a playhouse. It was her own
little house and it looked right the big house. It
was brown with a with dark brown window moldings and
all that little screens on it. The windows would go

(44:07):
up and down, and it was Dawn Strickland. It was
a little house. You see, well you knew you were in,
you were ready in if you were invited to play
in Dawn Strickland's house in the back. Missus Strickland, by
the way, tendered the invitations.

Speaker 7 (44:19):
Dawn did not. So it was that kind of scene.
And so once in a while, me and.

Speaker 3 (44:24):
There was a guy named Dicky. There was a guy
named Dick Twyman. This was another world. I haven't described
this world to Beacon Street Twyman. We only lived there
about seven months, so it's a very brief moment. And
Twyman and Dickie and Cashmere once in a great while.
Who was a little pollock who lived on the other street.
And he was you might say, the symbolic poor guy

(44:47):
that was allowed to come in because this was a
rich family that believed in you know, democracy and helping
the lower classes. And now that I think of it,
maybe I was it's just come. I realized now that
Missus Strickland, I would say, you and Kashmere come too, now,
I said, oh, crying, that explains that. Well, we would
arrive there and we would play and they would bring out,

(45:08):
you know, cookies, and that was the first time I
ever realized the graham crackers were good. Up to that point,
I'd get bugged when my mother would say, how about
a graham cracker. Graham cracker and a graham cracker. And
what I want is a like like a seven pound
milky ware the graham cracker. She said, here, here's a
graam crack. You'll spoil your dinner.

Speaker 7 (45:27):
Have a Graham cracker.

Speaker 3 (45:28):
Well, when I went to Dawn's house and Missus Strickland
with a maid would come out and say, kids, how
about some nice graham crackers and milk. I'd sit there,
you know, I'd jaw squared off and I'd sit there. Oh,
nothing I like better than graham crackers. And they would
give me Graham crackers and cold milk, and dog would
sit there with.

Speaker 7 (45:46):
Their court around there.

Speaker 3 (45:48):
I don't even remember any other chicks being involved. We
would all be there with Dawn. Well, you got the scene.
This chick really was on her way. Well, it came
Valentine's Day one day. And Valentine's Day is a big
deal for kids. Oh yes, kids, kids really take this
is a kid holiday. Valentine's Day, And I'd say Halloween

(46:09):
is also a kid holiday.

Speaker 7 (46:10):
More these are more kid holidays than Christmas.

Speaker 3 (46:13):
I think Christmas is an adult holiday, which it accrues
to the kids, but it's an adult holiday, whereas Valentine's Day,
most adults are come on Valentine's Day. You know, it's
a kid things and just like Halloween. Well, Valentine's Day,
it was announced in the neighborhood. Is the word going on?
Did you get invited to Dawn's party? I didn't know,
you know, I get did you can invite? Everybody's going

(46:35):
to Dawn's party. At about fifteen minutes before the party
was about to begin, mysteriously in our mail box appeared
an invitation from Dawn Strickland for the party. You know
when those little white envelopes. Please come to my Valentine's parties. Dawn, Well,
of course I have like a shot like a bunny.
I'm in my I'm in my corduroy pants, you know,

(46:55):
and my hair is combed. My mother whips out a
box of Whitman's, you know, these little tiny miniature Whitmen
candies that they always advertised, which she always kept on
hand for emergencies in case Aunt Theresa threw a fit
that nobody gave her a present or a gift. So
she gets out the box of Whitman's, these little whitmen samplers,
and I rip across the street with hearts all over

(47:16):
the thing, you know, And I go in and here
they all are inside the house, now in the real house,
and they had made in the living room a whole
big scene.

Speaker 7 (47:25):
It was all, you know, magnificent.

Speaker 3 (47:27):
They had white streamers and red streamers and hearts hanging
down and the whole bit. And they had a big
round table there and they had ice cream, cherry ice
cream cut in the form of hearts, hearts with little
cherry things on it, you know, and coconut and little
heart shaped cookies and the whole bit.

Speaker 7 (47:44):
And there were a lot of kids there.

Speaker 3 (47:46):
I didn't know immediately, you know, but there was one
chick I knew dad, and even at that day and
age that I was a man of maniacal single mindedness,
now that I think back on a maniacal So there
is Don Strickland on the other side of the room,
wearing a white dress with a red ribbon around her waist,
with the black patent leather shoes, you know, and the

(48:08):
whole bit, and the red hair ribbon thing, and well
right across the room might go. You see there's down
hi don and she of course is throwing the party. Hello,
and I says, I got a present, and I gave.

Speaker 7 (48:21):
Her a present.

Speaker 3 (48:22):
Well, it was a funny moment there hanging in the air,
just like that. And of course at that age I
didn't know the giant booboos that you can do. I
had been the only guy to give her a present.
I did not really, So here's a present. She say, what,
here's a present? Oh, well, she's got a present. So
immediately you can see how the scenes started. Well, we
started a play games. Now, there are certain games which

(48:45):
kids play at Valentine party, games which even now it
makes me nervous. I'm not a game player, honestly, I'm
absolutely anti gameplay. If there's anything you want to do
with the bud Shepherd, invite him to a place and
start you opening up and down on one foot and holler,
let's play charades. Oh boy, I'll tell you, I'm serious
that this would this. If there's anything that would drive

(49:07):
me to drink, it's that I don't drink, but I
could drink. I mean, seriously, anything part you name it,
after that charade bit, Well, it probably goes back to
the seat. All the kids knew the games. You know,
there's nothing worse than to get It's like it was
like a whole little crowd of Bennett Serfs and Arleen Francis's.
You know, they're sitting there grinning like idiotic nuts and

(49:29):
jumping up and down and taking these games seriously. And
I was strictly a ball playing, fistfighting type. And here
they asked, saying, all right, it's your turn to guests, now, Dickie,
what am I in? Ears wiggling and hopping up with
a tail pinning on? And they all know, you know,
oh ha, And they somehow it was a secret coat
I was in. And I must have been there like
five minutes, and I felt so far out of it

(49:51):
that even to this day, I don't think I fully recovered.

Speaker 7 (49:54):
They knew all the answers.

Speaker 3 (49:55):
Then they started to do things like guessing minerals, minerals, minerals,
what is you know? What is the mineral? All I
knew is my old uncle used to take mineral oil
all the time. He was always stopped up. Is what
I have. Threes used to mineral oil, see mineral what
a mineral? And they were saying, they were hollering minerals, bismuths.
Some kid out a bismuth? What is a Bristmas business?
And another joke one it starts with A and I'm

(50:17):
a mineral, mineral oi A A and it would be
my turn. I'd say, uh, okay, it's your turn, Dicky.
Boom boom boom. And I'm sitting there with my mouth
hanging over Anthony, what what? What business? Ten?

Speaker 11 (50:28):
Ten?

Speaker 3 (50:29):
Ten? Ten is a mineral? What ten? It's ten? What
do you mean ten?

Speaker 9 (50:32):
You make ten?

Speaker 3 (50:33):
House caves on ten. Well, it went on like this,
on and on until finally we all were marched in
to eat well that I could do. You know, I
was pretty good with ice cream and stuff, and so
I start waiting into the ice cream, eating the stuff.
And finally that after this is all over, we're all
lined up. Now we're all and I'm still not defeated completely.

(50:54):
You see, I feel that the that the that the
shank of the evening is about to begin and I
will come into my own no knockout flo guy, you know,
or or or wrestle with Dawn or something that I
could do. So with that we all line up, and
Missus Strickland says, all right, now, kiddies, now we're going
to have the Valentine Hunt. We're now going to have

(51:15):
the Valentine Hunt, and all of you can go and
look and and there are clues all over the room,
she said, there are clues all over the room to
where the Valentine prizes are hidden. There are clues clues.
And with that, she says, all right, all right, when
I clamp my hands, everybody go looking around and she

(51:36):
goes cling and these kids all start, oh, they start
running around. They know what clues clues, you know what
to clues. I'm looking around. There's the ribbons, you know.
And kids are diving under sofas and coming up with
packages and stuff, and I'm wandering back and forth and
I look for her nothing, and all of a sudden
it's all over, absolutely all stinking rotting over, and everybody's

(51:57):
got a package except guess who.

Speaker 7 (52:01):
Oh, and the party's over.

Speaker 3 (52:04):
Missus Strickland says, all right, kids, that's it. And then Dawn,
bless her heart, I don't know now that I think
back on it, now that I think, she says, Jeane
doesn't have a prize. The entire company looked and there
guess who was standing there with nothing but old chocolate
on his hands and some melted ice cream. And missus

(52:24):
Strickland says, oh, he hasn't, has he. He hasn't, has he? Well,
and she moves back and she says something to Effie
the maid, and I see Effie sort of does he hasn't,
has he? Well, let's help Geanie find a prize. What
are you men, She says, let's all help him find

(52:45):
a prize. And I'm standing in the middle of the
floor and she says, all right, now, kids, let's all
help him. Now, Jean, look for a clue. Now, what
would you think would be a clue? And I see
Effie scurrying behind the curtains hiding something, and I says, Effie,
he's back in sticking out, and she says, no, Now
you look for a clue. She says, Now look for
a clue, look for a heart, or look for a

(53:06):
little arrow? Which way to the arrows point? You know
they had a little cupid dolls and all that stufmb
So I says, oh, oh, arrows suddenly thawns on me.
These kids were running after the arrows. They had a
little arrows point, you know, with the qpies and stuff arrows.
For God's sakes, why don't you tell me? So I
start looking around and everybody, the entire company is watching me,

(53:28):
and I knew where she hid it. I saw back
of the back of the curtains. There behind the sofa,
this big fat maid is hiding it. So I play
like I'm looking, and finally I go over behind the
curtain and I pick up this little box and there
it is. It's a box of Wittman samplers, all wrapped up.
So I come back out and I say, well, I
got my prize. And you can see the glue is

(53:51):
still wet on it, you know, Effie has licked it.
And the stamps are falling off, and all the kids
are walking out across the street and there it is.
It's that beauty for Indiana, climbing out there and the
trees are hanging over, and I can see the big
white fence all around Dawn's house, and I'm tropped across
the street and down up into the apartment. My mother says,

(54:13):
how did you like the party? This says, good, real good.
You want some candy? Ma, This is what do you mean,
I told you to give it the dawn. I told
you to give that the dawn.

Speaker 9 (54:23):
I said, what you get.

Speaker 1 (54:31):
From May twenty third, nineteen sixty four. Sponsored by the
Village Voice, the broadcast originates from the Limelight, New York City,
a program not for women and children Miss Subways Entertainment
Dish Knight at the Orpheum. The Red Garter Jazz Band
plays several tunes. Marty Warren, owner of the Limelight, sings

(54:51):
call Me by My Rightful Name? And John Henry with
lyrics about the Brooklyn Dodgers the chemistry exam.

Speaker 11 (54:59):
Oh what do you mean?

Speaker 3 (55:00):
Oh? Shut up. You may be captain of your own
house check, but here I'm in charge. Pulley boy, I
look at him, pacing like a tiger up here. I'm madman.
He's got fifty five minutes to go, and twenty seven
states are tuned in waiting for the excite. Without warning,

(55:23):
suddenly it comes out of the darkness like I'm full
of lightning. What is it? Is it a bird? Is
it a plane?

Speaker 9 (55:29):
No, it's.

Speaker 3 (55:32):
Yes. Let's give Robert Moses a cheer. Come on, porray
for Moses. Everybody's on Robert Moses. Let's give her Hello
to Robert Moses.

Speaker 7 (55:49):
Hello, Bob, Bye Bob.

Speaker 3 (55:53):
Where are the people?

Speaker 9 (55:54):
Bob?

Speaker 3 (55:54):
Hi? Remember us? We're the guys that pay. Have you
ever had the feeding that your whole life is the voted?
Just a shelling out? You know already there are two
kinds of guys. There are guys that shell out and

(56:15):
there's the other kind. They're just standing there. What you
like to own the George Washington Bridge for ten minutes?
Saying about five thirty in the evening with Fred Feldman
flying over and oh he goes over there just to
wait to see for the crashes. He loves you know,

(56:36):
he's a great automobile accident fan. You want to see faces.
There's a big one down there on the Oh boy,
it's on fire.

Speaker 9 (56:49):
Wow, they're very terrible there.

Speaker 3 (56:57):
You know, Uh, can't you imagine you up owning the
George Washington Bridge, Say at quarter to six on a
real steamy Friday night, when nine million guys are trying
to make it to Pomping Old Lakes. They're trying to
get away, and you put up a big sign says
ten dollars without any warning. You know tonight only special.

(57:28):
You know it is true. Have you ever have you
ever have you ever seen anybody use one of those
guns that shoots quarters. Yeah, they got a gun that
shoots quarters, you know, brought on a turnpike. You know,
you shoot them at the end of the little thing
that basket says exact change lane. You know, you know,
there is nothing more terrifying than to get into the

(57:50):
exact change lane. You know what's coming, don't you. And
you get up there and you got your ten dollar bill,
you know, you had a quarter and it's disappeared, you know,
is you're looking and everybody in your car, you say,

(58:11):
anybody got a quarter? And they're all sitting there in
bathing suits, you know, and the line stretches all the
way to Trenton. Well, you know, I've always felt the
true bravery in our time is not measured by fighting dragons.
And it's very difficult for a guy today to go

(58:33):
out and beat a saber tooth tiger into the ground.
But real bravery. Can you imagine real bravery? Genuine bravery.
There's a line of cars behind you. There's a line
of cars ahead of you, and they're all going through
the Lincoln Tunnel. They're all heading in. You know, it's
one of those big Saturday nights. There's ninety seven million

(58:53):
people from Jersey or trying to get in to see
the big show. And they're all lined up and there
you are. You see it, This guy taking the half buck.
He says half dollar, thine and then it says thank you.
You know, have you ever seen it say thank you
to a giant Mac truck? And this guy makes his exhaustious.

Speaker 9 (59:14):
Go byeah when he bo.

Speaker 3 (59:19):
You know, I'll tell you one of the greatest moments
I ever had in my life. Speaking of I'm a
guy who's involved in the mechanical world. I mean, many
people shun it, but I find it wildly exciting. And
one night I had the chance to drive a big
four hundred and twenty horsepower cab over engine Mac. This

(59:39):
thing had seventeen forward speeds. It had nine speeds in reverse.
I'll tell you it had eight speeds and neutral. Oh man,
you sit there, you know this big flat steering wheel,
you know, like the bus steering wheel, and you got
a window that goes all the way around the turnpike

(01:00:00):
and you're sitting thirty feet above these guys in their mgs.
I'm sure that once in a while some guy in
a big white Diesel, big Commings Diesel, just wants to
run over the whole line of them, you know, just
run over them, you know, like worms and caterpillars. Or
I'll tell you. The feeling, though it is great. You
throw this thing in the first and a truck is

(01:00:22):
very different. You know that the men are beginning to
discover people. In fact, the beginning to discover the kick
of shifting gears, I mean actually controlling the car now
is a new, big experience for many people. That's called
sports car driving. Say, and you have to pay extra
for it now, say, oh yeah, yeah, Wait, the next

(01:00:43):
big innovation is going to be a windshield wiper. You
work like this, it says, manually operated sport windshield wiper
with chrome steel handle. Because you're forty dollars extra. Wait,
you know it's coming. Well, the the feeling is real.

