I seldom make New Years Resolutions. Basically it's like going to confession and saying "I'm not gonna..(fill in the blank) anymore and then, after doing a few hail Mary's, you go back and do it again. Resolutions are admitting faults and saying you're gonna stop doing it. Usually they revolve around smoking, drinking, and eating. Maybe once in awhile a "I'm not gonna cheat on my wife anymore" creeps in but otherwise, Resolutions are an attempt to make restitution for the lack of willpower the previous year. And resolutions this year are probably the same ones you made last year and will make again next year.
I don't make resolutions because I know I will break them before New Years Day is over. I have tried the quit smoking resolution and that failed. Thankfully I don't have to worry about the drinking one. I did modify my eating habits somewhat, not by resolution but by the knowledge that carbs are bad and I've reached the age where Big Mac's can kill. Other than that, I have nothing I need to change. I try to treat my wife with the love and respect she not only deserves, but commands. I have always been and advocate against domestic violence and still can't understand why a husband would abuse his wife, and stranger still, why they stay. Over they years I've covered dozens of homicides that were the result of domestic disputes.
We all want the New Year to be better than the last, and for many, 2010 was the worst year of their lives. Millions suddenly lost their homes because they could buy a home they couldn't afford and the banks gave them the money anyway. People were afraid that their last paycheck was, in fact, their last. The comfort employees had with their health insurance plans became less secure as companies tried to find ways to keep the premiums low had to resort to eroding benefits and escalating co-pays.
2011 will be worse. Gas prices are climbing and could reach 5 dollars a gallon if some experts in the industry are to be believed. That will lead to inflation at best, hyper-inflation at worst. Many will have surprises when the next phase of "Health Care Reform" hits. No more free scooter from Medicare, no more woman in a scooter twirling around. Now they have to lease it for 13 months before Medicare will give them one. The donut hole for Medicare still remains and the new benefit is a slightly smaller donut hole but recipients will get a 50 percent discount on medication when they're in the donut hold. Many newer drugs for serious conditions can cost as much as 4,000 dollars a month so Medicare recipients will be in the hole the first month and the discount still makes those drugs unaffordable even if it is "only 2,000 a month. And none of the medicare advantage plans cover any of that. In time, many companies will decide to pay a rather nominal fine and tell their employees to go find their own health care. And rather than making health care more affordable, it will drive up the cost and limit choices. Many doctors are already leaving the medical profession for jobs in research. Malpractice insurance costs are being driven higher and higher, and in many cases, medical offices have more support staff to file claims and do billing than they have doctors.
So eat, drink, and be merry tonight. 2011 could be a wild ride.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Monday, December 27, 2010
Where Have You Gone, Joe Dimaggio
In the mid '80's, I want to say '87, an author in New York wrote a book about all the landmarks that had quietly disappeared from the Big Apple..The billboard of the guy who blew 10 foot smoke rings over 5th Avenue, the nightclubs, starting with the Copa where you knew you were "A-list" if Jules Podell wanted you to headline. The Latin Quarter, The Empire room at the Waldorf. There were other landmarks that were gone. Palisades Park which was immortalized in song but was really just a traditional amusement park that had a great view of Manhattan, especially at night. And Freedomland which was to be the Disney of the east but fell victim to location, (Pelham Bay, a long way from midtown) and money. It closed after only 2 years. There were others, many others..New York landmarks that were no more. There were two things not included because the book was written before 9/11..The twin towers.
I first saw the towers in June of 1964. I spent the summer with my aunt who taught at Erasmus Hall in Brooklyn and we took the Staten Island ferry for all of 5 cents. Coming back you could see the construction zone and the beginnings of the towers, at that time the framework for maybe 20 stories at most. New Yorkers weren't happy about the destruction of the New York Skyline. I always saw the skyline as a beautiful woman lying down. As you viewed it from the Jersey side of the Hudson, you'd know what I mean. The towers were not loved by New Yorkers..Most actually hated them, but up they went and eventually they'd accept them.
I had been at the base of the towers many times and never really noticed them. I never went to the top, preferring instead the RCA building. I still have a picture of my wife standing on the observation deck a couple of days after we got married with the Empire State Building and the twin towers in the distance. They are a haunting memory of innocence lost.
When I read the book, I realized any author in Anytown, USA could have written for their own local audience. In my case, they didn't compare to the guy blowing smoke rings, but just as important to me. The theater where Patty Syrylo shared our first kiss while watching "Farenheit 451", a movie I avoid when it comes to TMC or AMC. Last I knew, the building was still there except turned into a hardware store. The Drive-in's where we never watched the show are gone. One was torn down and turned into a Chrysler dealership but the woe's of the auto industry turned that into a vacant lot. The other was in a former pasture field that was reclaimed by mother Nature.
The two amusement parks are gone. San Souci Park, where Niel Diamond performed at the very beginning of his career, arriving in a beat up Ford station wagon. Rocky Glen Park gave it's share of memories. Over 50,000 people would turn out on "Warm Day" for "Dick Clark's Caravan of Stars" featuring the top 10 artists of the day. Bobby Vinton's first appearance as a recording artist was at Rocky Glenn when "Roses are Red" entered the top 10. The last name artist to perform there was Rick Nelson the summer the park closed, and the summer before he died. Now, instead of lovers holding hands in the sunshine, the park has been mostly reclaimed by nature and "suspicious" fires. An old roller coaster car buried in brush, the foundation of the "Tunnel of Love" and a few other artifacts are all that remain.
In Scranton, the Hotel Casey was THE place to be on New Years Eve in the 30's and 40's. The rich and famous of the area would gather there for a gala like no other in Northeast Pennsylvania. But as the city plunged into a near permanent recession, the fortunes of the hotel plunged as well. I was one of the last people to actually have a drink in it's ornate bar. Just me and the bartender..The hotel portion had been closed for some time, and the bar due to close the next week. It sat vacant as the city tried to figure out what to do with it, while it became a patient on life support that flatlined. It was home for pigeons and vagrants who kept finding ways to get in out of the cold, until it was past the point of rehabilitation and came down in a pile of rubble.
The Globe store was the upper end department store in Scranton and I did a fair number of remotes there. It was a beautiful store but too up-scale for a city suffering from economic uncertainty and it too fell to the ages.
The old YWCA on Linden street was an odd place to have the memories of my youth, but it was the dorm for the women going to Lackawanna Junior College. They had a very large rec room where the boys and girls could sit and talk and listen to music. Boys were only allowed there and in the refreshment room. They had a booth at the entrance with a woman who had to be 80 as their security guard. I remember her yelling at me because when I would write Patty during the week, I'd address her room as "Closet 4 whatever". I remember thinking prisoners on death row had more living space than she did. The Y is still there, just bought by the University of Scranton as a dorm. Don't know if they kept the closet's..uh, rooms the same..
When I came back to the area after my over 11 year absence, I used to drive down the Central Scranton Expressway, as I turned right, my eyes were immediately drawn to "closet 4 whatever", and the memories of yelling "goodnight" to the girl in the window, reflected by the moon. I would pass by the parking lot and still hear her echo, "I'll never forget you", and my reply "nor I, you."
When I read the New York book, I opened the phones, something we seldom did as we were still a music station and I didn't like listeners controlling the content. But the phones lit up and for the next 3 hours, I listened to caller after caller, some older than I, tell what was missing from long ago and why those "landmarks" meant so much. Some were the things I mentioned, others were things I had never heard of because they were before my time. But each one was a piece of somebody's life, something to cherish in memory.
I had wanted to write my own book on the loss of so much that used to be but was now nevermore to be again but I wasn't a priority and I had too much on my plate so it got put on the back burner. Now that I have the time, I am no longer able to hit the library for research. I keep asking friends still in the area to pick up the baton and carry it forward but so far no takers. They too have their priorities.
The bottom line was nothing is forever, not the girl nor the building. Each has a life-cycle and eventually will have an end. Most will outlive us unless a developer has other ideas of building a better building. And with the girl, somebody better at the time came along. But all are relegated to memory and at least, in my mind, I can still see the girl, beautiful in the moonlight and the bilboard of the guy blowing smoke rings over 5th Avenue.
I first saw the towers in June of 1964. I spent the summer with my aunt who taught at Erasmus Hall in Brooklyn and we took the Staten Island ferry for all of 5 cents. Coming back you could see the construction zone and the beginnings of the towers, at that time the framework for maybe 20 stories at most. New Yorkers weren't happy about the destruction of the New York Skyline. I always saw the skyline as a beautiful woman lying down. As you viewed it from the Jersey side of the Hudson, you'd know what I mean. The towers were not loved by New Yorkers..Most actually hated them, but up they went and eventually they'd accept them.
I had been at the base of the towers many times and never really noticed them. I never went to the top, preferring instead the RCA building. I still have a picture of my wife standing on the observation deck a couple of days after we got married with the Empire State Building and the twin towers in the distance. They are a haunting memory of innocence lost.
When I read the book, I realized any author in Anytown, USA could have written for their own local audience. In my case, they didn't compare to the guy blowing smoke rings, but just as important to me. The theater where Patty Syrylo shared our first kiss while watching "Farenheit 451", a movie I avoid when it comes to TMC or AMC. Last I knew, the building was still there except turned into a hardware store. The Drive-in's where we never watched the show are gone. One was torn down and turned into a Chrysler dealership but the woe's of the auto industry turned that into a vacant lot. The other was in a former pasture field that was reclaimed by mother Nature.
The two amusement parks are gone. San Souci Park, where Niel Diamond performed at the very beginning of his career, arriving in a beat up Ford station wagon. Rocky Glen Park gave it's share of memories. Over 50,000 people would turn out on "Warm Day" for "Dick Clark's Caravan of Stars" featuring the top 10 artists of the day. Bobby Vinton's first appearance as a recording artist was at Rocky Glenn when "Roses are Red" entered the top 10. The last name artist to perform there was Rick Nelson the summer the park closed, and the summer before he died. Now, instead of lovers holding hands in the sunshine, the park has been mostly reclaimed by nature and "suspicious" fires. An old roller coaster car buried in brush, the foundation of the "Tunnel of Love" and a few other artifacts are all that remain.
In Scranton, the Hotel Casey was THE place to be on New Years Eve in the 30's and 40's. The rich and famous of the area would gather there for a gala like no other in Northeast Pennsylvania. But as the city plunged into a near permanent recession, the fortunes of the hotel plunged as well. I was one of the last people to actually have a drink in it's ornate bar. Just me and the bartender..The hotel portion had been closed for some time, and the bar due to close the next week. It sat vacant as the city tried to figure out what to do with it, while it became a patient on life support that flatlined. It was home for pigeons and vagrants who kept finding ways to get in out of the cold, until it was past the point of rehabilitation and came down in a pile of rubble.
The Globe store was the upper end department store in Scranton and I did a fair number of remotes there. It was a beautiful store but too up-scale for a city suffering from economic uncertainty and it too fell to the ages.
The old YWCA on Linden street was an odd place to have the memories of my youth, but it was the dorm for the women going to Lackawanna Junior College. They had a very large rec room where the boys and girls could sit and talk and listen to music. Boys were only allowed there and in the refreshment room. They had a booth at the entrance with a woman who had to be 80 as their security guard. I remember her yelling at me because when I would write Patty during the week, I'd address her room as "Closet 4 whatever". I remember thinking prisoners on death row had more living space than she did. The Y is still there, just bought by the University of Scranton as a dorm. Don't know if they kept the closet's..uh, rooms the same..