(01:01:04):
You know, I got into SMAC and I was about, oh,
I must have been about twenty nineteen twenty something like that,
And it was in the Army, the first time I
ever had a chance to drive a real vehicle, genuine vehicle.
They don't even call them cars. They're not called trucks.
They're vehicles, and they've got iron all around them, you know,

(01:01:25):
and there's no I'll tell you. You just don't know
what it's like to drive something until you've driven an
army vehicle. They don't have jazzy little sequin dashboards. There's
a big green chunk of metal. It's iron in front
of you. Say, it's got little black dials and it
says gas oil. One says grenades forever. Oh yeah, you're

(01:01:53):
sitting this thing, you know. And out in front they've
got a grill guard that doesn't stop. Let me tell
you they really do. It's a big iron bars all
over the big things. And this particular vehicle was what
they call a mine exploder. Now this vehicle, yeah, you
know what it is. It's a thing that has a
big arm out in front. It has a chain about

(01:02:14):
seventy yards long and it goes boom, boom. It beats
the ground ahead of you. See it goes boom and
it blows boom. The mines are going and on you're driving,
it's like boom bang, you're going, what I think I
have on a turnpike? Boy? Is this ever an aggressive crowd? Well,

(01:02:43):
this is a mine exploder? Well, you know, the thing
about a mine exploder. You see, it has a giant chain,
it really does. And at the end of the chain
is a big iron ball and it's got this arm
that just goes up and down like a big hip
boom boom. And you know, I know that all of
you are driver, every one of you. And you know
that guy that goes whistling down the center of the

(01:03:06):
turnpike with the fifty sixth Mercury, you know, with the decal.
He's got this phony Continental tire on the back and
it's got a big dragon head looking on and it's
got the phoney Venetian blinds in the back, you know,
and on the back it says Pat and Joyce. He's

(01:03:27):
got his chick's name on the back in this red
letter stuff. You know, it shows up when the lights
are on it. This is a pure swab. This is
pure swab, is them all the way. And he's got
one of these steering wheels. Have you ever seen the
steering wheels that they put this fake erman on. It's
a big fat steering wheel. And he's got his dashboard

(01:03:50):
is blocked, you know, with that sort of purple stuff
with details of playgirls on there. You know, playmates of
the month, and on top of his dashboard, he's got
a little player to christ see. You know, this guy
he's with us. You know, he's with us. He's always

(01:04:12):
got one of these satine jackets with a wing foot
on the back. You know. You see this guy continually
in Jersey diners. This is his miliere and he's always
there with four or five other guys. And how many
times after a date you're dressed up, you know, and
you're with this chick. You got your white coat on,

(01:04:35):
you got this little phony carnation here. The chicks got
one of these yellow dresses with the corsage. And you
come into this diner at two thirty five in the
morning on us one, and you know it's a mistake.
A minute you get in there, you have made a
classic booboo. You see you walk in and eight guys

(01:04:56):
with these satin jackets turn around. Of course, if you're
really a hip traveler, you know, because when you drive
into that gravel drive where you can see these mercuries
all lined up by four motorcycles, there's a cut down
forty nine board that's been channeled, rotted and leaded. It's
it's got a thirty seven coat, paint of bronze armor

(01:05:18):
on it, you know that kind. It's got little deep cows,
arrows and stars. You drive in, you walk into this place.
The chick wants scrambled eggs, You want coffee. You just
you know, listen to the You get in there and
the rock and roll boom. These guys turn around. You

(01:05:41):
see the things going. That's it. And the guy back
walking back and forth behind the counter, he's got the swab.
He looks up, he knows there's truckle. Now it's gonna start.
And Gerty the waitress, the big blonde is walking around,
you know, the big purple things sticking out of her

(01:06:01):
little pocket. Here she's got a little white hat and
she sort of leans back and she knows. And all
of these martys, these Jersey forty seven, fifty six Mercury Martys,
turn around, they start, and your white coat gets to
be bigger and whiter. Your carnation is getting big in

(01:06:24):
the bat, you know, and all of a sudden you
feel real skinny and white faced, you know, as though
you're real flabby and screnching. These guys are cruel cut
The look her big round jaws. They all look like
kind of like debauched Mickey mantles. You know, yeah, you
know that, you know that that's sort of gir in

(01:06:44):
a big fat you know that kind Well, then the
first move you make is to try to get as
far away as possible, back in the corner in the booth.
You get back there and you're sitting. You're figuring if
you don't look at at them, they won't see you.
So you sit with your back to 'em, and the

(01:07:04):
chick is looking this way, and there they are, and
all of a sudden you begin to get that terrible feeding.
The water is in front of it, that cheap table
where is there. She's giving you the paper napkin, and
suddenly you see the girl's eyes are sort of looking
real funny. She's kind of looking away time, and you
get the sensation these guys are giving her the big

(01:07:25):
eye and they're just waiting for you to turn around.
You can feel a drilling in the back of your neck,
and then suddenly you hear one of us is, hey, baby, hey, hey,
what are you doing with that clutch? And it's hanging
there in the diner, you know, like some great big dragon,

(01:07:47):
you know, just laying there and you know, just feeling
you gotta do something, So you say, how about how
about the how about playing a jukebox match? You put
it in and the music starts. It goes for a
minute and a half. You know, they have special records
for jukeboxes. They're like thirty seconds long. Now you know,
it plays, it stops, there's a silence, and suddenly you
hear something coming up behind you. You turn around. You

(01:08:11):
catch his eye. What are you looking at? Mac? You're
looking at me. You're looking at me. Hey, hey, Charlie,
look at this guy. He's looking for a fight. You're
sitting there. You're looking at me. He said, no, no,

(01:08:33):
I was just looking at the pie over that. Yeah,
you better not get smart. He walks past, He slams
the John Thorpe. Thirty seconds later it comes out. He
walks past me. He looks at the chick. He gives

(01:08:54):
her that look, you know, come with me, Fly with
me to paradise in my fifty six leaded mercury. If
there's something about those guys that chicks cannot quite they
cannot quite resist fellas, let's face it, it's sin. You

(01:09:16):
know they're torn between being friend. You know they're torn
between loyalty to Claude after all these my dates, and
that funny little overload relay that kicks out when this
gigantic hairy mail looks at him says, come up, baby.

(01:09:38):
Then he looks at Claw. He goes back. It sits
down another long, pregnant paise, and then one of them says, hey,
look at the coat, Mack, Hey, why you got the
ice cream coat on lunky Colt. These are all typical

(01:09:59):
witticism of New Jersey Martys. Their wit is clean and cutting,
scintillating in its brilliance, and to my knowledge, has never
been put in a play. Won't Eat Colt. Long pause,
Then somebody comes down and you can feel it coming.

(01:10:20):
And with that the guy leaves from behind the counter
and he heads him off. He said, I don't want
no trouble here, Chuck. I don't want no trouble, Chuck.
I remember now, listen, not like last Wednesday, Chuck me
the last Wednesday. Chuck says, Oh, I'm just leaving, And
you hear boom the door, and then you hear out

(01:10:42):
there in the driveway the sound of gravel. You know
that his rear wheels boom gravel over the front of
the stainless steel diner. And you see those lights room,
and one by one they leave and you're left. The
low big truck pulls up your toying with your scrambled eggs.

(01:11:07):
Have you ever lost a round? Wow? Have you ever
tried to make you say? Oh wow? I didn't wanna fight? Boy?
Let me tell you you notice there was eight of 'em,
don't you Mark? She says, yes, there were eight. I
don't wanna fight on Saturday night. You're sitting on your

(01:11:30):
little white coat. And then there's a pause, and she says,
I think we'd better get home. It's getting late. This
is an awfully rough place. Who if she is saying,
they're too big for you, Claude. All the men in
the world are tougher than you are, Claude. And Claude

(01:11:51):
gets up and gets in the front seat of his
borrowed father's nineteen sixty four Pontiac tempest with seat covering
the kind you know that look a little like soft tweed.
He gets in and drives away and all up and
down us one. There they are waiting in their webs.

(01:12:16):
I wonder how many guys are listening to me right now?
Who five minutes ago have just said to their chick,
let's find a diner, and now he says, no, let's
go to the Red Rooster back home. You better stick
with the Red Rooster death. You know, speaking of of

(01:12:38):
this is all part of entertainment now that we're going back,
because it is a fact, since this is entertainment week.
The Jersey Marty's get their entertainment by knocking Claude's heads
together and driving up and down that turnpike. And every time, boy,
I'll tell you, I don't know of any anger that

(01:12:59):
matches the anger.

Speaker 9 (01:13:00):
I don't think women know this.

Speaker 3 (01:13:02):
I don't think they see this. This is the kind
of danger that women don't know. I've never seen one
woman get up in a diner and come back and
challenge another one. They'll fight never. They don't know this,
you know, in front of God, everybody, the chick, the
whole world. Women don't know this thing. And another thing
they don't know is that kind of thing that they
do to you on the road. How many times have

(01:13:25):
you been driving along the highway and some guy comes
whipping along on the turnpike. You can always tell they
tail gate you. You're driving along, and all of a sudden,
you hear that, You think of the truck. Hey, he's
got his Hollywood pipes going full blast, and he's coming
up that center lane you see of the Jersey Turnpike,
and he's looking for a fish. You he could tell

(01:13:49):
you see, he looks, he sees two people. He sees
a guy and a chick, and so here's eight of
them in this car. They come up and they tail
gate you. They get right behind you, and you feel
a You're going along, you're trying to pretend nothing's happening.
You slide over to the next lane.

Speaker 9 (01:14:03):
I let him pass.

Speaker 3 (01:14:05):
They don't pass. They get behind you. You see, chicks
don't know about this. They get behind you. And then
you say, well, wait a minute. You go to the
left lane waiting, and then you see those lights sneak
up behind you. There ain't no mistake in it. Dead,
it's beginning to happen. Then you go back to the

(01:14:25):
center lane. Thing, I can jump either way here, they
won't trap me. You're laying here, and all of a sudden,
he slides out and starts to catch up to you,
and he begins to nudge you. You ever had that
happen at sixty miles an hour, and all these guys
are looking at the chick, those big fat Marty Bowling
Alley grins, and they got cans of beer. Hey, hey baby,

(01:14:50):
And then the car staggers a little lady when you're
drug oh. And then they get in front of you,
you know. Then they s are going, they're waiting for
you to raise them, and they boom. You see those
four pipes breathing blue flame.

Speaker 12 (01:15:07):
Pooh.

Speaker 3 (01:15:08):
He keeps fight back. Now you're going twenty two miles
an hour, and so you calmly, you go out like this,
pretending it's just another driver. Boom boom, boom, boom boom.
Hey baby, let's go chicken chicken. And suddenly you got claws,

(01:15:29):
you got a big beak. You could feel feathers growing
out of here, big white ones. You're the first yellow
belly chicken chicken they get in front of It is
at that moment that I get a fantastic urge to
have a mine explode. I think that's a great invention

(01:15:53):
for civilian use, just to use in case of emergence.
You press the button for felt them right on the
top of his cutdown.

Speaker 9 (01:16:05):
A little foul well, you know, driving.

Speaker 3 (01:16:10):
Driving, this vehicle, which great sensation and the next thing
that I drove. And you know, I have never seen
a war book or novel that tells you about driving vehicles. No, really,
do you know that they have a GI driving license? Hey?
Stop it, wait till I tell the Joe. Then you laugh. Now, no,

(01:16:31):
there is a GI driving license. It's a little blue
folder and it folds like that, and it has thirty
seven vehicles listed all up and down and wait, wait,
don't come on, fellow, give me a chance. Tell them
allant to wait, will you? So it's got a whole
list of vehicles that range all the way from m
one jeeps to things like d u k ws. You

(01:16:57):
know what a duck is? Well, oh yeah, I know
it's obsolete, but they've got a version of it. Now, dad,
And that vehicle is as big as the limelight, it
really is. It's down near this big it's a boat.
It goes into the water and it mounts two fifty
caliber machine guns. It mounts thirty five little grenade slots

(01:17:21):
along the edges. You sit in there.

Speaker 7 (01:17:24):
What a sense of security?

Speaker 3 (01:17:28):
I mean, there's acres of wood and there's a motor
in there. Boar, that just sounds like it's an elephant
that's got a bad tube. Well, well, i'll tell you.
I'll tell you one of the most thrilling vehicles that
I ever drove in my days in the army is
a great, great sense of driving something that really had it.

Speaker 9 (01:17:47):
I mean it really.

Speaker 3 (01:17:48):
It was a wild sense of something that was really
that was really there, that had muscles all over it.
It was a troop carrier with what they call split
rear reel. This is the kind of thing that goes
directly straight up walls. You know, that kind of thing.
You could throw gears eight gear ships in it'd see.
You could throw the rear wheels at the high, the

(01:18:09):
front wheels in the medium, the middle wheels you can
throw at the low. And this thing is like a caterpillar. Ah.
And you sit there and it shakes. You're sitting there
and then driving. It's got glass that thick that goes
up and down. It's got a little a tiny just
a tiny little thing you put over to keep the
rain and shell fragments out. Just sit there like that.

(01:18:32):
And on the front of this thing they had a
great big knife that stuck up right out of the
front of it. And it was for cutting wires. It
was for cutting booby traps. You know. They used to
have a booby trap where it would a little fire
across the road would be strung. Guys would come along
in a jeep or something they hit it, boom up

(01:18:54):
or decapitated. Little things like that.

Speaker 13 (01:18:56):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:18:57):
Oh, if you think you have trouble in your traffic,
I'll tell you if you think that. If you think
Fordham Road is bad, you want to drive over a minefield? Well,
you know, speaking speaking of mindfields now, yeah, speaking of
mind fields and all out war. What radio station is this?

(01:19:20):
AM New Yorky New York ABS again and by George.
Oh yes, And one more thing. If you are not
living in New York and you have not read The
Village Voice, you have not tapped a really open, naked

(01:19:42):
nerve of this city. As a matter of fact, The
Village Voice is probably the most prize winningest newspaper to
come about in the country in the last five or
six years, and unquestionably one of the most continually irritating, interesting,
wildly misinformative newspapers that's ever.

Speaker 7 (01:19:59):
Been printed in the this country.

Speaker 3 (01:20:01):
And as a matter of fact, I've taken the Voice
myself since about nineteen fifty six, and I have been
booked the way some people get booked on Ovaltine. This
is the Village Voice. Really, it's a weekly, it's wild.

Speaker 7 (01:20:12):
It's interesting, and it tells more about.

Speaker 3 (01:20:14):
America, I think than most of the more serious, pompous
newspapers that are around. And if you would like to subscribe,
send your name and address to Village Voice Jeane Shepherd,
Sheridan Square in New York. It's four bucks a year,
and it's a big four dollars. The village points, the
village points, the village points the book. Okay, hello, hello, Hello,

(01:20:42):
excuse me, friends, I hate to interrupt what is apparently
very interesting. Marty, Hey, Marty, you want to sing for us?
Come on, come on down, Martya, come back. You know well,
Marty's getting ready to sing for us. Marty Lauren is
one of the owners of this joint. That's why he

(01:21:03):
can sing for us. You know that they've been doing
a lot of research into the pleasure area of your brain.
Do any of you know that you have a pleasure
center in your brain? You do, you really do. It's
a fact that in your brain there is one little
spot where all the whoopee goes on. Of course, some

(01:21:27):
people have had trouble. It's been truncated in that. But
that is the truth. And you know they've been doing it.
They've been doing it with rats in the experiment. It's
the truth. And they've been attaching little electrodes to different
parts of their brains, and they finally discovered that with
the proper batteries. Don't mess with those jaft batteries. They're

(01:21:48):
no good. You're gonna try the real pleasure problems. That
with the proper bultage is fed into the pleasure center
of the brain, the rats go ape. No, they give
up everything. They sit there, they give up, you know,
all the stuff that rats do, you know, leer and
growl and snap and hiss, and they just sit there

(01:22:10):
with a silly grin on their face. No, it is
the truth. And they've been experimenting and they found it
that the rats give up everything. The total pleasure is
obtained with this voltage. And right now General Electric is
working on a whoopie hat. It's gonna be made illegal,

(01:22:33):
but for the when it first comes out, we can
swing for a while. And this thing looks like a
symbolic paper hat and you plug it in, the electrodes
are connected, and dad, it is fantastic. You just sit there,
your eyeball, sweat.

Speaker 9 (01:22:55):
Your ears, you know, just hang out there and.

Speaker 3 (01:22:58):
You just sit there. The only thing they're worried about
is that it's liable to cause a terrible drop in
the population. So come on, party, go over. Uh. It's
his old friendly Marty Lauren, who isn't the same since

(01:23:19):
he lost this beard, and there's an anti beard chick.
What are you gonna do for us tonight?

Speaker 11 (01:23:25):
Write well and I have welt the joycey Monty's I have.

Speaker 7 (01:23:30):
I have rock and roll type things. So you talk
about you.

Speaker 11 (01:23:34):
This is a for low man, Okay, just bring it's gruesome.

Speaker 3 (01:23:38):
Okay, there you go, watching though it's live. Uh.

Speaker 11 (01:23:44):
In honor of Leo there, who has off requested it,
I'd like to do a song called call Me by
my rightful Name.

Speaker 3 (01:24:01):
Well, I was standing on the corner when his chick
walked by a whistled kind of lord. She looked me
dead and me aye. She said, I'll come if you
call me. She said, I'll come if you call me
in she said, I'll come if you call me, but
call me by my ride full name. Well, I asked
her if she wanted me to walk her home. She

(01:24:23):
said she seen me later, she'd be all alone. I said,
i'll come if you call me. I said, i'll.

Speaker 9 (01:24:29):
Come if you call me.

Speaker 3 (01:24:32):
I said, I'll come if you call me, but call
me by my ride forul name. Oh well.

Speaker 9 (01:24:38):
I went up to her house and she was all alone.

Speaker 3 (01:24:41):
She gave me plenty of love, and then her father
walked home.

Speaker 9 (01:24:44):
Man, oh what he called me? Oh man?

Speaker 3 (01:24:48):
What he call me? Oh man? Money called me, and
he didn't use my rideful name. Oh well, I beat
it out the window cause I couldn't find the door.
I call it so long, baby, I won't see you anymore.
She said, I'll come if you call me in. I'm
gonna come if you call me. I'll still come if

(01:25:09):
you call me, but call me by my riffle name. Well,
the next day I called her. She came about ten
with the parson and the sheriff and a half a
dozen men. She said, I came cause you call me in. Yeah,
I came cause you called me in. I came cause
you call me.