When I came back to the area after my over 11 year absence, I used to drive down the Central Scranton Expressway, as I turned right, my eyes were immediately drawn to "closet 4 whatever", and the memories of yelling "goodnight" to the girl in the window, reflected by the moon. I would pass by the parking lot and still hear her echo, "I'll never forget you", and my reply "nor I, you."
When I read the New York book, I opened the phones, something we seldom did as we were still a music station and I didn't like listeners controlling the content. But the phones lit up and for the next 3 hours, I listened to caller after caller, some older than I, tell what was missing from long ago and why those "landmarks" meant so much. Some were the things I mentioned, others were things I had never heard of because they were before my time. But each one was a piece of somebody's life, something to cherish in memory.
I had wanted to write my own book on the loss of so much that used to be but was now nevermore to be again but I wasn't a priority and I had too much on my plate so it got put on the back burner. Now that I have the time, I am no longer able to hit the library for research. I keep asking friends still in the area to pick up the baton and carry it forward but so far no takers. They too have their priorities.
The bottom line was nothing is forever, not the girl nor the building. Each has a life-cycle and eventually will have an end. Most will outlive us unless a developer has other ideas of building a better building. And with the girl, somebody better at the time came along. But all are relegated to memory and at least, in my mind, I can still see the girl, beautiful in the moonlight and the bilboard of the guy blowing smoke rings over 5th Avenue.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Government Waste
Everybody in Washington recognizes government waste but still fail to do anything about it, fearing the loss of pork will cost them votes at home. So they say something needs to be done but even if waste is identified, it never gets fixed until after the fact. Hopefully the Tea Party movement with newly elected representatives will help change that but I'm not holding my breath.
Even in the 70's and early 80's I was party to several wastes of taxpayers dollars. The first was when I had back to back assignments at Forts Sill and Hood. Fort Sill had a mobile remote Television studio that would make Monday Night Football proud. It was used to video tape training exercises, training films, etc and would be on the road almost constantly. We had 3 RCA TK 44 studio cameras which were really fun setting up in the middle of nowhere, along with state of the art video and audio equipment..It was capeable of doing anything a network remote studio could do and all in living color. The only problem was, the on-base cable system was still Black and White with no plans to convert. The cost of the remote studio, nearly a half million dollars in 1973 dollars.
After Sill, I was Electronics Media Public Affairs Officer which meant that I dealt with Radio and Television stations in Central and North Texas. Part of our daily routine was a half hour news cast that was carried on base through their COLOR cctv system, and aired on the PBS affiliate in Killeen as well as KTEM in Temple. The studio was color but their remote van looked like a converted Good Humor truck and was Black and White. I had the brainstorm of swapping the vans, and if Sill needed to shoot color, we were only 4 hours a way. Both commands liked the idea except Uncle Sam said otherwise. Hood had two very famous divisions, the 1st Cav and 2nd Armored..They needed the color van more than the Artillery school, but the plan was shot dead.
The second was in Germany when AFN took television away from the Air Force. We had a perfectly large studio that needed little work to convert from radio to television. The studio was used in the past to record concerts and could hold a symphony orchestra and about a hundred people in the audience..It was BIG..But instead, they decided to gut it and totall remove the floor so cables wouldn't be exposed..The only way to do that was dynamite so for 6 months, they did small blasts..Did I mention that my radio on-air studio shared one of the walls. So every time they did a blast, the arm of the turntable would jump an inch or so..Then the equipment, again state of the art..20 million dollars worth..Again TK44's, fabulous control room, and a lighting grid that had every light imaginable..foot lights, Kleigs, fill lights, back lights..When they were installing the grid, I dared to ask where they were storing the replacements..I was told they were at budget and didn't need them as they are expensive, and besides, an emergency requsition to the depot in Sacramento, Ca. would only take a few days.
The first flip of the switch took out half the lights so the huge set became much smaller so the remaining lights would light the set. But bulbs kept popping and the emergency requistion took almost 6 months so before they arrived, we wound up doing "News by Candlelight. Again far more equipment than needed and poor logistics lead to a waste of taxpayers dollars.
The next was the most bizarre. When I was in Italy, I learned that we still had 6,000 dollars left in our supply budget and as it was mid-September, I had to have our supply clerk "spend it". I thought it would be a nice idea to give it back to Uncle Sam and I was read the riot act..If we returned the 6 grand, the bean counters would figure we could live without it in the new budget and, hell, lets cut it 10% as they don't need it. So I sent our supply clerk to the supply depot to get 6,000 dollars of stuff we could use..All he could find was 6,000 dollars in Bic pens and toilet paper. We gave out bic pens like candy.."I need a pen." "Here's 2 cases just in case you run out." I didn't go to our supply office without laughing..Toilet paper piled to the ceileing.
This one doesn't count as my waste as I don't know what happened. For one of my last official duties I was given 20 million dollars to spend on equipment for both radio and television. All I wanted was new studio cameras and a new board for the main studio. So I spent a day and a half ordering dream equipment. I left before I knew what had been approved so I can't take the blame on that one, although I heard later that a lot of stuff had arrived.
So, it's no so much waste and fraud, although there's a lot of that. It's budgets that run amuck with goodies that aren't needed, lack of oversight, and a mentality that you are given too much money and you have to spend it or lose it.
Hopefully the new Congress will start providing oversight, starting with Freddie and Fanny, and go down the food chain and stop some of the funds for some of the more bizarre earmarks. That will probably happen when people in Hell are offered ice water.
Even in the 70's and early 80's I was party to several wastes of taxpayers dollars. The first was when I had back to back assignments at Forts Sill and Hood. Fort Sill had a mobile remote Television studio that would make Monday Night Football proud. It was used to video tape training exercises, training films, etc and would be on the road almost constantly. We had 3 RCA TK 44 studio cameras which were really fun setting up in the middle of nowhere, along with state of the art video and audio equipment..It was capeable of doing anything a network remote studio could do and all in living color. The only problem was, the on-base cable system was still Black and White with no plans to convert. The cost of the remote studio, nearly a half million dollars in 1973 dollars.
After Sill, I was Electronics Media Public Affairs Officer which meant that I dealt with Radio and Television stations in Central and North Texas. Part of our daily routine was a half hour news cast that was carried on base through their COLOR cctv system, and aired on the PBS affiliate in Killeen as well as KTEM in Temple. The studio was color but their remote van looked like a converted Good Humor truck and was Black and White. I had the brainstorm of swapping the vans, and if Sill needed to shoot color, we were only 4 hours a way. Both commands liked the idea except Uncle Sam said otherwise. Hood had two very famous divisions, the 1st Cav and 2nd Armored..They needed the color van more than the Artillery school, but the plan was shot dead.
The second was in Germany when AFN took television away from the Air Force. We had a perfectly large studio that needed little work to convert from radio to television. The studio was used in the past to record concerts and could hold a symphony orchestra and about a hundred people in the audience..It was BIG..But instead, they decided to gut it and totall remove the floor so cables wouldn't be exposed..The only way to do that was dynamite so for 6 months, they did small blasts..Did I mention that my radio on-air studio shared one of the walls. So every time they did a blast, the arm of the turntable would jump an inch or so..Then the equipment, again state of the art..20 million dollars worth..Again TK44's, fabulous control room, and a lighting grid that had every light imaginable..foot lights, Kleigs, fill lights, back lights..When they were installing the grid, I dared to ask where they were storing the replacements..I was told they were at budget and didn't need them as they are expensive, and besides, an emergency requsition to the depot in Sacramento, Ca. would only take a few days.
The first flip of the switch took out half the lights so the huge set became much smaller so the remaining lights would light the set. But bulbs kept popping and the emergency requistion took almost 6 months so before they arrived, we wound up doing "News by Candlelight. Again far more equipment than needed and poor logistics lead to a waste of taxpayers dollars.
The next was the most bizarre. When I was in Italy, I learned that we still had 6,000 dollars left in our supply budget and as it was mid-September, I had to have our supply clerk "spend it". I thought it would be a nice idea to give it back to Uncle Sam and I was read the riot act..If we returned the 6 grand, the bean counters would figure we could live without it in the new budget and, hell, lets cut it 10% as they don't need it. So I sent our supply clerk to the supply depot to get 6,000 dollars of stuff we could use..All he could find was 6,000 dollars in Bic pens and toilet paper. We gave out bic pens like candy.."I need a pen." "Here's 2 cases just in case you run out." I didn't go to our supply office without laughing..Toilet paper piled to the ceileing.
This one doesn't count as my waste as I don't know what happened. For one of my last official duties I was given 20 million dollars to spend on equipment for both radio and television. All I wanted was new studio cameras and a new board for the main studio. So I spent a day and a half ordering dream equipment. I left before I knew what had been approved so I can't take the blame on that one, although I heard later that a lot of stuff had arrived.
So, it's no so much waste and fraud, although there's a lot of that. It's budgets that run amuck with goodies that aren't needed, lack of oversight, and a mentality that you are given too much money and you have to spend it or lose it.
Hopefully the new Congress will start providing oversight, starting with Freddie and Fanny, and go down the food chain and stop some of the funds for some of the more bizarre earmarks. That will probably happen when people in Hell are offered ice water.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Old Before Our Time
I really wonder sometimes why we go into radio. Is it the chance to pick up girls..a desire to help our community..(I guess Elmo and Patsy do that..I guess..maybe..)..or is it we're looking for a job that requires no manual labor..Maybe we were the class clowns, the guy with the lamp shade on our heads at parties. Back in the day I used to marvel at the number of "communications majors" area colleges and universities churned out with promises of big money when a majority would wind replacing stock at Walmart. Other than "Communications", their degree was worthless and their parents (or Sallie Mae) were on the hook for thousands. Many came through the doors of the stations I worked at and college radio wasn't considered experience. I had one back in the early '80's who was an honor graduate at Penn State. They had to choose print or electronic media and she chose electronic...At the time, Penn State was building a state of the art studio and even though the old studio was fully operational, they didn't want them to work with "old" equipment so, long story short, she had never touched a radio board. She did have potential so we hired her anyway for overnights, but only because the slot was open and nobody was clammoring for the job. She did well but had a lot to learn. After I moved on we lost touch and I don't know if she ever went further.
Very few of us reach retirement age as there is a point where we are too expensive to keep or we've outgrown our target audience. Add to that the jobs that the likes of Ryan Seacrest and other syndicators have cost the industry, and the problem gets even worse.
I have worked the "bigs" in markets where Uncle Sam was nice enough to send me for stateside assignments (Dallas when I was at Fort Hood, Chicago and Milwaukee when I was at Ft. Sheridan)..I was lucky enough to work 8-5 Monday thru Friday so that gave me nights and weekends to work full time, although Milwaukee was rather short...I accepted night strictly in Chicago as a 45 minute train ride in snow was preferable to a 90 minute drive on the interstate..And they do get snow. but I digress.
I always preferred local stations because you can reach out and touch you listeners, they know you in person and you build a bond. You in turn buy your sponsors products..then turn the sales pigs out to pitch a buy. There were plenty of remotes so you could reach people who didn't listen and maybe they'll like you enough to give you a try.
I grew up with the great ones..Herb Oscar Anderson, Dan Ingram, Joey Reynolds, Dolly Holliday to name just a few from stations in magical towns like New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and on and on. But times changed and all of them were dropped, not because they got bad, but because management made stupid decisions. (My old flagship WARM and WABC had one thing in common..They tried disco on AM..STUPID..STUPID..STUPID) The ratings dropped and it was the fault of the on-air talent. This Memorial Day, WABC even dropped their traditional Musicradio Reunion.