Speaker 9 (01:25:28):
Now, I'll call me by my rifle name.

Speaker 3 (01:25:33):
Oh well.

Speaker 9 (01:25:33):
I looked all her around.

Speaker 3 (01:25:34):
And such as what was what? And so I said
to the parson, go ahead and tie the not. And
now she comes when I call her. Yeah, she comes
when I call her. She always comes when I called her,
cause she finally got her right full legalizing lean. Yeah old.

Speaker 9 (01:26:00):
What an uh Marty?

Speaker 3 (01:26:02):
I I hate to I hate to appear gas.

Speaker 9 (01:26:06):
Since when, but I'm going to a peer.

Speaker 3 (01:26:15):
Gach I want you to sing John Henry again.

Speaker 11 (01:26:23):
This is kind of really in honor of the Limelight
softball team, which finally, after many tries, won its first
ball games.

Speaker 3 (01:26:35):
And all the mets are far better than we are.
When John Henry was a little baby, said, now is
that's me? He picked up a.

Speaker 11 (01:26:49):
Ham, a little piece of steel, said, I'm gonna be
the death of me, Lord God.

Speaker 3 (01:26:54):
I'm i gonna be the death of me. Some said
John Henry come from Texas?

Speaker 11 (01:27:00):
How this say come from Caroline? But I know John
Henry was a Brooklyn man, and he worked on the
B and T subway line, worked on the B and
T h the Lion.

Speaker 3 (01:27:13):
When they were.

Speaker 11 (01:27:13):
Digging that underground railway.

Speaker 3 (01:27:16):
And the rock and the earth wouldn't yield, he picked
up Bahama took a mighty backswing and he came up
in there bitsfield, Lord God came up in here. It's
field well. The ball game it was in progress with
the Giants win in five or two. Brooklyn hats free

(01:27:37):
runners on base.

Speaker 11 (01:27:38):
But Mary your hit her in if you Lord God,
Mary your hit her, isn't you well?

Speaker 3 (01:27:44):
John Henry said, don't you worry? Johnny Henry said, don't
you care. He picked himself up a mighty hickory bat
and started fanning breezes in the air.

Speaker 11 (01:27:56):
Lord God, fan in those breeches in.

Speaker 3 (01:27:58):
The air with a picture. He went into his wind
up Henry through what he thought was striking one. John
Henry took a card out of.

Speaker 11 (01:28:08):
The very first pitch and drove that ball unto the son.
Lord God drove that old volunteer the sun and the
sun he went into hiding, handing a ring, come a
pouring down. Before that day lose hit the earth. John
Henry was a circling her round, Lord God, John Henry

(01:28:29):
was the.

Speaker 3 (01:28:29):
Circling around, said it. With John Henry on his shoulders,
Henry carried him to Borough Hall, the borough present.

Speaker 11 (01:28:39):
And offered a reward to the man who could find
that ball, Lord God.

Speaker 7 (01:28:44):
The man who could find that ball.

Speaker 11 (01:28:47):
Well, the Dodgers moved to California.

Speaker 3 (01:28:52):
Try to take John Henry along. He told him, keep
your goal. Rush out on the.

Speaker 7 (01:28:59):
Coast to Brooklyn.

Speaker 11 (01:29:00):
Is a place where I belong, Lord God, Brooklyn is
a place where I belong.

Speaker 3 (01:29:05):
Then he went back to work on the subway, swung
his hammer for the BMT. He struck the.

Speaker 11 (01:29:12):
Third rail of mighty shattering blue, and he lit up
like a Christmas tree.

Speaker 3 (01:29:18):
He lit up like a Christmas tree.

Speaker 13 (01:29:21):
Well, it took his body to the ballpark, and they
filed past, one by one, and as they lord him
in to the ground, that ball came down from the sun,
Lord God, and that baseball came down from the sun.

Speaker 3 (01:29:39):
Well, lots of tailor John Henry. You might've heard it
another way, but every time you.

Speaker 11 (01:29:47):
Cross at Brooklyn Bridge, I tell you just how John
Henry saved the tail Lord God.

Speaker 7 (01:29:53):
Just how John Henry say the day.

Speaker 3 (01:29:59):
Okay, you know, every time every time Marty comes on
the show, which is about once every two or three weeks,
I get this terrible urge to revert to type. I

(01:30:21):
don't know whether you know what my type is, but
I want to tell you every time Marty, every time
you finish that song or one of your songs. I
get this feeding and say you've been listening to big
old loads and wander and Marty coming this way from
the Midwestern Hey, I brought to you by the Puria
chick Jaw Company. For those of you are having trouble

(01:30:42):
with laden chicks and land hens, it's puring in a
chick jow every time. And the Peoria Rockdale Monument Corporation
is making available to those of you out there who
have a loved one line and a grave tonight and
an unmarked grave because you can't afford a headstone for them.
Is those of you who have an unmarked brave in

(01:31:02):
your family, the Porrea Rockdale Monument Corporation is making absolutely
free of charge a four color catalog that shows a
beautiful selection of headstones with movable type and many sentimental
inscriptions are gonna be yours. And now the International Bible
Corporation of Westchester, Texas makes available to those of you

(01:31:25):
who would love to have a Bible with bullet proof
covers a Bible. Well. As a matter of fact, as
you can see, I've been there and I have a
I have a vague feeling that that I'm going to
have to answer for many sins when I arrive up
at that great Can you imagine yourself though? Seriously, you

(01:31:47):
know that's a funny idea. We always think of these
things in the total abstract, and we you know, there's
there's there's the feeling that's somewhere someplace along the line
we're going to have to pay for our sins. All
the things you did are somewhere someplace being compiled in
a book, your service record. Well, can you imagine what

(01:32:12):
yours looks like? Now? Seriously? Can you see your little book,
your little service record? And one of them is, let's
say one of them is passion purple. They have two books.
One of them is passion purple and the other one
is white. And the white beautiful one it looks like

(01:32:33):
this alabaster. That's the book where they keep the beautiful
things you have done in life. And the other one
is where all your evils are recording. Which one would
be fatter? Seriously, can you imagine there's a chicken that's
really she's worried. Well, now see we put all this

(01:32:55):
down because you know, we say, well, we're modern, we're
very modern, enlightened people. Well, we do not believe in
such things as original sin. We do not believe in
such things as absolute morality. We don't believe in these things.

Speaker 9 (01:33:13):
Right, dang, we don't do we? No?

Speaker 3 (01:33:16):
No, let's right. We don't want any books, do we.
They're not keeping a book on all the stuff we've done,
have they? No? No, no, no, will we all together?
Please yell one just once, it'll be somehow, maybe it'll reach,
maybe it'll reach the destination. Just once, holler help, oh

(01:33:37):
hel help, help, Oh boy, you tap that and it'll go.
But no, see, really, seriously, can you imagine yourself arriving
at this great, big bar of justice and they look
down at you, they it, whatever it is, look down

(01:34:00):
at you, says uh huh uh huh a village voice reader,
huh A Jonas meckis fan. Eh uh. I suppose you

(01:34:21):
think you're an art lover. Eh, Guys spent the last
fourteen years watching art films. Well, art lover. We have
a book here, and we're gonna start looking down the
files here and see where you first made your first mistake.

Speaker 6 (01:34:44):
Uh huh.

Speaker 3 (01:34:44):
Let's see you were age seven? You say seven? What? Seven?
He says, yes? And you know don't you but seven,
I was only a kid. No, you weren't. Don't give

(01:35:06):
me that cop out. At the age of seven, you
went down for Georgie's candy store and you stole a
copy of Spicy Detective. All right, literature fan, That was

(01:35:27):
the beginning. And then there was this ad that appeared
in Popular Mechanics. I quote art students fifty poses you
must be over twenty one. You were nine, and then

(01:35:51):
you know you're sunk. They got it all down, and
after about twenty minutes of reading, I could just see
all of it just standing up there. Just don't go on,
send me, I'll go. I'll go. That's where all my

(01:36:11):
friends are.

Speaker 9 (01:36:12):
Anyway, I'll go.

Speaker 3 (01:36:14):
They're all down there.

Speaker 9 (01:36:15):
Flick bring and roll there.

Speaker 3 (01:36:18):
And he says, wait just a minute, art lover, just
a minute, beauty fan, You are not going there. Can
you imagine the terrible fear that would come into your
mind to realize you're going to heaven? You're not going there?

(01:36:41):
Where am I going? He says, well, how are you on?
How are you on music? Do you play any instruments?
Guy says, no, I don't play. You don't wanna tell
'em about your kazoo. You can't imagine yourself in heaven
throughout eternity playing a beat blat kazoo. He says, you'll learn. Well,

(01:37:06):
I want to tell you that I suspect most of
us right now in this room would be insulted by
Saint Peter if he says you're going to heaven And
so what do you mean? Because everyone thinks he's been
really rotten, you know, he says, son, greasy kids stuff.

Speaker 9 (01:37:32):
And then you wonder what you missed.

Speaker 3 (01:37:40):
You wonder what the real what the real swingers were doing.
And the terrible thought is that always secretly you have
felt you were missing. You know, most of us, you know,
wouldn't be great. Seriously, though there are seven deadly sins.
Wouldn't you like to be the person you'reighborhood to invent

(01:38:00):
a new one? I mean, really a brand new one.
I'm a cosmic ones and you invent this thing and
it's fantastic, and wow.

Speaker 9 (01:38:12):
You stagger around.

Speaker 3 (01:38:15):
Immediately you know it's a sin. I know that the
first guy that had a drink of Scotch knew he
was doing something wrong. I believe me. First guy, you'd
stagger around, and can you imagine yourself, hiding it to
keep your neighbors from finding out. And then it begins

(01:38:35):
to spread like wildfires, a new sin. They have to
rewrite the whole book. Well, let me tell you about sins.
This is the thing that's bugged everybody all the times
who question you know, you sit here and laugh. It
is a word that is rarely used in today's lexicon. Rarely.

(01:38:58):
In fact, if you noticed a lot of words that
aren't used, like ignorant, nobody's ignorant. He's all underprivileged. It's
always underprivileged, nobody's dumb. They're always underachieved. You know, there's
no such thing as as just a slave anymore. All

(01:39:19):
these words have disappeared, and along with them has the
word sin disappeared. Well, it has disappeared as a word.
We don't use it anymore. No one says, oh, there
goes Charlie. What a sinner he is? No, you don't
say that. See there goes Charlie. Boy, there's a real swinger,

(01:39:46):
you know. Oh yeah, this is the playboy ideal. And
the word has disappeared. Sin, good evil, all those things
have gone down. Well, let let me tell you it's funny.
There are little pockets in the Midwest where it remains
they have they haven't gotten it. They haven't gotten the

(01:40:07):
message yet, you know, they really haven't. They're still living
someplace in the far distant past. When there were dumb kids,
there were bright kids, there were spoiled brats. That's another thing.
Have you noticed ever since Spock, the spoiled brat has disappeared.
There's only bad parents. That's fascinating. And yet almost every

(01:40:33):
parent I knew who was a rotten parent was a
spoiled brat. And he's producing a spoiled brat, you know.
And so with with the with the with the coming
of Spock and various other organs of this kind, there
have disappeared from our nomenclature, all the great words like sin.

(01:40:53):
Another word that's disappeared, that's almost completely gone is cheating. No,
not really. Did you notice recently everybody got very mad
because a West Point cadet was kicked out for cheating
in an exam. Did you read that they caught this
guy had notes on the back of his ears, on
his shoulders, he had him written on his contact lenses.

(01:41:18):
He had the whole scene go and see, and they
caught him, and they threw him out and there was
a great hue and cry. And now he's sitting back
that with a smug look. They got him in, you know,
because there's no such thing anymore. Well, I want to
tell you, since this is exam time, there's a lot
of sinners out there tonight. Oh yeah, and they're getting

(01:41:39):
even more. They're ready. Seriously. You know, the most creative
exam cheater that I ever saw in my life I
just ran into two years ago. The electronic world. Fellas
has gotten into the exam cheating business. I know a
guy who had a little Japanese transistor radio which he

(01:42:00):
had rebuilt, and he had it there and he pretended
he was listening to the Mets games, and outside outside
the campus was his buddy with a walkie talkie, and
he was saying, he is equal with the two piem
square over l D ninus seventh. That is the multiple
diapole equation for elliptical waveforms. You got it, Charlie, And

(01:42:25):
Charlie would press the button he got it, say he
pressed them once? Repeat who this guy passed with a
fantastic record. I want to tell you one little story
about me that is involved in the exam Most people
are afraid of show business, most people because they can't

(01:42:48):
imagine themselves getting up in front of a lot of
other people naked, just sheer naked and says, watch how
funny I'm gonna be Watch me saying, now, folks, I'm
gonna tell you if I mean jokes point that strikes
terror to your heart. And so generally most people adjust
and say, ah, the rotten show biz. Those are all

(01:43:08):
rotten people, you know, rotten aggressive people and show bits.
And the most I'd say, the most operative form of
audition is the exam. Believe me, you know that terrible,
terrible moment of truth when you were about to approach
the Latin free exam and your head has just been

(01:43:31):
buzzing for a semester. You know that terrible feeling of
sitting in a class in your eyes and you can't
keep them open, and there's one of these teachers that
just goes right, right right, the bell pos you get up, boo,

(01:43:51):
you wake up. You're staggering down, but you have had
fifty five minutes of quadrilateral equations and there's nothing but
this home in your ear. All well, of course it
goes on and in the beginning of the semester. You
have a feeling that you're gonna win. You know, somewhere
along the line you're gonna catch on. But then about

(01:44:12):
somewhere at a crucial part, this is the.

Speaker 9 (01:44:14):
Point of no return.

Speaker 3 (01:44:16):
Literally, you suddenly realize, with a faint sick fantastic sickness
in your stomach. You don't even you don't even know
what identities mean. They're using phrases like identities. You give
me the following equations for the following identity. What the
hell's he talking about? And you see this, these these

(01:44:37):
convolutions are going together. Time is undoing you. You say,
it's getting closer and closer to the to their talk
that day, you can't escape. Well, let me tell you
one time. I am in the army, I am in
a university. I am taking a university course. I have
been out in the field. I have been brought back

(01:44:58):
from a shell. They have sent me to the university.
I am now in this university. They have given me
thirty seven hours of solids or it's fantastic. All the
guys with me, and they tell us you fail one
course and it's the one hundred and second infantry jack

(01:45:21):
Now and you're going by airplane and you're gonna land
by parachute.

Speaker 9 (01:45:26):
I'm buying.

Speaker 3 (01:45:27):
Can you imagine going into an exam with that riding
on you? Well, let me tell you. I one course
has always totally eluded me. Chemistry. I don't understand it.
And there's always some smart guys with glasses who know
all about it. They had it in high school or something,
you know, and they're goes, yeah, of course, any valance

(01:45:50):
tool miners seven blah blah bla blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah. They write it up, and I'm throwing,
you know, all the way through, I'm thinking that I'm
phoning it, And all of a sudden that they came
for the exam, the final. I didn't know anything, and
it was an exam in organic chemistry. All I knew

(01:46:13):
was things like salt and carbon. I knew there was
something called carbon compounds. So that night, the whole night,
I stayed up. I read my little cell, my uniform sweating,
Oh god, the one hundred and seconds they call it
the Bulldozer Infantry Division, they call it old bull whored second.

(01:46:34):
I'm reading, reading well during the semester, you always pick
up three or four or maybe eight or nine little
isolated facts. And there I walk in. I'm sick. It's
one of these amphitheater places. And I looked down and
there is that professor up there, and he says, all right,

(01:46:55):
here are your exam questions, ten of them ABC. And
I looked down. I couldn't believe it. It was the
only ten things I knew. Fantastic. I mean, it was
like God had said, Shepherd is not going to a

(01:47:15):
hundred and second And I write it down. I'm write
in real past. I think he's going to erase it.

Speaker 9 (01:47:22):
You know, I'm writing it down.

Speaker 3 (01:47:27):
You know, I'm writing like mad. And I put it.

Speaker 9 (01:47:29):
I put the paper down.

Speaker 3 (01:47:30):
He takes a look at it and he says, he says,
you know, to one look at it, and he says, Shepherd.
He says, I knew even though you were in the
last row and you were I knew you were one
of my best students. Well, we'll be back next week
from the Lime Light. Thank you for coming. Who.

Speaker 7 (01:47:54):
This is w o R Radio, your station for news.

Speaker 8 (01:47:57):
If you've ever seen a youngster on his way to camp, agree,
he's just about the happiest person alive as he dreams
of the swimming and.

Speaker 7 (01:48:04):
Hiking, of all the outdoor fun he's about to enjoy.