And then, what killed many careers was the feeding frenzy of the '90's where broadcast groups had to buy everything in sight for double and triple what they were worth and then find out they weren't generating any revenue leading to selling them for a loss just to raise operating revenue. Some of those stations went dark, robbing the local community of their voice.
Most of us have an epiphany, either forced or voluntary, that we need to change course as somebody crowding 50 is going to have a problem holding on to his or her 25 to 54 demographic. And if you have a degree in Communications, the choice is go back to school, or hear those soothing words, "Cleanup in aisle 6"
Very few of us reach retirement age as there is a point where we are too expensive to keep or we've outgrown our target audience. Add to that the jobs that the likes of Ryan Seacrest and other syndicators have cost the industry, and the problem gets even worse.
I have worked the "bigs" in markets where Uncle Sam was nice enough to send me for stateside assignments (Dallas when I was at Fort Hood, Chicago and Milwaukee when I was at Ft. Sheridan)..I was lucky enough to work 8-5 Monday thru Friday so that gave me nights and weekends to work full time, although Milwaukee was rather short...I accepted night strictly in Chicago as a 45 minute train ride in snow was preferable to a 90 minute drive on the interstate..And they do get snow. but I digress.
I always preferred local stations because you can reach out and touch you listeners, they know you in person and you build a bond. You in turn buy your sponsors products..then turn the sales pigs out to pitch a buy. There were plenty of remotes so you could reach people who didn't listen and maybe they'll like you enough to give you a try.
I grew up with the great ones..Herb Oscar Anderson, Dan Ingram, Joey Reynolds, Dolly Holliday to name just a few from stations in magical towns like New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and on and on. But times changed and all of them were dropped, not because they got bad, but because management made stupid decisions. (My old flagship WARM and WABC had one thing in common..They tried disco on AM..STUPID..STUPID..STUPID) The ratings dropped and it was the fault of the on-air talent. This Memorial Day, WABC even dropped their traditional Musicradio Reunion.
And then, what killed many careers was the feeding frenzy of the '90's where broadcast groups had to buy everything in sight for double and triple what they were worth and then find out they weren't generating any revenue leading to selling them for a loss just to raise operating revenue. Some of those stations went dark, robbing the local community of their voice.
Most of us have an epiphany, either forced or voluntary, that we need to change course as somebody crowding 50 is going to have a problem holding on to his or her 25 to 54 demographic. And if you have a degree in Communications, the choice is go back to school, or hear those soothing words, "Cleanup in aisle 6"
Monday, December 20, 2010
Suffer The Little Children
When my Grandson was born, there was a tree in the lobby of the maternity ward covered with butterflies..not real ones, of course, but the decorative kind you buy at the local craft store. I didn't count them but there must have been 50 in all colors of the rainbow and I thought what a pretty decoration..Then I read the inscription..It was in memory of babies who were "born asleep". Then my heart plunged to my stomach. In this day of medical miracle, there were still thousands of childless mothers..They waited in anxious anticipation when they would welcome God's last great miracle into a life of hope and joy, only to find tragedy and unbearable sadness. I cannot even imagine what that feeling must be. Life is fragile enough, but to not even have a chance at that life must be the most horrific pain anybody can feel.
I know a number of women who have put their career first, or decided that having a child would destroy their figure. That is selfishness in it's highest order. Very simply, you adapt. In my own situation, my wife and I were master jugglers of time. She was an accountant who served on the board of Blue Cross/Blue Shield of NEPA and was going to school at night to earn another degree. When my daughter was born, after at least two earlier miscarriages, I had to step up to the plate and was able to juggle my work schedule so my daughter was in day care the least amount of time. And as she got older, she wanted to stay in day care so she could play with her friends. We maybe overcompensated our guilt by doing everything we could to give her the best of everything from the piano, (She didn't want to learn then, now says she wished we had forced her to learn..Response..Music is something you want to learn and learn well) to ballet (she stunk up the joint but it was fun to watch..and expensive) to Karate which she excelled in but quit while working on her black belt. My wife and I made sure we made every lesson, every ballet recital which we hated as the kids were held captive backstage until everybody on the planet danced, usually about 3 hours of torture. Christmas was presents piled to the ceiling and the best toy was the box they came in. Trips to Disneyworld, Hershey Park, several times to Knoebels Amusement park, and every festival known to man..Or at least Northeast Pennsylvania. It was probably a lot out of guilt, but I wouldn't trade one moment of it. It would have been nice to have a stay at home mom, but there are choices to make. I think we made the right ones.
I especially feel sadness for the women who can't have children. There are far too many of those. Some go through excruciating tests and procedures and, in the end, all fail. I have known a number of those, one in particular where we chose a name, not if but when, we had our first child. She would have been a wonderful mother but that wasn't meant to be. I don't know if it was career or inability but I see in the eyes of others the sadness many of the childless have when they see a baby in another mother's arms.
In the days after Roe v Wade I was very pro-choice. I foolishly believed that a woman had a right to choose. But that changed when I realized life is life, whether at conception or at birth. A baby in the womb does everything a baby does outside the womb. It sucks it's thumb, plays with it's toes, yawns, and sleeps in the love of it's mother. It makes faces shows displeasure when annoyed by a doctor's prodding and poking. New 3D ultra-sounds show with great detail that is true. I wish the pro-choice crowd would show a lot more lean more towared adoption. For many, adoption is cost prohibitive to the point where people go to the former Soviet Union to adopt, rather than adopting the tens of thousands of children waiting in their own back yard. Laws need to be changed as well, along with anythin else that can speed the process and lower the cost substantially.
In short, Friday many will celebrate "Baby's first Christmas", which is more for parents and grandparents as the baby has no clue except that there's this big tall green thing with a bunch of colored lights. But it's something that is easily in the top 5 of the greatest of life's moments. And do go overboard on the gifts..I did...
I know a number of women who have put their career first, or decided that having a child would destroy their figure. That is selfishness in it's highest order. Very simply, you adapt. In my own situation, my wife and I were master jugglers of time. She was an accountant who served on the board of Blue Cross/Blue Shield of NEPA and was going to school at night to earn another degree. When my daughter was born, after at least two earlier miscarriages, I had to step up to the plate and was able to juggle my work schedule so my daughter was in day care the least amount of time. And as she got older, she wanted to stay in day care so she could play with her friends. We maybe overcompensated our guilt by doing everything we could to give her the best of everything from the piano, (She didn't want to learn then, now says she wished we had forced her to learn..Response..Music is something you want to learn and learn well) to ballet (she stunk up the joint but it was fun to watch..and expensive) to Karate which she excelled in but quit while working on her black belt. My wife and I made sure we made every lesson, every ballet recital which we hated as the kids were held captive backstage until everybody on the planet danced, usually about 3 hours of torture. Christmas was presents piled to the ceiling and the best toy was the box they came in. Trips to Disneyworld, Hershey Park, several times to Knoebels Amusement park, and every festival known to man..Or at least Northeast Pennsylvania. It was probably a lot out of guilt, but I wouldn't trade one moment of it. It would have been nice to have a stay at home mom, but there are choices to make. I think we made the right ones.
I especially feel sadness for the women who can't have children. There are far too many of those. Some go through excruciating tests and procedures and, in the end, all fail. I have known a number of those, one in particular where we chose a name, not if but when, we had our first child. She would have been a wonderful mother but that wasn't meant to be. I don't know if it was career or inability but I see in the eyes of others the sadness many of the childless have when they see a baby in another mother's arms.
In the days after Roe v Wade I was very pro-choice. I foolishly believed that a woman had a right to choose. But that changed when I realized life is life, whether at conception or at birth. A baby in the womb does everything a baby does outside the womb. It sucks it's thumb, plays with it's toes, yawns, and sleeps in the love of it's mother. It makes faces shows displeasure when annoyed by a doctor's prodding and poking. New 3D ultra-sounds show with great detail that is true. I wish the pro-choice crowd would show a lot more lean more towared adoption. For many, adoption is cost prohibitive to the point where people go to the former Soviet Union to adopt, rather than adopting the tens of thousands of children waiting in their own back yard. Laws need to be changed as well, along with anythin else that can speed the process and lower the cost substantially.
In short, Friday many will celebrate "Baby's first Christmas", which is more for parents and grandparents as the baby has no clue except that there's this big tall green thing with a bunch of colored lights. But it's something that is easily in the top 5 of the greatest of life's moments. And do go overboard on the gifts..I did...
Friday, December 17, 2010
Weepy
John Boehner and I have several things in common. We both know how to shed a tear or two, many of mine thanks to Hallmark and Lifetime Movie Network, starting around Thanksgiving. That's when we get bombarded with hundreds of feel good, if only things really went that way, Christmas movies. My better half burns up the DVR with every movie they offer. B actors, weak dialogue, overacting...and situations that rarely, if ever, happen in real life, There are 4 basic storylines and if you can put all of them in 1 movie, you've got a ratings bonanza.
First, the deployed soldier. That one can happen but very rarely. He comes home in his fatigues. (I would have rather put peas up my nose than travel in fatigues) Uncle Sam puts staffing requirements first, and in time of war, only a rare few are allowed to go home, and even then at mid-tour. I only came home once for Christmas and that was in peacetime. We had 3 slots that could go home, and our Network Commander made the choice. Only 4 wanted to go home, and the one who couldn't didn't really care.
I was going home to introduce my 3 1/2 month old daughter to the parents and things started badly. We were flying charter and were waiting at Frankfurt International when we found out the DC-8 we were to fly in had the windshield blow out over Bangor, Maine and the flight would be delayed for 8 hours. Luckily I had a Brother in Law who lived nearby so the 8 hour delay was just an annoyance.
When we finally got airborne, we sat across the aisle from some guy who could barely fit in the seat and sounded like he had stage 4 lung cancer...so for 9 hours, he coughed almost constantly. We were all ready to ask the pilot to drop to a thousand feet and open the doors and throw him out. Forget about sleeping.
We took the bus from the Port Authority the next morning and my father was waiting, insisted on taking the baby's carrier, and promptly dropped her in a snow drift. It was horrendously cold and lot's of snow that I had learned to live without, We had snow in Germany but it was measured in inches, not feet. When we got to the old homestead, we found my father had gone all out on the decorations. Clark Griswold would be ashamed..A 3 foot plastic tree with 25 twinkling lights. That was Christmas Eve day.
On Christmas Eve we exchanged gifts. I had gone overboard for gifts for them. A state of the art Texas Instrument for my father..This was 1975 so they were God awful expensive. I forget what I got my mother but it was also something outrageously expensive. Their present to us..Each of us including the baby got a 20 dollar bill.
Each morning we counted down the days until we were airborne and heading back to Germany, leaving the Twilight zone and going back to sanity.
For me, that was one of the worst, and most expensive, Christmases I ever spent. So the returning warrior storyline may happen, but only to a very, very few.
The second storyline is the guy or girl who accidently runs into a memory from long ago and they fall in love and pick up where they left off. A former girlfriend or fiance should also be a best friend and when you lose one, you lose the other. I tried once to get that person back, and it didn't go well. So that storyline is a pure fairy tale of dreams that can never come true, not even at Christmas. Most of us reluctantly move on.