Speaker 8 (01:48:07):
Unfortunately, for some boys from New York's East Side, camp
is only a dream.

Speaker 3 (01:48:12):
But your dollars can make this dream come true for
one boy at least.

Speaker 8 (01:48:16):
The Boy's Club of New York desperate in needs contributions
to send some one thousand boys to their new Camp Harriman,
in the beautiful forests of the Catskill Mountains, and they
are asking for help. Just twenty six dollars will treat
one boy to a week in camp, a week away
from the heat and noise of the city, a week
of carefree fun and good healthy country living. Won't you

(01:48:38):
give some East Side boy this chance to enjoy the
kind of vacation he needs and dreams of. Send your
contribution to Night to the Boy's Club of New York,
Box seventy seven, New York nine, New York, and thank
you so much.

Speaker 1 (01:48:55):
From June twentieth, nineteen sixty four. The broadcast originates from
the Limelight, New York City Army story searching for German
submarines and the swamps of the Everglades. An unexpected catch
in the Indiana Swamps, the sight of the mud Hen
and the swamp, the Toledo mud Hens.

Speaker 3 (01:49:12):
Now, listen, we start with the horn and the cheer.
Here are you ready for it? All set? I guess
you're not. We better not, boy, talk about Farina hold
it thing? Well, I'm sorry, honey, you're cream a wheat.
Then all right, all set? One, two, free go, Let's

(01:49:48):
try it again. Let's start over at the top. Listen,
I'll tell you all right, come on now, lady's we're
doing a show here. All lives will be saved for
twelve oh five. All set. Nothing is funnier than the
twelve year old ad liver. Already again, I'll say, there

(01:50:11):
he goes, the little glasses shiner. The coming generation shows
great promise, at least from the volume standpoint. Well, it
is summer now officially in one hour, it will be
the twenty first of June, and it will all begin

(01:50:33):
and end at the same time. And I have maybe
perhaps a stronger feeling for summer for that external out there,
because I didn't come from New York. I didn't come
from a big city. And to the people who live
just on the outside, just you know, when you drive

(01:50:54):
along the Turnpike, and you see that glow cast by
Howard Johnson. Well, on the other side of the globe,
there are people out there in the darkness. That's the country. Well,
I came from this area where all they had steel mills.
On one side, tremendous edifice. This is a machine, believe me,

(01:51:19):
that makes Times Square look like kids stuff. If you
can imagine a gigantic beelching insane furnace the size of
Manhattan and half of the Bronx. This is Inland Steel
Plant number two. And of course you live next to it,
and just remove you see that glow in the sky.

(01:51:39):
From the time you're three years old and you can
perceive the horizon till the time you die, that sky
is always lit up, the blast furnace, the Bessemer converter,
the open heart. And on the other side of you
is the darkness of Indiana, nothing just long rolling hills.

(01:52:05):
And on the diagonal side was the big swamp. We
had a swamp that stretched from the edge of our town.
This little town I lived in, almost unbroken to the
Michigan border, laid right there by the side of Lake Michigan.
And it was a true swamp and I'm going to

(01:52:27):
tell you a story of the swamp, since I guess
most of you have never lived in a swamp, have
never been in a swamp, but as a kid, I
spent my entire summer in the swamp. Now, the swamp
is not really like going to the Catskills. Well in
some ways, yes, but the swamp, the swamp is a

(01:52:49):
separate thing. It's just like this, All this water is laying,
just laying, and it's been cooked for countless centuries by
the sun. It's got mud in it. Totally nobody goes there,
so it's largely, really largely, even to this day, unexplored.
There're reason to go there, just a lot of water
and cattails and hanging trees and darkness and sand, mosquitoes

(01:53:14):
and heat. And every summer about this time we'd split
from school and the kids would start infiltrating into the swamp. Now,
I have a feeling that if every kid today was
given at least seven square feet of swamp to play with,

(01:53:35):
he would have a bigger and more complete sense of reality.
In fact, I understand that Fao Schwartz is bringing out
a backyard swamp for city kids, teaching what life is
like and one of the things we used to do
as kids. I don't know why it's funny a child.
I guess one of the things that we find interesting

(01:53:55):
about children is the children are far more of the
true animal that we are, that we have learned to
hide as we grow up, suppress and not be. But
there is an insane, maniacal urge on the part of
kids to catch things, you know what I mean, catch
things in bottles and stuff. The adult doesn't really do that.

(01:54:18):
I don't know whether a guy at the age of
forty eight walking along Madison Avenue suddenly sees a really
good beetle as a desire to grab it and stick
it in his bottle of guin is stout and take
it home. But the facts of the matter are kids
don't know they shouldn't do it, you know, So they
have a desire. They always catch the stuff. And one

(01:54:41):
of the things that we would do immediately immediately upon
getting out of school the temperature is one hundred and five.
Oh boy, it's hot in the swamp, and the humidity
is fantastic, was to build a sane. Now, the way
you build the sane you take a gun ey sack. Now,
if you don't know what a gunny sack is. There's
a potato sack. You know, it's a it's a it's a. Well,

(01:55:02):
today gunny sacks are hanging in the hip apartments. That's
the drapes you see, that's the Yeah, that's gunnysack material.
For those of you who don't know it, that's potato
bag stuff hanging there. Burr Lap is what it is. Well,
burlap makes an insane sane. And you take you take
a potato sack and you split it right down, you

(01:55:23):
open it up, and you put a broomstick at each end,
and you start digging in a swamp for whatever comes up.
And the water, you know, is maybe this deep, sometimes
it's this deep. Sometimes it's seven feet deep deep. You
know it's black water, mud up, you know, mud up
to your hocks. And we would go off sainting. Nobody

(01:55:45):
knew why. My mother would say where you're going, he says, saning,
And somehow she knew. And I don't know what. Mothers
understand the primeval far more than the men do when
they get older. And she say, okay, sane, and don't
bring no junk home. It's okay, all right, going off saying, well,
me and Bruner and Flick and Schwartz would go off

(01:56:05):
into the swamp with our saints. Well, I remember one day,
and this is the day. This is why I say,
you get reality, honest to God, honest, true reality out
of the swamp. And I really do believe that if
I took this gang right here for about two hours
into the dismal swamp in Virginia, you'd come back and

(01:56:28):
you'd know a lot more about what you are, you'd
know a lot more about the world, and you'd know
a lot more about fear than you think you know now.
And so Schwartz and Flick and Brunner and little Shepherd
are out in the swamp one day. The sun is
beating down and everything looks so innocent. We know the terrain,

(01:56:50):
the steel mill is off in the distance, there's the
cat tails. You can hear a train going off somewhere,
way off over the horizon. The big L and N
is going into the hump, and we're down there saying it. Now,
what we caught generally was crawfish, craw dads. Now, these
are tiny lobsters, little lobsters like this. Why we caught them,

(01:57:13):
I don't know. We catch millions up them put them
in the bottom. We also caught tadpoles, we'd catch things
called noots. Once in a while we'd catch a lizard.
And that's that was our catch. That was our bag,
except this one unbelievable afternoon. I'm on one end of
the seine. On the other end of the Seine is Flick.

(01:57:36):
Flick is a tall, skinny kid. And off to our right,
Schwartz and Brunner are working with their saying. We're down
there digging like this, and we've been going fine for
about two hours, you know, just swimming and flobbing around,
saying and sweating, swearing kids always swearing swamps, by the way,
insane swearing comes out of immediately yelling at each other,

(01:57:59):
absent and the whole bit. You know, we got no
clothes at all on We're down there saying and away
in the swamp. Now this is again, I must tell you.
This is not Jones Beach. This is the swamp. And
once in a while you put your foot down and
to be on the top of an ancient in third forward,
you know, you'd move over a little bit and you'd
wide through and there's there's some kind of funny thing.

(01:58:20):
You'd go like this, you just move away. You don't
want to stay there anyway. God knows what it is.
You just keep going up and down, saying and away.
It's about three o'clock in the afternoon, must have been
one hundred degrees and there's that slow rouse that settles
in over a country. You can hear the locus. You

(01:58:40):
know that that wild sound that locusts make it. You
know that sound that goes on and on and your
ears ring. And we're down there scene when all of
a sudden, Flick pushes his end up. I push my
end up and the water explodes. Boom. We got this thing.

(01:59:04):
He goes up like that. Crash first schwartz Hull's watch
a big tadpole. Look boom up like that. And right
in the middle of our scene is a completely maniacal
water moccasin. If any of you ever dug up out

(01:59:25):
of the quiet sunshine of a sun of a sunny
Indiana afternoon, a four and a half, what's deadly poisonous
water moccasin? Their mouth goes to me, Ah like that.
He takes one look at one look at Flick, and
he's got these things he want to blow them. What
are you gonna do with them?

Speaker 6 (01:59:44):
Throw them back in the.

Speaker 3 (01:59:45):
Water, you know, what do you do? He's flying around?
We got him in the Sane flicks his hall of
grab and I said, what do you mean? Grab them?

Speaker 6 (01:59:54):
Hall of what coven?

Speaker 3 (01:59:56):
We got this? Oh boy, you talk about open up
a Pandora's box. Let me tell you poop. We rush
back up on the shore and we got this in.
Say that he's plopping. We throw him out and he
lays there just sort of spins around. This is a
water snake and he's suddenly up on dry land. He's

(02:00:16):
just spinning around. You got to see him. They sort
of cork screw and out in the pond. Yet are
the other two guys. Brunner is out there and Schwartz,
and they're scared to come in, And all of a
sudden they get the idea maybe there are others out there.
And we're all standing like this and this thing and

(02:00:38):
just rolling around and looking at us these little beady
red eyes. He's rolling and he lays there. Flick says,
let's kill him. That's the first instinct all kids have,
you know, Let's kill him. Schwartz. I can hear Schwartz
out of kill home. He's out there in the water.
Kill him, kill him, flicks kill him.

Speaker 9 (02:01:00):
Come.

Speaker 3 (02:01:00):
We're standing there looking and one of us picks up
a stick and sort of hits him. Well, I'll tell you,
it was like hitting a rubber hose. I mean, you know,
he just sort of snapped, moved back, and he starts
working his way back towards the swamp. You know, they
have a tremendous instinct for water. And he's working his

(02:01:20):
way back towards the swamp and we're standing there, absolutely dumbfounded.
You know, We're just standing and he works his way back.
All of a sudden, when he gets to the edge
of the water, just like the most of it's like magic.
I don't know whether you've ever seen a water snake
returning to his element. You can't believe it. He just
goes who gone, And the swamp looked just like it

(02:01:44):
had looked before. The cat tails are waving. We can
hear the locusts and the trains at the steelments, and
Flick sort of standing there with one end of the
same I've dropped my end. Schwartz and Brunner now are
four hundred feet out of the pond and going south.

(02:02:08):
We're all sort of backing away from nature, you know,
back and away. Well, you know, I can't tell which
was the scaredest the four of us were that snake.
Can you imagine that snake going back down to the nest.
He gets back and he says, my god, you don't
know what happened. He said, I just laying there and

(02:02:33):
all of a sudden, and I could just see him saying, listen,
I was just sitting there, just laying there. Nothing happened,
and it was hot. I was laying all of a sudden,
this they hit me and I'm up there. I get out.
He says, my god, there were these four monsters saying
look at me. And he says, I just gone away.

(02:02:53):
And I could just see all the rest of the
snake saying, oh, come on, boy, let a water moccasin
gol and he'll go. Well, I want to tell you
another thing. Animals, you know't get to be very very well.
It's a unit. You're a unit. You get so that
you're part of the animal world when you're living next

(02:03:15):
to a swamp. And I'll tell you one other incident
that occurred in that swamp, which I carry because I
keep seeing it over and over again. I keep seeing
the same image when I walk on Lexington Avenue or
Sixth Avenue or Fifth Avenue, or any place in New
York City, I keep seeing it. I've seen it twice

(02:03:36):
here tonight. It's a funny sight. One afternoon, there was
just two of us this time, me and Brunner have
gone deep into the deep, into the swamp, and there
was a place out in the middle of the swamp
that was known as the place where you swim. It's
the swimming place. It had deep water, it had a

(02:03:57):
long curving shore and had big trees over It was
just like a pond inside of a swamp, you know.
And we're working our way back. This was a tremendous trek.
I mean, it was like four hours of struggling to
get back, the sweating and struggling. You know. By the way,
right down the street from where we lived was the
most fantastic swimming pool you ever saw in your life.

(02:04:19):
Nobody went to the swimming pool, you know. Everyone was
going to the swamp. This had a much stronger, much
more primeval pull. Well on this afternoon, we are going
through the swamp and you jump, you literally jump from
little hillock to hillock, you know, you jump from from
one mess of cattails to the next. We're going through
the water and we're just blobbing around, throwing rocks just

(02:04:41):
you know, it's like all afternoon just going there and
then you come back. That's all you do. So we're going,
we're hollering, yelling at the crows, and the crows are
yelling back. By the way, are you aware that of
all the birds, the crow is the one bird? And
I swear it, And I know people will argue with you.
The crow no when you're after it, and when you're

(02:05:03):
not after it, that crow will do everything but sit
right on your shoulder and ask you which way is
the Howard Johnson. I'm serious. I'm absolutely serious. If you
walk out and you're gonna hunt crows, and you decide
you're gonna hunt them, and you're gonna carry your gun
concealed inside your shirt, you know, and you're going out
there dressed like a cratefish sayer, instantly there is a

(02:05:27):
crow and they're all yelling at you. Wow. You see
them looking down at you, and they swim, they fly away, yell.
You walk out in the woods, there you walk out
in the swamp and you're just out there and the
crows are hopping along next you hide. You know, wow,
oh the crow is a great bird of fantastics. That's
the humor. Well, so here we are, Blunder and I

(02:05:49):
are going out. The crows are accompanying us, you know,
they're all around. And there's another thing they have on
the swamps. One of the most beautiful of all birds
is the kingfisher. You ever seen a king that's a bird. Oh, boy,
that believe me, the kingfisher. This is the Robert Moses
the birds. Oh he is a tough son of a gun.

(02:06:11):
I'll tell you. A kingfisher coming down for a landing
and something to see. You know, it's like seven helicopters
coming in and they've got a long beak, they got
a high top knot, and they're perpetually angry. You remember
those cartoons of those two little birds that they used
to have on the On the cartoons, you remember those
were kingfishers. Pa are yelling at each other. They yell,

(02:06:33):
and all the crawls are yelling. Brunner and Shepherd are
going to the big swimming hole.

Speaker 7 (02:06:40):
Is everything is calm?

Speaker 3 (02:06:42):
Well, you get a sense, a kind of desire for privacy.
When you get out in the woods like that, or
in the swamp anyway, and you don't talk much, you
don't yell loud, you really literally become part of the
animal world. And so we're going through the swamp. We've
been doing this since we were six m we are
now fifteen. We are real swamp people. We're going through

(02:07:05):
the swamp. We have seen it all.

Speaker 7 (02:07:07):
We know all about it now.

Speaker 3 (02:07:08):
We know about the water moccasins. We know about the
snapping turtles. Oh that's something else again. I'll tell you
about the snapping turtles some night. We know about the
painted turtles. We know about the crows and the crawdads.

Speaker 7 (02:07:21):
We know about the bullheads.

Speaker 3 (02:07:23):
Have you ever stepped on a bullhead with bare feet
at two o'clock in the afternoon, the second day of
the baseball season? Line? And can you imagine a second
basement out of action for six weeks because of acause
of a bullhead shot. He got a bull head right
in the knee. But this is the kind of world
we lived in, and on this afternoon we are crawling

(02:07:45):
our way through the swamp. Well, there were a lot
of little private places in the swamp. You'd come upon suddenly,
a little glade that wasn't there the day before. Swamps
are always movies. They're like people. You just can't predict them.
One day you walk across the sandbar, and the next

(02:08:06):
day you're in the Quicksand, by the way, do you
know anything about quicksand? There was the rumor among all
the kids that one day one of us would be
swallowed up forever by Quicksand never happened. But every time
you get a little mudd quicksand quick sent Oh oh
so I just you walk away? Oh yeah, you know.