The third storyline is the most bizzare..Santa sets up his workshop next door and, by working his magic, is able to thaw a frozen heart and help somebody find the spirit and the meaning of Christmas just in time for him to make his yearly flight. Not a whole lot can be said to describe that impossible dream.
And then there's storyline number 4.. Scrooge, the epitome of the business man with the cold heart that suddenly thaws on Christmas Day. Dickens should have had another chapter to show what Scrooge was like the day after Christmas. Old habits die hard and for most of his kind, and there are many, old habits don't die just because a few spectres scare the devil out of him. I suspect that Bob Cratchett was still asking for more coal for the fire.
So there it is, the roadmap to writing a Lifetime Movie Network Fa La La La Christmas classic. If you can incorporate all 4 storylines into one movie, you've got a blockbuster..and John Boehner and I can be weepy every day until Christmas.
First, the deployed soldier. That one can happen but very rarely. He comes home in his fatigues. (I would have rather put peas up my nose than travel in fatigues) Uncle Sam puts staffing requirements first, and in time of war, only a rare few are allowed to go home, and even then at mid-tour. I only came home once for Christmas and that was in peacetime. We had 3 slots that could go home, and our Network Commander made the choice. Only 4 wanted to go home, and the one who couldn't didn't really care.
I was going home to introduce my 3 1/2 month old daughter to the parents and things started badly. We were flying charter and were waiting at Frankfurt International when we found out the DC-8 we were to fly in had the windshield blow out over Bangor, Maine and the flight would be delayed for 8 hours. Luckily I had a Brother in Law who lived nearby so the 8 hour delay was just an annoyance.
When we finally got airborne, we sat across the aisle from some guy who could barely fit in the seat and sounded like he had stage 4 lung cancer...so for 9 hours, he coughed almost constantly. We were all ready to ask the pilot to drop to a thousand feet and open the doors and throw him out. Forget about sleeping.
We took the bus from the Port Authority the next morning and my father was waiting, insisted on taking the baby's carrier, and promptly dropped her in a snow drift. It was horrendously cold and lot's of snow that I had learned to live without, We had snow in Germany but it was measured in inches, not feet. When we got to the old homestead, we found my father had gone all out on the decorations. Clark Griswold would be ashamed..A 3 foot plastic tree with 25 twinkling lights. That was Christmas Eve day.
On Christmas Eve we exchanged gifts. I had gone overboard for gifts for them. A state of the art Texas Instrument for my father..This was 1975 so they were God awful expensive. I forget what I got my mother but it was also something outrageously expensive. Their present to us..Each of us including the baby got a 20 dollar bill.
Each morning we counted down the days until we were airborne and heading back to Germany, leaving the Twilight zone and going back to sanity.
For me, that was one of the worst, and most expensive, Christmases I ever spent. So the returning warrior storyline may happen, but only to a very, very few.
The second storyline is the guy or girl who accidently runs into a memory from long ago and they fall in love and pick up where they left off. A former girlfriend or fiance should also be a best friend and when you lose one, you lose the other. I tried once to get that person back, and it didn't go well. So that storyline is a pure fairy tale of dreams that can never come true, not even at Christmas. Most of us reluctantly move on.
The third storyline is the most bizzare..Santa sets up his workshop next door and, by working his magic, is able to thaw a frozen heart and help somebody find the spirit and the meaning of Christmas just in time for him to make his yearly flight. Not a whole lot can be said to describe that impossible dream.
And then there's storyline number 4.. Scrooge, the epitome of the business man with the cold heart that suddenly thaws on Christmas Day. Dickens should have had another chapter to show what Scrooge was like the day after Christmas. Old habits die hard and for most of his kind, and there are many, old habits don't die just because a few spectres scare the devil out of him. I suspect that Bob Cratchett was still asking for more coal for the fire.
So there it is, the roadmap to writing a Lifetime Movie Network Fa La La La Christmas classic. If you can incorporate all 4 storylines into one movie, you've got a blockbuster..and John Boehner and I can be weepy every day until Christmas.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Searching For Christmas
I can't remember the last time I truly felt the Christmas spirit. It was probably in the 70's while I lived in Europe. True, my daughter's first few Christmas' were special but the "Spirit" was long gone. Maybe it was the fact that Europeans have a different take on the holiday season. First the Christmas markets. It's a "legend" of sorts in that I was taking a train full of GI's to the Christmas Market in Nuremburg and I was filming a Christmas special for AFN-TV. I had met my wife to be a week earlier and I invited her along. So part of our fly by the seat of our pants had my camerman and I riding the cab from Frankfurt to Nuremburg. So I basically walked her to our compartment and said see you in Nuremburg. Not the greatest beginning of a relationship, but we did get some fabulous film footage, especially when an express train passed on the other track with my camerman hanging out of the window, getting a great shot of snow being kicked up by a combined speed of about 180 mph. At that time, there was only 1 McDonalds in Germany and it was in Nuremburg, right along the street that took me, and 700 GI's to the market. It was an invasion like no other and the fear in the faces of the 3 girls behind the counter is still a vision I will never forget. The market was lit with every color light imaginable and while standing in the middle of the street, my cameraman and I nearly got run over by a beer wagon pulled by 4 of the biggest horses I'd ever seen. We shot our footage and spent the next 4 hours in the hotel lounge near the train station as it was COLD.