(02:08:27):
The quicksand myth is very strong among kids. We even
felt that the vacant lots had it, you know, quicksand
was to swallow you up. But are you aware that
this is one of the reasons we all had a
really deep fear of the earth swallowing us up. We do. No,
I'm not kidding. I'm telling you this is a psychologist,

(02:08:48):
that this is one of the reasons why our space
exploration goes on. But nobody has decided to build a
little gondola that digs four thousand miles into the earth somehow,
that's that's a real scary thought, isn't it really? Going
to Saturn doesn't seem as frightening as getting in a

(02:09:08):
little thing that just starts to bore down, just things
right down through the height of New Jersey and heads
for the core of the earth. Well, so the quicksand
thing is is a real scary myth. Well, one day,
this day, we're going through the swamp, we're moving our

(02:09:29):
way through these little glades, and when you come upon
these things, you'd kind of sneak up on them. Always,
kids are funny. They didn't. We didn't just run into
Glen Hollow. We just sneak and suddenly, without any warning,
in this quiet glade, there is something standing there in
the shadow, that dark green one. Boy, I can see

(02:09:51):
the picture in my mind. It's scared, you know that,
You know that secret fear that all of us have
that one day when we come home, our pad is dark,
we're gonna open the door and there's gonna be some
shadowy figure just standing at the door looking at us.
Can you imagine tonight when you're asleep in your bed
at three o'clock in the morning, you wake up, just

(02:10:13):
out of a dream. You wake up and there's a
shadowy figure standing over you, just looking, doesn't move, just
looks oooh yeah, terrible thoughts. All right, let's erase all that.
That's erase all that, boy, boy, yeah, that fear of
something standing well in the darkness, there is something standing

(02:10:38):
and brunuses what is that? It's just standing there. It
can hardly make it out. You know, swamps are very dark,
and I could see this gray thing up against the
blackness of these trees. And at first it looked like
some kind of a skinny man standing just standing in
the water. We looked, and suddenly you could see what

(02:11:03):
it was.

Speaker 7 (02:11:05):
It was a mud hen.

Speaker 3 (02:11:08):
It was a tall, skinny gray bird just looking at us.
And he had the saddest, most completely pathetic, lonely look
on his face I have ever seen on anything in
my life. Have you ever looked right eye to eye
in the eye of a mud hen standing in a

(02:11:29):
swamp next to a steel mill. He's just looking and
Brutus is what is it? I said, I don't know.
And the mud hen saw us just about the same
time we saw him, and he backed up a little bit,
and you saw this fantastic fear in his eye. You know,
you're not used to seeing emotions and birds. It don't

(02:11:53):
you know a bird is an emotionless creature. You hold
this bird, he's just a little beady eyes. But for
some reason or other, mud hens have wattles, they have sadness,
they have tears, they have a bent beak. Just look,
and they're up to their knees in water, and their
knees are nobbling, and they've got kind of green, green

(02:12:15):
mold on him. He backs up, and with that he
slowly stands up and starts to move his wings. He
can't take off. He's stuck in the mud. He's going
like this. He's giant, four foot wings are just flop flop, flop.

(02:12:40):
And Brunner is looking and I'm looking. We're both back
in the way. He's gonna flop and if boop, he
pops out, you know, like a quirk coming out of
a bottles. Here PLoP. He looks back and you can
just see him going off over that swamp, off into
the distant gloom silence. Bruner looks. I look. I said,

(02:13:07):
come on, let's go, let's go to the swimming pool.
All of a sudden, for some reason, whether there was
no heart, I don't know, why we didn't want to go.
It scared us. It made a very funny image. And
brunus is getting late. My mom says, I ought to
get home early. And we walked all the way back home,
just sort of slugging or pretending, and all the while

(02:13:28):
is the sight of that insane mud Hen. Well, I
see that mud Hen about four times a day in
New York walking up Sixth Avenue coming out of a
bar somewhere in the forties. I see him come down
here every Saturday night, sits out there in the darkness

(02:13:52):
under the move's head and just looks searching for what.
What is the mud Hen searching for? What are we
searching for? Or I want to tell you the story
of the mud Hen. It goes even further than that.

Speaker 9 (02:14:05):
Years go by.

Speaker 3 (02:14:07):
I'm in the army, I'm out of the army. I'm
in college. And one long hot summer, even a longer
hotter summer than we're than we're enjoying now, I get
a summer job. You wouldn't guess what my summer job is.
I'm a play by play announcer announcing the games of

(02:14:31):
the Toledo mud Hens. Well, let me tell you about
I never knew a ball team that had a better name.
The Toledo mud Hens played. First of all, they played
in a swamp and they had I'm serious, you know,
they had a ball field. I have to bring this

(02:14:53):
in because this is all part of the American night.
It's all part of the American life. Nobody else put
in America. And understand what I'm gon I tell you about.
But night after night, I would sit in the press
box with my little crystal microphone in front of me,
and down there on the field would be the Toledo
mud Hens. They played nothing but night games, and yeah,

(02:15:17):
it was so hot. They couldn't play day games out there.
They only played at night. And their night time. Believe me,
their lighting looked like the kind of lighting you see
on a used car lot out in Queens. They had
light bulbs, you know, just hanging from wires out there,
you know, around the field. And hot, Oh my god,
it was one hundred degrees there. Every night in the
humidity on the shore of the lake. There would come

(02:15:38):
waving in and we'd sit there and watch the Toledo
mud Hens and there would be two hundred and ten
people at the ballgame. Now most of you have never seen.
Just all of you who have ever seen minor league
ball raise your hands. You've seen minor league ball played? Well,
you see how few people have ever seen it. Out
of this crowd, you guys who think you've seen sad sights.

(02:16:03):
When you see the Mets, you want to see the
met Ree Jacks playing. Now, there's two kinds of ballplayers
on a minor league team. There's the ballplayer who's on
his way up or thinks he is. And there's the
ballplayer who's on his way down after twelve years with

(02:16:27):
the Cleveland Indians or fourteen years in the National League.
And I'll tell you you've never seen anything like a
center fielder who played seven seasons with the Yankees, three
seasons with Cleveland, two seasons with the White Sox, had
a lifetime batting average in the majors of two ninety

(02:16:48):
seven playing center field for the Toledo mud Hens. I'm
telling you it's a psych. Here's a pro. He ain't
going nowhere. What he does know, well, he may be
going somewhere. He may be going from Class B to
Class D. This is where he's going. He's playing with

(02:17:10):
twelve year old kids. You know who got that fire.
You know that that look of Ron you know that
look of Ron Hunt to that sharp, skinny face. You
know that that looks out of the looks out of
the Sporting News. Those those the sharp eyed, bright eyed,
beady eyed kids that have just come from Cornell. And
here is old big John out in center field. I'm

(02:17:33):
gonna tell you a.

Speaker 7 (02:17:33):
Story one night that I saw.

Speaker 3 (02:17:35):
It was one of the most one of the most
peculiar sights I've ever seen in sports. The Toledo mud Hens,
in case you don't know anything about him, were a
farm team for a team that made the New York
Mets look like the Yankees. They were a farm team
for the Saint Louis Browns. They really were. There were

(02:17:58):
a Saint Louis brown farm team, and the Saint Louis
Brown's were a farm team. You know. It was a
sad scene. And here you had. They even had a
one armed outfielder. Yeah, they had a one armed outfielder.
And so so one hot July night, I'm sitting in

(02:18:19):
the press box up there, the score is twelve to
two in favor of I don't recall who it was,
Indianapolis or somebody, and the Toledo mud Hens are playing
out there, and they had a big mud Hen on
the front of their jersey and this great big chicken here.
You know. They had these beautiful uniforms. If you notice
the worst of the team, the greater the uniforms. These

(02:18:42):
beautiful red bills, you know, these sharp looking black hats,
and the big red, white and blue bird and that
said mud Hens, not it, you know, big. They had
a big number seven on the back and had this
beautiful PA system. And I don't know whether you've ever
heard a PA system echoing out over an empty ballfield
announcing the next hitter, and this seven hundred PA system.

(02:19:07):
So I'll talk some clothes and they can hear it
over all of Southern Michigan. Who couldn't care less, they're
all somewhere else. You know, there's two hundred people in
the stands. And there's something about a die hard minor
league baseball fan that makes honestly makes a met fan
look like an absolute soft, quiet, Madison Avenue controlled person.

(02:19:33):
When you have been following the Toledo mud Hens for
fifteen years, you are a grizzled piece of leather. And
they sit out there and they're actually and they're old men,
almost all of them are old men. They're retired guys,
old ball players. These are real baseball fans. These are
not television viewers. And they sit in those wooden stands

(02:19:56):
and you can pick out each voice. You get to
know all the fans. And I'm doing it to hear hey.
Oh it's terrible. Oh it's terrible. How you can hear
the sound of one heckler in a minor league ballpark
in a night game at eleven o'clock at night, with

(02:20:18):
a temperature one hundred degrees and two hundred people there. Well,
one clown starts getting on this major league outfielder. And
here he is out there. Here's a guy that's played
in four World Series. I knew it, you know, I
knew what he'd done. I remember one time when he
came up to bat in the twelfth inning of a

(02:20:38):
World Series game and tripled with two men on. And
now he's playing center field for the mud Hens, and
he had this stance. You know, there's a certain stand
the way minor league ballplayers stand. You know, this eager
look the kid. You know, he's always moved, and he's praying.
He can't stay he's so excited that he's there and

(02:20:59):
he wants to make it. Is there a scout in
the stand, always looking out in the stand hit this glove?

Speaker 13 (02:21:03):
You know?

Speaker 3 (02:21:05):
Oh no, you could see the old timer out there.
He's just waiting and he can hardly you know. It's
funny because the fog.

Speaker 7 (02:21:13):
Comes moving in.

Speaker 3 (02:21:13):
They don't have good lights and you can hardly see
the outfielders. You just see these shadowy figures out there,
just watching, looking up into that gloom, waiting for those
fly balls. Once in a while the train would go
by and it would pour its smoke down in. You know,
foo choo choo, choo choo. These are the guys that
are on their way to what you see now doing

(02:21:36):
the Shiit commercials. It's very strange, you know, we don't
see this much in America anymore. Well, one night score
is twelve to two. And as an announcer, your job
is to make it sound exciting. Okay. Your job is
to make it sound that there's a rally in the wings.

(02:21:57):
Your job is to make it sound like this is
worth seeing. Well, how can you say, friends, come on
out here because this is an American ritual. Come on
out because you'll never see anything like this down at
the beach. You that there's no drama like this in
a Doris Day movie. It's just not there. The real

(02:22:20):
thing is here, friends, because in the ninth inning, one down,
Big John comes up the x Yankee. I'll never forget
to say. There are two mud hens on base. They're
down twelve to two. It's the last of the ninth

(02:22:44):
and John comes up, picks up his bat, walks up
there and he's got a straight up stance, stands up
the right handed hitter, by the way, So maybe you
know who I'm talking about. I know old Yankee fans
may know, by the way, his name really was. I
won't give you his last name. So Big John is
standing up there, and there's something in the human breast

(02:23:08):
that likes to needle people who no longer are what
they were. We love to see those which were once
big no longer. I think we hate our celebrities and
we love them, and the hate is far more virulent
than the love is real. Oh yeah, how many of

(02:23:29):
you would love to see Mary Martin reading down the
street Three Sheets to the Wind. Ah, sure you tell
you you tell that story of the rest of your life.
You really would so here's old big John standing up
there at the plate. Oh, everybody in all these two

(02:23:49):
hundred and ten guys out there knew he'd been a Yankee.
They knew he'd been with the Cleveland Indians. This guy
was a real ballplayer, and he was playing among kids,
and he was playing before boards. And so the boors
started this nut back a third base with a leather voice.

(02:24:10):
Wha has ben?

Speaker 12 (02:24:13):
Wah?

Speaker 9 (02:24:13):
Has Ben?

Speaker 3 (02:24:14):
Let it?

Speaker 6 (02:24:15):
You hang them up?

Speaker 3 (02:24:17):
That means hang up your spike. You has been? Yeah,
has been? And here's this poor guy. He's earning maybe
six thousand dollars for the season. Obviously he needs the money.
Either that or he can't quit playing the game, which
is probably closer to the truth.

Speaker 9 (02:24:39):
Yeh has been.

Speaker 3 (02:24:41):
And everybody is here. You know, it just sort of
floats out, and I got my microphone and it picks up.
I can hear it in my cans. Yeah hez ben,
Yeah bun Yeah has been. Ooh you want to kill him.
And here's this big fat slob you know who can't
even make it in the fat Man skinny Man picnic

(02:25:01):
ball team. You know, boy, is he gotta set a
lungs yo hands beIN he's yelling, and Big John is
up there. Well, there was a kid pitching. This guy,
by the way, went on to become one of the
best pitchers of the nineteen fifties. And I had a

(02:25:22):
very funny feeling. Just the other day I read in
a sport page that he had been finally given his
unconditional release. This picture. He was a kid then though,
he was nineteen years old, and he was on his
way to two hundred and forty victories in the majors.
Oh boy, did he have a fastball. And there is

(02:25:43):
nothing faster than a minor league pitcher with a fastball
under bad lights.

Speaker 11 (02:25:49):
Boom.

Speaker 3 (02:25:50):
I'll tell you that ball is like lightning. And he
stands up there, this big, strong bull of a kid,
and he's got that hat pulled down. He's in that
gray You know, there's nothing that looks more menacing than
the gray traveling uniform the enemy. They're gray, you know,
they're dark gray uniforms, those drab colories. Tool. And he

(02:26:12):
stands up there and he's getting his signed yeas just
floats out there, as clean and as beautiful as you
care to hear it. That kid picture just looks down
hears it, big John can't help, but hear it. He's
done there and John is just standing. The one thing

(02:26:34):
you learn when you work before a crowd, don't listen,
but that doesn't never works. You don't listen, but you hear.
There's a difference, you know, between listening and hearing. You
can stand up there and you can close the ears,

(02:26:56):
you can close the mind. But there's something that's open.
Some antenna picks it up. Yeah has boom, yeah boom,
and his kid looks down, he gets his sign up,
goes the foot and he lays in a fastball. Do

(02:27:18):
you know that beautiful sound that I think men appreciate
it more than women of a real fastball hitting a
catcher's man who it just goes. You could just hear
it echoes boo. You hear it coming back from the stand,
that snap strike one. Big John didn't even see the swing.

(02:27:41):
His reflexes, you know, are that little quarter of a
millisecond too late. That's what happens, you know, the big ballplayers.
It isn't that they lose their swing. The swing is
still as beautiful. But did you notice what was happening
to Ted Williams At the end of Ted Williams' career
for the first time in his life. He was hitting
him for left field. He was swinging just a little

(02:28:03):
poo late. That ball was going off down the third baseline,
and the minute they started to go left of the
third baseline, Ted hung up his spikes the reflex and
so big John is ten and these two mud Hens
are going back and forth. One of them, by the way,
was a forty six year old outfielder who had been playing.

(02:28:27):
He played in the majors before the war, before the war,
and now he's a big round figure who owns a
bowling alley in town. The only reason he was playing
with the mud Hens is because he could still wail
the daylights out of it. He was just he was
an animal. There are certain ballplayers that don't have reflexes.
They're just animals, just animals, And he was just like

(02:28:47):
an animal. This guy could hit a ball. He's probably
seventy years old now and he can hit a ball
six hundred feet, but he can't run. He's an animal.
He'd hit a ball in you's a boom off the
wall and he's still air running this bowling ball. You know, well,
you can imagine how this guy must to hit one.
He's on second, he's got a double, and so Harry

(02:29:08):
is dancing off a second. This forty six year old outfield,
he's bouncing back and forth. And on third is this wiry,
spinfully shortstop who, by the way, came up and became
known as a superlative glove man in the National League.
This kid is moving. He's got that fanged deep look

(02:29:28):
of the glove man, the one sixty five hitter, but
who's got a glove like a vacuum clean and he
just moves back and forth. On third, you know, Big
John is standing up there. Twelve to two, last of
the ninth inning. Toledo mudd Hens are taking on the
Indianapolis Caps, and they ain't making it. The smoke is

(02:29:51):
coming down in over the left field screen and you
can't even see the center fielder because the fog is
setting in. Now and a couple of guys get up
and go home very ostentatiously. Let me tell you nothing
is more ostentatious than the left field crowd leaving in
a minor league ball game. All six of them get up.
Now they walk out carrying their beer cans. You know

(02:30:13):
they go well, Big John is up there. Ten minutes
go by. It seemed like it's like being played underwater.
And now the count stands at three balls and one
strike and his clown rull walkyr John, that's your hit
for the night run and walk yeah, well, three and one.

(02:30:42):
The kid makes his mistake. That same fastball over the
outside corner comes down and Big John, remember is a pro,
he has seen them all. He's batted against Feller, he's
batted against Gomez, he's batted against Roughing, and his kid
throws that same pitch. And I can't tell you how

(02:31:04):
I felt as an announcer.

Speaker 6 (02:31:07):
There was that sound that just like that Big John
just moved and.

Speaker 3 (02:31:13):
You could see those shoulders. He dug in and he
got it right on the fat part, and that ball
just climbed up up up, didn't even bend, you know,
the kind of doesn't go up. It just went.

Speaker 7 (02:31:26):
Off into the fog.

Speaker 3 (02:31:29):
And the outfeelers didn't even turn, they just stood there.
That ball was one hundred and fifty feet over the
left feeler's head when it was going up and out,
and Big John's just starts to move, you know, that
smarty drop the home run hit hisself, you know, see well,

(02:31:56):
I want to tell you I had never seen a moment.
I've seen major league ball games. I've never seen a
moment that came anywhere near that. And you know, there's
a little smattering of applause after all. That makes it,
now what twelve to five, And there's a little applause,
And you could see this big fat slob sitting back
at third base and he is turned around. Now, a

(02:32:18):
slab is always a slob, you know. He's turned around
and he's hey, peanuts, peanuts. He ain't even gonna look
Hey peanuts, peanuts, Hey peanut, man, come on, and Big
John just ron's third base, you know, and he doesn't
look up. You know this ballplayers never look up. You know,
he doesn't look up. Hey man, he just roun's third base,

(02:32:38):
and he's heading for the doug guy. You ought to
see a minor league dugout. I'll tell you. It's a
park bench with a hole under it, you know. And
he's heading for the dugout, you know, and the crowd
gives in my hand. He just sort of pulls the
hat a little bit and he ducks in. I'll always
to the last day, to the last.

Speaker 7 (02:32:55):
Day of my life.

Speaker 3 (02:32:56):
I'll remember that number twelve, that great big blue and
red number twelve on the back. He bends over at
the giant man, he ducks under and he goes well.
The ballgame slowly petered up, and three days later in
the Toledo Blade, it was announced that Big John had retired.

(02:33:21):
Now it sounds like one of those strangely pat stories
factual proof. And I suspect that Big John somewhere tonight.
I don't care where he is.

Speaker 11 (02:33:30):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (02:33:31):
By one more thing, I saw him on a Phil
Rizzuto interviewer not more than a year ago, and you
know one of those things where Phil Rizzuto's up there
and he says, hey, here's one of the old Yankees
up here today. Drop by, what are you doing John?
You know? He says, well, I'm selling insurance somewhere and
I'm head of the Little League, and I'm interested in children.

(02:33:55):
And he says clean, Yeah he is, you know, And
he's a clean, limb looking guy. He looks it's like
an insurance man. Now, he's got a pair of glasses,
you know, with the big brims, and Phil is talking
to him, and Phil says, gee, I'll never forget the
time against Cleveland. John, I remember the time when you
caught and he's talking. Yeah, he says, yeah, I remember that.
And you remember the time Demjo and they're talking about

(02:34:16):
the great Yankees and I wanted to jump up and say, John,
tell him about the night in Toledo, tell him about
the night you really did it and you know it's funny.
Oh yes, gee, wow, what is the station here? We've
gone ten minutes past time FCC. I'm sorry, we get

(02:34:37):
carried away. What station is this? Friends? The Big Apple? Yes, friends,
you poor fellow suffers. We're in the big time, aren't we.
Gang We're New York. He's right. Oh listen, I'll tell

(02:35:05):
you one more. I have to, you know, because because baseball,
and I don't want to. I don't want to get
hung up on baseball too much. But baseball, in so
many ways is truly an American expression. And when baseball
is played in hot weather in the middle of the summer,

(02:35:26):
when the Pennant race is over, have you ever watched
two seventh place teams play in Kansas? I mean really,
you know, you guys are New Yorkers. You're used to
watching the Yankees play. You know, you're used to watching
the Dodgers, the Giants, and the Mets are colorful. Believe me,
they're colorful. Have you ever watched two completely gray teams

(02:35:47):
play no color whatsoever, no absolutely no chance of even
any excitement. Well, I am living out in the Midwest,
and the Chicago White Sox have been over one hundred
years in the Second Division. They owned it, They owned
the second Division. We used to resent it when when

(02:36:08):
a team would be in eighth place and the White
Sox were out of it. Now it was like it
was just unnatural and it just felt rotten. You know,
it's like somebody's getting pushy. See. So the White Sox
were the last place ball club. Well, certainly out of
the middle of the depression, the White Sox developed a
colorful ballplayer. Now, color on a bad ball team consists

(02:36:32):
of being worse. Not like on a good ball team,
color consists of being Mickey Mantle, you know. Color consists
of being somebody like well, who is all right, I'll
give you one guess who in the entire history of
the Mets ball club was by far the most colorful
ball player. Marvelous Mar Have you ever seen Marvelous Mar

(02:36:57):
with that concrete glove out there bravely, you know. Oh yeah, marvelous.
Marv grew to be loved by the Mets fans because
he was aggressive about his ineptitude. You know, the others
would fight against it, they'd cover it up at Marv.
Let me tell you when Marv made a bad throw
from first over to third, believe me, it was upper Decksville.

(02:37:18):
You know, that was Marv. Well, the White Sox developed
the ball player. He used to be a pleasure to
go out and see him. He was, without question, the
worst left fielder whoever played baseball. No, he really was.
But the reason he played he was an instinctive hitter.
He had absolute impeccable instincts. He was a three fifty

(02:37:42):
hitter when he felt like when he was kidding around
three twenty, you know, that kind of thing, and he
just he'd play around at bat and he would come
up there with the pass. He'd pretend like, you know,
he'd do the little I can't I keep thinking, I'm sorry,
I'm on the radio. But he used to do a thing,
you know, he used to do a thing with his hips,

(02:38:04):
you know, like this, he'd come up and go like that.
He'd wave with the audience. He did a thing. He
would do a takeoff on some of the more prominent
tenizens of Greenwich Avenue, you know what I mean. And
oh they used to make Feller mad, you know. Oh
and maybe those guys mad that he because he didn't
take the game series they play around. You know, he
gets up there and he'd do all kinds of bits,

(02:38:26):
like he come up with his hat backwards. Well you know,
I mean, what are you going to say when a
guy's batting, he's got the bills sticking on in the back.
He get up there like that hit, and of course
the crowd loved it. He'd drill a triple down the
left field line with his hat backwards, or he would
do it. I never forgot one time he hits a triple,
sure triple, you know, he belts went out there and

(02:38:47):
then he goes down pretending he's got a wooden leg.
You know. Oh, Jimmy Dikes came out and the dug
a hundred bucks, you idiot, and he goes I'll tell
you it was, how wan are you cheer? And you
know the poor son of a gun was getting busted

(02:39:10):
two hundred bucks. Well, one day this is what had
happened one day. It was a hot day. I'm a
patrol boy. You know. They used to let the boy scouts,
the patrol boys in free during the depression because they
figured that the back ends, the fannies of these kids
would keep the seats clean. They didn't have to hire
guys to clean up the seats, you know, and that

(02:39:30):
kind of stuff. So we'd sit out there every afternoon,
we saw all the ball games. We'd wear our you know,
the patrol boys badge. You know, we'd wear them every
I wore it more in the summer when school was
out than when school was in, you know. So we'd
go in there, we'd sit down there, and one day,
our left fielder makes three consecutive errors on three balls

(02:39:51):
hit directly at it. I mean, you know the kind
of errors where he's circling under it like this, you know,
he's circling oh like that. The last instant, you know,
Donnie runs hits the wall and picks it up and
throws it in the stands. You know that that kind
of well, you see, and what was so sad about
it is that the ball team was playing a fairly

(02:40:11):
decent game, you know, well he was kicking it away
literally kicking it away, kicking the balls everything. So finally
the score at the end of the eighth inning is
something like seven to one. The pitcher that's pitching, yeah,
I know, you develop a kind it's it's kind of
it's not really like Roger Craig, because Roger Craig was
the was beloved of the met fans. You ought to

(02:40:33):
be a pitcher on a second division team out of town.
You have lost nineteen games, you have won two, and
you're up there and you've got this left field and
you're losing another one to Detroit and everything you throw
you have that little thing. So don't let him hit

(02:40:54):
it to left field. That inhibits a guy, I'm telling you,
it inhibits. So in the eighth inning, score seven to one.
Somebody drills a ground ball, a single right through short.
It comes hopping along. The outfielder comes up to it,
and suddenly he sees the ball. He gets one of
his nutty ideas. He lays down in front of it.

(02:41:15):
This one is not going to get past him. See
he lays down, and the whole crowd backs up, you know,
and you can see Dikes rise up off the bench.
Dikes was the manager he rises off the bench. You
see his head going down. Here's the outfit of laying there.
The ball is rolling at him and he's got his glove.
He's waiting. See it's not going to go the last instant,

(02:41:37):
it takes a bad hop over him all the way
to the wall. Well, he gets he gets up, you know,
he looks. He gets up. The crowd is roaring, The
runners are going around. It's a merry go round. You know.
They guard the guy that hit the ball. It's the

(02:41:58):
longest triple he ever guy, you know. And the outfielder
gets up, picks up the ball. He's got it ended.
You won't believe it. It gets stuck in the webbing
of his glove. He can't get it out of the
glove and he forget it. Home run inside the park. Well,
they finally get the side out and he comes walking in.

(02:42:19):
You know how ballplayers run in after the inning, if
you watched them, you know they sort of run in.
You should have seen this guy come down the side.
He went right by the wall and he's sidling inad
he's examining the dandelions and he's coming in. Well, he
arrives right down there by the dugout and Jimmy Dykes

(02:42:41):
came out, and Dykes took one. Just stood out there
like this. He came running across. Dyke says, like that,
just pointed in fall view of all the pointed to
the clubhouse. Go you're out of the game. The aftermath
of the story is that all the White Sox fans
got together and voted this guy, the worst outfielder whoever

(02:43:06):
played in the majors, into the All Star team. So
help me. They voted him into the All Star team.
He made the All Star Team, and in the third
inning of the All Star Game, one of the All
Stars belted a long shot and they said, it's going
out to left field, and all the White Sox fans

(02:43:27):
are sitting there watching. We'll show that rotten league now.
He dropped the ball the runners. Finally, the White Sox
got back at a Yankee pitcher who was pitching, so losers,
there are plenty of you out there, and if you
stick with it, you may make the All Star team.

(02:43:50):
Banks for coming.

Speaker 1 (02:43:56):
From July twenty fifth, nineteen sixty four, sponsored by the
program originates from the Limelight New York City, Turtles and
radio evangelists doing a remote the congregation praise for Shepherd.
Two girls on a bus, army story learning to climb poles,
air races. It's Shep's birthday.

Speaker 8 (02:44:16):
This is WRM and WRFM in New York.

Speaker 3 (02:44:21):
Tell you you give a guy with a weather report
in his hand, you give them five seconds on the
air and you're dead.

Speaker 9 (02:44:25):
Friends.

Speaker 3 (02:44:26):
All right, let's give the weather a big hand. Hooray
for weather. And now on that note, and once again
we've returned to action down here, deep in the bowels
of Greenwich Village. And you can take that anyway you'll

(02:44:46):
want to. That reminds me of a terrible parable, but
we'll save that until after the air show is over.
But nevertheless, we're in Greenwich Ville.

Speaker 9 (02:45:00):
And where are we?

Speaker 3 (02:45:01):
Friends? Where? Where do they have the best Hamburgers in
the world? All right, what's the best joint you've ever
been in in your life? Are you glad you're here?
Nothing like a free commercial. You realize you've all been patsies,

(02:45:23):
don't you. Yes, we're down in the Greenwich Village sector
known as Sheridan Square, just south of fourteenth Street, where
the search for truth and beauty goes on ceaselessly, where
life is lived to the pulis where each one lives
his little life like a burning flame of passion at

(02:45:46):
the sound of illy tune sears robut guitars play out
the obligato to the wailing cry of mankind spinning towards eternity.
How'd you like that? All right? Eh?

Speaker 9 (02:46:01):
As it describes our lives.

Speaker 3 (02:46:03):
This is the way it is. Oh, speaking of the
way it is. Since this is next week, National Barbecue Week,
National Together this week, and this is a program for
those that think young and for the sociables who drank

(02:46:23):
the right pop, we might as well start stripping it
down to its basics tonight. And I think the only
way to do that is to tell a story about
the army and about that strange, free floating fear that
men feel when they're confronted with what appears to be
the innocent. Why do you think that everybody in that

(02:46:46):
bus was scared out of his skull? Because we live
in a society where we believe that all young girls
are beautiful. We really do. This is a young girl
society in America. Oh yeah, we lay wreaths at the
feet of the young chicks in this country. And so

(02:47:09):
when one comes aboard the ship, who's tattooed, who carries whether?
Our newspaper says axe murderers lays nine in baptub picture
on page seven, and she bursts in the maniaca laughter.
There is a fear that just cannot be described, that
goes through everybody, women and children, men, chicks, bus drivers,

(02:47:31):
diesel engines. Everything was scared because it goes against nature,
or at least what we think nature is. And I
suspect this is why the armed forces, the army, the
navy have given rise to the greatest literature that man knows.
What do you think the iLiads about those guys were

(02:47:54):
not on picnics? What do you think Elektra is about?
All the great classical Greek drama has to do with
the fantastic clash of those open passions. For one time,
you know, we mostly think of fear coming from the
fear of another man. I say, we don't fear other

(02:48:15):
men as much as we fear things which are not men.
We know the other man, we know the evil that's
in it, you see, and we can judge it, we
can play with it. Oh yeah, for one afternoon, I'm
about I think I was about eighteen, which is a
very interesting age. You are just emerging from the chrysalis

(02:48:41):
and you are about to tiptoe into full butterflyhood. You
got wings, but they ain't dry, you see, you think
they are. They're stretching out there, you see, but they
don't reading carry you as well as they should. They
look big. You may be nine feet tall at eighteen

(02:49:02):
years old, but inside you're five feet two and fat,
and you got skin trouble. Oh yeah, that's it's it's
definitely there, you see. And I'm eighteen years old and
I've got this. I've got the uniform of the United
States Army on me. That gives you an illusion of
having no age. Oh yeah, you meet you meet a

(02:49:24):
guy who's who's a first sergeant. He may be in
the army twenty years. You never get the sense that
he's older than you are. You're both soldiers. You got
this anonymous thing, especially when you've got things like web belling,
webbing on you, canteens, you know what I mean. Yeah,

(02:49:44):
you got this great big gas mask hanging over here.
You've got a bayonet strapped onto you, you got a
tin hap and you're you're somehow able to hide that
little five feet two shrimp with skin trouble that's way
down there that wants to drink.

Speaker 9 (02:50:00):
Oval team.

Speaker 3 (02:50:04):
You know, you keep saying I want to popsicle when
the whole gang is going into the idel hour beer hall.
You know, they're all clumping in. You know, a bunch
of eighteen year old guys. You can see I want
to popsicle and the first guy inline says, burden, doubble.

Speaker 9 (02:50:21):
What do you say?

Speaker 3 (02:50:22):
And you don't say I want to coke? You know,
we hear all your stuff clanking, And so you move
through that world very tenuously. When you're down at the PX,
you pretend, you know, you say, oh boy, you should
have seen me Saturday night. Oh boy, was I bombed
out of my skull? Oh Saturday night at the USO.

(02:50:42):
You know, that's where you spend it cadging donuts, sort
of apologizing.

Speaker 9 (02:50:48):
And so you move through this life very carefully.

Speaker 3 (02:50:54):
In civilian life, you know, you can pretend the minute
you get home that you're whatever you really are. How
many guys, the minute they get home from the office,
get out to their enn, take off their shoes, put
on their sandals, become eight years old. They sit there
fleck their front watch, They watching Old Lucy rerun, you know,

(02:51:19):
drinking beer. Oh you see those guys at the office,
great big suits and they walk around they have gray
and the hair, you know, and smoke big cigars. They
call their subordinate son. Get them out on that boat.
You see them with the Bermuda shorts and they're sitting
there with the tennis shoes. You know, little guys, they

(02:51:39):
become eight. Well in the army, you can't, you see,
you can't come back to the barracks from the rifle range,
you know and put on your little T shirt that
says Captain Marble.

Speaker 9 (02:51:52):
You know, you just can't do that.

Speaker 3 (02:51:55):
It's a very different scene. So the guys are always
held in and they're suppric you know, and the fears
that they feel are fears which they can't really put
into words. You can't. The real fears are not the
obvious ones that guys make movies about, like fighting the Germans.
You know that all the years I'm in the army,
I never hear anybody saying, oh boy, am I scared

(02:52:16):
when we get up there? Oh man, this isn't there.
They don't talet because that's so abstract. Let me tell
you what they are scared of really want to know.
Tell you, I'm eighteen years old, see, and they've shutt
at me from one signal course school to the next,
and each one is somehow getting a little more sinister

(02:52:38):
than the last, each one. I remember the first time,
I'm working on a piece of equipment, working on the
circuit diagram, and they say this diagram is for self
destructive elements, and it's got bombs in it, you know,
And up to this point you've just been taking tubes

(02:52:58):
out and putting them in. You know, this thing is
all white to blow up. Then I tiptoed into the
next school and it seems such a great one. They
said it was a pole line construction school. That sounds
like nothing just labor to you, doesn't it pole line construction?
And everyone said, you know that sounds pretty good, you know.

(02:53:20):
And they picked guys that were in good physical condition.
We figured that was for carrying poles and stuff. You said, yeah,
they did. They picked guys that had a certain physical setup,
good physical condition, and they gave us physical tests. We
ran around and stuff, and I said, well, we're gonna
send you the pole line construction school guys. And so
we arrived on a Friday night in this new school.

(02:53:43):
It was dark. You ever go into a summer camp
where they put you in a cabin or in a tent,
and you can't see the rest of it out there,
and you just suspect something greats out there, the lake,
the mountains, you know, And you sit in there and
everybody's talking. It's Friday night, Saturday morning dawns, and we
look around and over on one end of our area

(02:54:09):
is a field. Now picture this in your mind. This
field was absolutely denuded of every blade of grass, absolutely
flat like a table. They had rolled it and rolled
it and rolled it until it stretched maybe two miles.
It's fantastic distance, just two miles of absolutely bare earth,

(02:54:29):
not a hill, nothing in it. But on that bare
earth was a solid porcupine, a fur of telephone poles,
bare telephone poles sticking up like some insane, surrealistic forest
that everyone has stripped.

Speaker 9 (02:54:46):
The leaves from me looked.

Speaker 3 (02:54:48):
Like skeletons, just these white poles of all different heights,
like a gigantic graveyard, stretching out and out and out
and reaching up and up, and poles and big poles.
Now you look at me and you say, well, what's
scary about that? That's exactly my reaction. The first morning

(02:55:09):
it looked like fun, kind of like Jim. And so
Sunday passed peacefully, and now Monday morning arrived. The whistles blow,
and you know that first day in school, that little
tremulous feeling you have. You don't know what's gonna happen.
You look around, you know, you sort of stand there

(02:55:29):
and you try to be on your best behavior. You
don't know about this first sergeant, You don't know about
this duty corporal nothing. You know, you're gonna play it
real cool. You're gonna watch and see what happens. That's
the that's the big thing in the army that you'll learn.
Watch and see me. Watch, keep watching, keep your eye open.
So we're all standing there, and the eyes were shifting
or back and forth, and this guy is walking up

(02:55:50):
and down in front of us. You men are here,
Colin Pauline construction. Any of your guy, but any climbing.
You ain't done any climbing anyhow well, you know all
of us have climbed trees.

Speaker 9 (02:56:08):
You know, we've all climbed little things, and.

Speaker 3 (02:56:10):
So you know everybody says, no, I mean any real
climbing nothing. We're all standing nobody, volunteers. They just watch.
You're gonna be in charge of Corporal Aberanati. I was
gonna teach you how to climb long lines, construction poles.

(02:56:31):
It ain't easy. And some of you guys aren't coming back,
coming back from what he means from that field. He
doesn't mean the Germans. Corporal Abernati take over. And here

(02:56:53):
comes this angry little man, built like a bowling pin, and.

Speaker 9 (02:56:58):
He clinks when he walks.

Speaker 3 (02:56:59):
He's got on you know, he's got these little iron
things with the spikes. He's got a big white belt
around him that's got he's got plyers, hammers, it's got
big wire cutters. He's got big leather gloves attached to it.
And then he's got a huge belt that hangs way down,
silver clips on it. And he walks out in front

(02:57:19):
of us, his tin hat, you know, the snotty little guy.
He walks out and he says, all right, you guys,
we're going down.

Speaker 9 (02:57:26):
In the day room.

Speaker 13 (02:57:27):
Now.

Speaker 3 (02:57:28):
We got one hundred and fifty sets of climbers and
I'm gonna show you how to put them on. Follow
Let's go, let's go. Come on, get on a ball,
let's go, and we're run legs. This the end of
the day room and they got all these things laid out,
all these climbers. What is a climber? This is the
kind of thing that I'm referring to. There are simple
little pieces of our existence that can strike terror into

(02:57:54):
the hearts of men that most other people don't even
know about. All of us are rate of guns, spears, swords.
How many of you know the fear that almost everybody
who's ever used the par of climbers feels when he
sees him. I mean, a real sick fear. We didn't

(02:58:14):
know it yet, you know. We're sort of saying, hey, Charlie, look,
you know wow, you know we're putting them on.

Speaker 9 (02:58:18):
Gee.

Speaker 3 (02:58:18):
Look and you put them on it and you start walking,
and it's like wearing baseball spikes. You go clank, clank,
and I'll tell you how it works. On right, here
is a long spike that sticks out. It's about three
inches below your shoe. It comes up like this in
a big piece of metal. There's a big belt around here,
and a belt here felt here, and a belt here

(02:58:39):
in this big spike. You stand there, boy, and you
really got a grip, you know, you walk sort of
stiff legged like that. He says, all right, you guys,
pick up your equipment belts. Now, don't ever wear them tight.
You hear that they'll tear your gut out, tear your
gut out. You'll wear them loose so that if you're
flying through the air, you can get rid of it
sat on the way down, so you don't get stabbed

(02:59:01):
by your own pliers. So he says, where I'm lose,
he says, and I want you to practice working with
that fuckle, because if you start cutting out, the first
thing you do is throw your safety belt off, unclip
this thing and let go. Somebody said, corporal, what is

(02:59:23):
cutting out?

Speaker 9 (02:59:26):
You'll find out?

Speaker 3 (02:59:28):
Well, so we get all prepared. You know, there's a
great feeling of you know, all kids have a secret
little love of putting things on their body, strapping things on,
you know, little hats and stuff like that. Oh yeah,
and each one of us shares. It's, let's face it,
we all do. And so there is a kind of fun,
you know, putting this thing on. Big pair of wirecutters.

(02:59:51):
Here's a big, tremendous collection of pliers all going down
like this, and it's yours. It's this usue to you.
It's all new and beautiful. And so he gets us
out there and he says, all right, man, you're all
equipped now for poleline construction duty. Don't kid yourself because
you got the equipment.

Speaker 9 (03:00:09):
You know nothing.

Speaker 3 (03:00:10):
You don't about face. Take one step forward in the
company street, right face, polehad hotch and we go off
and get double time like this and clank clank clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank,
clank clanklin and we're getting closer. These poles are coming.
And we had been seeing him, you know, from about

(03:00:31):
a mile distance. Clank clink, clank, clank, clink, clank, clank,
and they're getting bigger clank clink. The closer we get,
the higher they get, the skinnier they get. They're getting higher.
And suddenly we're here and there they are, and we
stand all right now, man, I will demonstrate how you

(03:00:55):
take your first hitch on a pole. He goes like this,
clank boom zoom. Bobby goes. He's like a monkey. Come dunk, dunk,
dunk kumk he.

Speaker 9 (03:01:07):
When we watch.

Speaker 3 (03:01:09):
Have you ever seen those guys on poles you've all
seen them. Doesn't it look like fun? Doesn't it look easy? Gang? Well,
I'll tell you, he says. All right, now watch this.
He's up there in the pole. We're all watching him.
Keep your knees stiff, swing out, lean back on your belt.

(03:01:30):
That belt is not a safety belt. It's a work belt. Everybody.
You know that. I knew up to that time. It
felt you put the belt on it.

Speaker 9 (03:01:39):
It keeps you up there.

Speaker 3 (03:01:40):
You know it's a sick that ain't no belt for safety.
That the work belt. You lean back your work like that, say,
But if you cut out, if them things go oom,
you get rid of that thing and down your goal,
he said. Don't you hang on? He says, I'll tell
you why. You'd reached the bottom of that pole looking
like a porcupine, You would have eight foot slivers that

(03:02:01):
went in here and came out the top of your head.
Good God, you know I'm telling you this is the truth.
You know, we're all of a sudden it's getting very menacing,
you know, this little pole or we're gonna climb? He says, Now,
are you guys in the first road there? I want
you to take one step forwhead hut all right, now,

(03:02:22):
each one of you address your pole. That's army talk.
That means, look at the damn thing. Address your pole,
and upon command, I want all of you to take
your right foot raise it above the left, so plant
it in and take a short hitch up and then
up up up one, two, three, and stop at the

(03:02:43):
third one. So everyboddy's stay. Wait. Guess who's fourth from
the end. And here's the telephone pole. Up to this time,
telephone poles have been just little things. You carve stuff on,
you know, now you spit on, or you throw rocks
at you know, all of a sudden, this thing's leering it.
You're just leering at me. And you can smell the creosote,

(03:03:04):
and you can see where millions of other guys have
climbed up those holes. They've gone up, and the pole
looks as rotten as cheesecake. This has been climbed on
since the first German went into the wind of the Poland.
Ten million Signal Corps soldiers have climbed to the top
of these things and have seen and looked at the

(03:03:25):
bull right over his horns, and have climbed down. And
now here I am I stand, he says, right foot.

Speaker 9 (03:03:36):
End of the pole.

Speaker 3 (03:03:37):
Hip. I'm hanging it, you know, and all of a sudden,
ankle's boy, I'll tell you, you discover you've got ankles
of pure spaghetti. You know. I'm just hanging like this,
and I'm only three inches from the ground, you know,
like this, everyone's hanging. He's right left, food up, hump up, pop.

Speaker 9 (03:03:57):
I'm hanging like this.

Speaker 3 (03:03:58):
You're hanging, he said, all right now, and everybody's teetering,
and that pole is going up. And here were three
feet from the ground, and that pole goes all the
way up into heaven somewhere. He said, hold on right now.
The easy part is getting up. You know, you never

(03:04:20):
think of coming down. That all seems seems so easy.
He says, all right, now, raise your foot straight up.
Do not bend your ankle with that.

Speaker 9 (03:04:28):
I go whoa.

Speaker 3 (03:04:30):
Eight guys on a ten go down on their things
and know they're laid there, and he says, all right, man,
get up, Get up your slop, get up. Do you
realize that if you eight had done that another three
feet higher, we have the ambulance here, yes, yes, yes,
I know. Well discontinued for the first morning, and as

(03:04:57):
it continued, the fear built in at the same time,
I'm a peculiar kind of pride bills up. It must
be the same thing with guys that walk tight ropes.
You're scared, but you're glad you can do it. And
so we began to climb higher and higher, until by
the end of the second day we are climbing thirty
foot poles. Now a thirty foot pole seems you know,

(03:05:20):
thirty feet seems a little bit to you, but that's
almost three stories. Now. Can you imagine yourself hanging at
the top of a tiny toothpick three stories up, just
hanging in this see and with the stories ringing in
your ears of cutting out, and the wind is blowing
back and forth, back and forth. He said, Look, we

(03:05:45):
are gonna work on the thirty foot poles for two
straight days. Then we're gonna climb. Then we're gonna climb.
You know, we figured, you know, let's stop here. We're
pretty good now, you know, you know this is good. Here.
The fourth day we arrive at what they call the

(03:06:06):
major pole area. These poles range from forty five feet
to ninety six feet in height. Right, have you ever
seen a night? He knows what I'm talking about have
you ever seen a ninety six foot high pole? Oh
my god, they're made out of wood, the same kind
of wood. They're not much thicker than the others. It's

(03:06:28):
like climbing up a string almost ten stories. Well, on
the fifth day, we're beginning to develop this thing inside
of us.

Speaker 9 (03:06:40):
We hated to get out there.

Speaker 3 (03:06:41):
You know, that terrible fear that you have a failure
of not you want to stay in bed. Well, by
i'd say roughly Thursday, it was almost impossible to get
us up. We all pretended we were tired. But every day,
you know, we get these things on and start putting
them on. Each start because you knew, you knew what
had happen. You just knew something had to happen. We're

(03:07:03):
now working on the sixty footers. Sixty feet is roughly
five stories or a little above. And about three o'clock
in the afternoon, I have worked my way up to
the top of a sixty foot pole, and I'm looking down.
You know, by the way, that was one of the
great commandants. Don't look down, your nuts need stand. I

(03:07:26):
come looking down, Gassler hot on, and of course immediately
you look up. Have you ever looked up from ninety foot. Boy,
those clouds are going and everything. A bird goes past
you and he's under you.

Speaker 9 (03:07:42):
You know, you're.

Speaker 3 (03:07:44):
You're hanging up on this thing. You see. You keep
saying yourself, don't look down, don't look down, don't look down.
You're sixty feet up and the wind goes. You're swaying
a full two feet back and forth, and you look
down your way out here, and you're way over here
and on your and you can hear your client creek
and way down below, I hear the corporate life. You guys,

(03:08:07):
come on down, cold down, and I start going down.
I made about three steps down, and by now, you know,
you figure you're pretty good about three steps. And suddenly
I hear a rip. It's a ripping sound, just like
somebody ripping a pair of levis. And I felt something happen,

(03:08:30):
a funny feeling just in the left foot. I just
felt it, and I dug my right in and my
left foot is floating free. It has cut off. I
just put this thing back in like this. I start
working it. I get it stuck in solid. Now I'm
sweating like a pig hanging on and the breeze is
blowing past me. I'm swaying back and forth. I start

(03:08:53):
bending and now everything goes. You know what happens when
you get scared, Everything you've learned goes out of your head, gone, gone, gone.
You become a basic animal. And all it says that
basic animals hang on, hang on, don't move. Hanging on.

Speaker 9 (03:09:11):
There, I see and I look out.

Speaker 3 (03:09:12):
I see the other guys are going down, and I
hear this guy, come.

Speaker 9 (03:09:15):
On, shepherd.

Speaker 3 (03:09:16):
And I just hear come on, shepherd.

Speaker 9 (03:09:20):
So I start working my way down.

Speaker 3 (03:09:24):
I get about halfway down when suddenly I hear floating
up to me this strange It sounded like a siren.
It just went wow. And I heard a silence, and
I knew somebody had fallen. It wasn't me. I knew

(03:09:48):
somebody had gone No. Really, it was a terrible moment,
you know. And I don't know whether I should look
down or what, you know. And I start working down
and I hear a lot of talk down and a
lot of guys running around. And I'm working my way down,
and the sergeant hollers, sheppard, stayway.

Speaker 10 (03:10:04):
Your dog, wool.

Speaker 3 (03:10:07):
He could see that I was chicken again. I'm hanging there.
I peek down, and I see about thirty guys all
around the base of a pole, and there is that
little tiny figure, and I see the jeep coming over
the field, and I can see that big white wagon
with the big red crosses coming over the field. And

(03:10:27):
I'm hanging there, just hanging. That wind is blowing way
off over in the distance of the Ozark Hills, you
know that you sing those folk songs about, And I'm
hanging I'm looking. They picked this guy up and he
isn't moving. I just see he's just all a limp.
He's hanging there into the wagon and off they go.

(03:10:49):
And then it comes the sergeant.

Speaker 9 (03:10:52):
Yells up, shephead.

Speaker 3 (03:10:56):
Do you want me to come up after you? Do
you want me to come up after? You know? They
really do. They get very scared when there's a casualty
on the climbing field, right, They absolutely panic because everybody
else then goes down. It's like one guy falls. They're
like leaves. They come down. Oh yeah, you lose your all,
your guts, your nerve, everything goes. Your knees get weak,

(03:11:18):
and down you go and you're forty feet up, you know,
you come down like a rock. So I said, no,
you know, and I start edging down. I keep thinking
to myself, keep your knees straight, keep your knees stiff.
Now one, two down, down, down, And I start working
my way.

Speaker 7 (03:11:34):
Down and I finally touched the ground.

Speaker 9 (03:11:43):
Good guy.

Speaker 3 (03:11:46):
And I stand down there and the nobody's paying any
attention to me.

Speaker 9 (03:11:48):
Now you know, I'm down.

Speaker 3 (03:11:50):
I walk I go walking over to the rest of
the guys and they're sort of talking around. You know, well,
let's go, and I'm taking a ten minute break. And
they do not lie. As you know in the army,
they do not allow you to dwell on the last crash.
So everybody finishes his cigarette and he says, all right,
now address up, pop. We are carrying aloft crosstrees. Pick

(03:12:14):
up your cross tree. You all know how to mount crosstrees.
We've been practicing. The cross tree is the thing that
goes over. This is the first time we have ever
done it on the top of a high pole. And
so I begin to climb, and each step I am
getting more scared, and I can hear the sergeant running

(03:12:39):
back and forth on it. All right, dancer, can I'm
old It's all right boy, he knows you put her
all up they're scared, all right, boy con gacar. And
about halfway through climbing up, the sergeant suddenly hollers, halt, halt.
I'm standing there. This thing is swinging in the wind,

(03:13:00):
that cross paw the wind. I look over and about
thirty five feet up, one of the gis has frozen.
He's hysterical, he's busted, and he's just hanging on there
and he's frozen. He's crying, yelling, and we're all looking
and all of us. He's one of us. This whole

(03:13:21):
tree full of guys, it's like eight million monkeys in
the trees. And one monkey has flipped his wig, you know,
we're all hanging everything. And he's screaming, and the sergeant says,
go on up, your yellow belly, get up there. And
the guy continues to cry, and the sergeant says, all right,
I'm coming up after you, and he starts to climb

(03:13:44):
up like a fiend. He goes up and this kid
is looking down and he starts to climb again, with
a sergeant after it. I'm telling you the truth. I'm
not inventing this thing. The kid gets up to the
top and here we all are, now one hundred and
twenty guys with cross poles at the top of enormous

(03:14:06):
telephone poles sixty feet in the air. And the sergeant
goes back down and he says, all right, now, I
attached those poles. I went said, I haven't attached in
forty five seconds. I'm timing you when I give the go,
go go, and we start swaking up there. Book with
the boats were there taking your big bowlt out. Oh,

(03:14:30):
it's terrible when you have to let go. You know,
you gotta let go to get the stuff out. Ooh,
you're holding on, you're putting this thing on, and the
wind is turning these cross poles. It's like a big
airplane and the wind sixty feet up.

Speaker 9 (03:14:43):
Oh it's tight.

Speaker 3 (03:14:46):
Oh my god, it's it's tight. It's tight. And I
start climbing down. I start climbing down. I'm about thirty
feet on the way down now, and I feel like
I've made it. I'm in. I'm a pole line man.
And I start climbing down and I'm about halfway down
the pole and I look over at Gasser, who's two

(03:15:09):
poles away, my old buddy. I said, come on, Gesser.
And suddenly, ooh, I am in mid air. I'm telling
you the true story. I am in mid air and
that instinct went just like a clock. It says detached.

(03:15:29):
That felt quick then and I hit it going. It says,
kick away from the pole, and I am going down.
And the next thing I know, I am in the clinic.
It is ten days later, and I see above me

(03:15:50):
these poles, all these little pulleys, these winches. I'm laying
there and it just just like somebody turned the light
on it. It was just now, all of a sudden light.
I didn't come out gradually. I just came out. I'm
still on a pole. I didn't feel a thig. And
the girl comes over, this second lieutenant, this nurse. She

(03:16:12):
looks down at me, said, how are you Mac. That's
the army, you know, How are you Mac? And I said,
what happened? She'll be all right. She walks away, and
I could see out the window, way off in the distance,
the tops of the poles, just out there in the distance.

(03:16:35):
And about ten minutes after I came to, I could
hear him coming down the ward. I could hear my buddies.
Gas are coming, gassers coming. How are a sheep? You know?
How are a ep behind me is the sergeant now
suddenly looking down at me, he says, how are you
a cheper? Keep your knees tight? It's a sergeant, you

(03:16:55):
know you keep your knees tight. Speaking of tight knees,
what radio station is this? Man? An a firm nor yord?
And now let's give the sales department. It's rotten upon
the flesh. We'll be back in one minute. Are you

(03:17:18):
for a filter and rich flavor to.

Speaker 9 (03:17:21):
The logical move is Ellender.

Speaker 3 (03:17:28):
The logical move. The logical move is Ellender.

Speaker 10 (03:17:35):
The rich flavors cigarette with a white filter.

Speaker 9 (03:17:41):
The logical move. The logical move is.

Speaker 3 (03:17:48):
Are you for a filter?

Speaker 12 (03:17:49):
Ellen M has a modern all white filter, pure white
both inside and outside. And you get the good taste
of ellen M's rich flavor leaf, the good taste of
soft nature.

Speaker 7 (03:18:00):
Longer age tobaccos.

Speaker 3 (03:18:01):
So, if you're Florida, filter and rich flavor too dull,
Logico moved.

Speaker 9 (03:18:08):
Logico move is Ellen.

Speaker 3 (03:18:13):
But all right, all right, we're back in the limelight
here in the heart of Greenwich Village. And if you're
looking for a place to buy a hamburger and sit
around for an hour or so tonight, how long do
we be open three o'clock in the morning If you're
really decadent, we're here. But you know, fear is a
funny thing. Oh no, that's the wrong. Well it's the

(03:18:43):
village talk about a sight gag. Wow, These poor guys
are going to talk about this the rest of their lives.
And you know, when you hear me tell a story,
you always feel you know he's made it up.

Speaker 9 (03:19:04):
Believe me.

Speaker 3 (03:19:05):
Five years from now, these guys are gonna tell a
story about how, in the middle of a nightclub show,
in front of everybody, they went in the ladies room,
and everyone's gonna say, oh, Charlie, what a bunch your
faul For God's sakes, you know, there they are. You know,
if you think their faces are red, you ought to
see the bottoms of their feet.

Speaker 9 (03:19:22):
All the way down.

Speaker 3 (03:19:25):
Well, you know, I'll tell you, I'll tell you. I'm
I'm I'm really constantly interested, fascinated, bewildered, perplexed and whatnot
about what we are. No, seriously, I mean what we are.
And this idea of the free floating fear is something

(03:19:48):
that I think bears very heavily on us. Now, we're
all people here, we all have certain things in common.
I trust we're all human beings. We all know about death,
we all know about birth, we know how it feels
to breathe. Yeah, we're all human beings walking around. And

(03:20:10):
yet there are some things that are inside of us
that none of us ever talk about. And that is
at least one of them. Is this maniacal urge to
do away with yourself. It's there, you know it is there,
and you can see it on all sides. And I

(03:20:31):
remember the first time I really discovered this as a kid.
I am deeply involved in reading G eight and his
battle Aces. I'm reading stories about these are stories about flying.
They used to do terrific stories on flying. This was
like Western of its day. G eight and as battle
Aces lone egle Fair devil Aces and airplanes were always

(03:20:55):
something that were kind of abstract, even to us that
ride in them today. An airplane really isn't an airplane.
It's like a big machine, like an extension of your living.
If you ever thought it was an airplane, I think it.
I think it turned green. You know, I'm in a
real airplane with a big wings, flying out eight million
feet above the ground, you know, just barely hanging up there.

(03:21:17):
It would scare the daylights out you. Well, I'm reading
these magazines and I want to see airplanes. Well, I
was ten years old. My old man came home and
he said, tomorrow's your birthday, and he said, I'm gonna
take you to the air races. Have you ever been

(03:21:38):
to an air race? Very few people today alive remember
air races. For some reason or other, this has been
erased from our consciousness. You know. William Fulton wrote a
great book about it called Pylon. Well, the air race
was not flying from Los Angeles to California, And of

(03:21:59):
course I'm a kid, and I said, yeah, Dad, let's go. Wow,
you know, and I think in terms of people getting
into airplanes and sort of flying around, I'd heard about
air races. Now wait a minute, Hey, what's going on here.
Let's give it easy there, easy man. So I can't
figure out what this. You know, air race, It's just airplanes.
It's exciting. Well, outside of Chicago, the day that the
air race started, had this great field with a set

(03:22:23):
of stands, just like you see at a ballgame. Now
picture this in your mind. These are airplanes. Airplanes, not motorcycles,
not cars, not horses, airplanes, and they had these stands,
and there in the foreground is a kind of track,
and at the end of the field, and that field

(03:22:43):
didn't look any more any longer than maybe two football
fields put together.

Speaker 7 (03:22:47):
There are two pylons sticking up.

Speaker 3 (03:22:49):
Just little maybe fifty feet in the air, two little towers,
and down on the field were maybe seventy five tiny airplanes.
The airplanes were just motors with wings, little angry looking things.
They look like bees or something. And here down on
the field are the pilots. I think every one of.

Speaker 9 (03:23:12):
Us feels secretly.

Speaker 3 (03:23:14):
A kind of sense of awe at a pilot, even
a private pilot. He's doing something unnatural. He's got some
kind of magic. He does something against nature. He hovers
above the earth. Now I wonder we have father figures.
In fact, I suspect that this is gonna help gold
Water being a pilot chore. He's magic. Don't laugh, he's magic.

(03:23:39):
Oh yeah, Wait till Goldwater flies from coast to coast
in a jet plane spelling out vote for me. I'll
tell you it's gonna make a difference. I'm in. And
you see that thing thirty thousand feet that's magic. It
really is magic. And so we're all sitting there waiting,
and down on the field these guys are warming up

(03:24:00):
their airplanes. Remember this, these are men like you and me.
They know about death, they know about birth. They apparently
like the trees and the sun. They apparently like the
beach on Sunday afternoons. They like to smell the flowers

(03:24:21):
and watch the sun come up and down. These are
all things that all of us do. And I go
in there. You know, it's my tenth birthday gift. It's
the wireless birthday gift I ever got my life. Go
to the air races. And of course this is any
dad that takes his son to the air races, or
to the motorcycle races or to the fistfights is automatically

(03:24:42):
really in Like Flynn. You know, my old man is
sitting there. He's telling me, oh yeah, you know, he says,
I used to go flying when I was a kid, you.

Speaker 7 (03:24:49):
Know, that old junk.

Speaker 3 (03:24:50):
And he's talking about flying. And I'm sitting there watching
down and they're working on the planes and it's building
up and suddenly one of them takes off. You know,
they don't even have racing aircraft today in our world,
and I know a lot of guys. This is a
thing that only existed an American because it's part of
the maniacal American drive and urge towards violence. They didn't

(03:25:15):
have this in Europe. No air races of this type
were not flown in Europe. They were never flown anywhere.
But here they were flown outside of Cleveland. And so
every man gets in his plane and he starts hopping
over the ground. Now, don't think of piper cubs. Please
think in terms if you can, imagine of a small,

(03:25:37):
very angry, insane atomic driven electric fan.

Speaker 9 (03:25:44):
With no wings, just little stubs.

Speaker 3 (03:25:46):
And they were they leap off the ground and they
were racing planes. You see. They were built only for
speed and maneuverability, not for landing, not even for flying.
They were just like no, they were just like if
you get something wound up fast, now it jumps off
the ground, you know. And they were going ill and
we and they're flying right past us, you know, right

(03:26:08):
on the slant.

Speaker 9 (03:26:09):
Ee ew ew jee. It's maniacal.

Speaker 3 (03:26:14):
And my old man is screaming. He's out of his skull.
He loves it. And the people are yelling, let's go.
You know, they're up there screaming. In each little airplane,
there's a yellow one, and there's a red one, and
there's a green one. There's a Howard Ike, and there's
a GB Sportster, and each one was more maniacal and
deadly and murderous than the last. Now, if you can
imagine ten guys circling around on a field twenty five

(03:26:38):
feet above the ground, at two hundred and fifty miles
an hour wide open, racing for the starting line altogether.
Can you imagine this? You're not over one hundred and
fifty feet from him, and these airplanes going whoo, and
they're off. Well, they hit the first corner. The pilot.

(03:27:00):
They went screaming around this thing like a like a
like an angry herd of bees wee, and suddenly one
goes whee, boom, it's gone. Do you think they stopped?
As a matter of fact, they opened it up two
notches wire and they're screaming around this pilot and my

(03:27:21):
old man is yelling and hollering, and everybody is up screaming,
and I'm up screaming, and they go whistling past again,
one after the other, whistling passed, until finally out of
the ten there were four planes left, and the rest
that they just didn't come down, you know, to get gassed.
I'll tell you they weren't landing passengers at Toledo. You'd

(03:27:43):
see what you would see all of a sudden, you
see one go gun gun, gun, gun, woof, And then
the guy would get out and everyone would cheer, and
then they'd say, and number seventeen on the Wilson Law,
armed on on the twenty.

Speaker 9 (03:28:01):
Fold of lock. He looks like he's all right.

Speaker 3 (03:28:04):
From him, let's dive hall a big chair. Now they
do is monopoly, insane races with the stock cars. Oh,
we're living in a very easy age. And so I
began to see that there's two things going inside of
each one of us. The desire to see the birds

(03:28:25):
that see those trees, to smell the breeze, and to
kill ourselves as spectacularly as we can. What does the
camel feel this? Have you been reading in the paper
recently about the people standing up on Brooklyn Bridge and
the people hollering jump jump. Have you heat in the paper?

(03:28:51):
Have all of you had the sneaking desire to see
an airpine crash?

Speaker 13 (03:28:56):
Have you?

Speaker 3 (03:28:58):
Yeah? Look at her? It is well, I want to
tell you it's a funny thing. The only time I
participated in a real crash was when I was playing
the tubook. I'm an old bass player, and I don't
know whether many of you have ever known the terrible.

Speaker 9 (03:29:17):
Thrill of standing in a line of.

Speaker 3 (03:29:20):
Eight table players with a band of one hundred and
twenty pieces lined up ahead of you, and you're getting
ready to lace into El Capitan. Boy, what a feeling
of power and immenseness that you know you walk around
and one quiet afternoon in high school, this also, incidentally,
is coupled with the worst, most embarrassing moment I ever

(03:29:41):
had in my life.

Speaker 7 (03:29:42):
Terrible embarrassing moment.

Speaker 3 (03:29:44):
You know, we all have moments. I'm just looking around.
I wondered at each one of these people things that
happened to them, that scared the daylights out of them,
and that they've been trying to forget ever since, those
rotten things that happened, this terrible thing, Like you're caught,
oh boy saying STUFFE Well, I'm pretty snotty, you know

(03:30:05):
at that age. I'm about sixteen, I'm in high school
and I'm playing the bass, you know, And I got
a letter and all that stuff, and I play football.
I'm kind of a snotty guy, you know, I like
all high school kids are. And I'm sitting in the
back row. Hey, what's going on here? You're breaking in here,
and just do it quietly, Okay. So I'm sitting in

(03:30:25):
the back row in a rehearsal in the auditorium. Now
have you ever rehearsed in a band in an auditorium?
It booms and echoes. It's all high school there. Old
speeches are still hanging in the curtains, you know, it's
all sort of warm. And it was just about two
days before graduation. And I'm sitting in the back up

(03:30:49):
on a riser. The bass players all are eight inches
higher than the rest of the people sitting there saying,
and old man Dirk's is out in front, and Dirk says,
all right now, he says, we're gonna take it from
c take it from sea there. Let's hear the base section,
Let's hear the bass section. Okay, Now take them from
seafellas and pom boom, boom, boom boom, and that lovely feeling,

(03:31:13):
you know, blowing a horn and it's coming out, you know,
and you're working the valves and you're singing. You know,
it's great, Sai. We're fitting you feel vibrating, You feel
the horn vibrated on your shoulders there. So we're playing
away there all right now, He says, Okay, now, let's
take them from sea all together, and Ali and out.
And I'm snotty. I'm just real snotty kid. And I'm
leaning back on my seat like this with the front

(03:31:36):
tilted up, my B flat susophone stretching eight stories above
my head, seven hundred pounds of tin and brass metal
and here I am two hundred pounds of mass. You know.
I'm sitting there like this, and I'm getting ready to
start at number CE and Dirk's raises his baton, holds
it like that. Just as I go this way to

(03:31:56):
go in, the kid next to me shifts forward and
I say, start backward in my suzophone. I'm tilting back
my god ooh, and down I go, and I hear
something ripped. There's a giant eyesh. I have just fallen
through the scenery for the senior play, which is tonight,

(03:32:22):
which was stored behind me. And I went through this
thing with a giant ripper and I'm behind the scenes now,
and I hear Dirk's back there. What happened? Shephard wanted
to do. We had a drama teacher and an art
teacher named Miss Bryfogel that was made out of pure flame.

(03:32:45):
She was the one lady in our high school that
wore the big bangles, you know, and had to let
bong neck and the dirndle. And she always dreamed that
someday she'd go to the village, you know, and do
checkhof And everybody in the school was scared to death
of her. And I had torn a rip in with
my suzophone. Well, man, I'll tell you, man knows moments

(03:33:07):
when he is above his equipment, when he's on top
of his forward, and then there are moments when the
ford is on top of you. And I got up
with that suzophone and coming down the main aisle, Miss
Briefoger was already screaming what happened? What happened?

Speaker 9 (03:33:24):
I seen?

Speaker 3 (03:33:26):
It was my first moment in the theater, by the way,
and behind her was a group of streaming seventeen year
old electors. I'd always thought they were just kind of sissies,
you know. It's a different world, and they came down
like all of a sudden. There I am. I'm one
with the airplanes flying. I'm getting ready to climb that pole,

(03:33:47):
a camp crowder. I'm getting ready to move out on
the beach. I'm getting ready to face that big sign
that says toll ahead, exact change, laying bear left and
knowing I don't have the exact change, and all those

(03:34:08):
smart guys are barren left, and I'm heading right towards
that big toll gate with a fifty dollars bill and
it's a ten cent toll and there are nine million
cars behind me, all lined up the Trenton and I

(03:34:29):
can't get my wallet out of my back pocket, and
they're starting to honk, and I know that just ahead
for each one of us lies that big side. It's
my birthday. I could hurt. By God, I made it

(03:35:23):
twenty three years old. Today we're at the limelight. We'll
be back next week at five minutes past ten. Thanks
for coming, Allie.

Speaker 1 (03:35:33):
Well that's it for airchecks this week. We will have
more Geene 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. Airchecks 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 3 (03:36:04):
That

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Episode 118, April 5, 2025 - Jean Shepherd Show Marathon, Part 12

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode 118, April 5, 2025 - Jean Shepherd Show Marathon, Part 12