The next two weeks until Christmas were unlike any in the States. Stores did a brisk but steady business, even staying open until 6PM on Friday and Saturday, Closed on Sunday. Didn't have to elbow my way through a crowd to get one of 3 chintzy doorbuster specials No mad dash to get a gift for that cousin 3 times removed, no stores opening at 3am on Black Friday..or better yet, the Pre Black Friday sales. Decorations being sold in August..Doesn't happen in Europe. The Christmas holiday is actually spread over two days..the 25th for family, and the 26th for visiting friends. I spent the first Christmas with my wife to be putting up the tree on Christmas eve, a real tree I might add..Then a big meal followed by singing carols and then opening gifts. I got her a Polaroid camera which I believe is now in the Smithsonian. The following day there was snow in the mountains so we drove into the Taunus to the Feldberg which is the highest peak and had a huge communications tower and an overlook of the hills and valleys all covered with snow. We did then what I did best.."Gee, I wonder where this road goes", and we stumble across a small resturant in the middle of nowhere and we were, no surprise, the only guests, The meal was simple but good and then we wound up at Limburg, on the Lahn river where the sun was hitting the sides of the yellow and brown cathedral which was a spectacular sight. Then we drove home so I could change into my "entertainer duds" and hit the stage from 8pm til whenever at the nightclub I headlined. The band and I had a pretty loose repitoire but this night we just had fun..I taught the audience American Christmas carols, they taught me German carols which was a real laugh. In all, it was a great Christmas season.
Now it's maxing out the credit card, the incessent bell ringing by the Salvation Army and the guilt you feel when you don't put anything in the bucket because you already have in the last dozen buckets, and the war being waged against Christmas by a vast minority that is offended by the mere mention of Christmas..Instead we have "The Holiday Tree", the "Winter Tree, and anything else that can be found to erase Christmas from our lexicon.
Maybe my sarcasm is directed to the years I spent playing "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer" over and over, followed by the Singing Dogs. Or maybe it's going the the Christmas Eve service where all the women went, not to hear of the Birth, but to show off the baubles their abusive husbands bought them for Christmas. Or maybe it's seeing the rich and powerful suddenly noticing there are those less fortunate and giving of themselves, but only for a day.
I guess you could call it innocence lost. But Christmas ain't what it used to be..And never will be again.
The next two weeks until Christmas were unlike any in the States. Stores did a brisk but steady business, even staying open until 6PM on Friday and Saturday, Closed on Sunday. Didn't have to elbow my way through a crowd to get one of 3 chintzy doorbuster specials No mad dash to get a gift for that cousin 3 times removed, no stores opening at 3am on Black Friday..or better yet, the Pre Black Friday sales. Decorations being sold in August..Doesn't happen in Europe. The Christmas holiday is actually spread over two days..the 25th for family, and the 26th for visiting friends. I spent the first Christmas with my wife to be putting up the tree on Christmas eve, a real tree I might add..Then a big meal followed by singing carols and then opening gifts. I got her a Polaroid camera which I believe is now in the Smithsonian. The following day there was snow in the mountains so we drove into the Taunus to the Feldberg which is the highest peak and had a huge communications tower and an overlook of the hills and valleys all covered with snow. We did then what I did best.."Gee, I wonder where this road goes", and we stumble across a small resturant in the middle of nowhere and we were, no surprise, the only guests, The meal was simple but good and then we wound up at Limburg, on the Lahn river where the sun was hitting the sides of the yellow and brown cathedral which was a spectacular sight. Then we drove home so I could change into my "entertainer duds" and hit the stage from 8pm til whenever at the nightclub I headlined. The band and I had a pretty loose repitoire but this night we just had fun..I taught the audience American Christmas carols, they taught me German carols which was a real laugh. In all, it was a great Christmas season.
Now it's maxing out the credit card, the incessent bell ringing by the Salvation Army and the guilt you feel when you don't put anything in the bucket because you already have in the last dozen buckets, and the war being waged against Christmas by a vast minority that is offended by the mere mention of Christmas..Instead we have "The Holiday Tree", the "Winter Tree, and anything else that can be found to erase Christmas from our lexicon.
Maybe my sarcasm is directed to the years I spent playing "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer" over and over, followed by the Singing Dogs. Or maybe it's going the the Christmas Eve service where all the women went, not to hear of the Birth, but to show off the baubles their abusive husbands bought them for Christmas. Or maybe it's seeing the rich and powerful suddenly noticing there are those less fortunate and giving of themselves, but only for a day.
I guess you could call it innocence lost. But Christmas ain't what it used to be..And never will be again.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Patty
The one thing I most wanted to do and found out I couldn't is write a book. I have made 3 attempts, 2 at fiction and one real life..mine. The two fictions went nowhere. I got 20 pages out of the first and about 50 out of the second..Got farther in the real life, but gave up because I didn't have the dedication and the focus to complete it. The writing part is ok, but going back and reading, then re-reading, then editing, then re-editing..the rejection letters..and some very painful memories made me give it up. So this is the first draft, unedited, not re-read and re-edited. In the chapters that I did finish, I opened with the lyrics of a song that most described that chapter...
Most of us in our youth had some idea where we wanted to go but had no idea how to get there. I first had the idea of going into radio in 1964 when I was in New York for the summer and saw Dan Ingram doing a remote broadcast from one of the bigger department stores..What a way to make a living..say a few words and listen to music..What could be easier?..Later that summer I watched one of the jocks from WMCA do an interview with Bobby Vinton after his show at the Moon Bowl at Freedomland in the Bronx and I was really hooked..But again, how do I become one of those guys?..The answer came when I saw an ad for a place called Career Academy for, of all things, Dental Assistant. It sounded like something a soon to be high school graduate might be interested in. So, I sent in the coupon and sometime in early January of 1967, their sales associate came to the house and gave the pitch. While questioning the future of dental assistants, he said I had a good voice, great inflection, and I should consider a career in radio and televison, because they had a curriculum in that as well. That sounded a whole lot better than digging around in somebody’s mouth, so I signed up right then and there. (actually, my father did as he had to pluck down the cold, hard cash)..Then, on February 22, 1967, I met the girl who would turn my world upside down, and ultimately, send me down a road I never thought I would travel.
I don’t believe in fate. I believe that life gives you road signs, something like those that Burma Shave used to put up. Little hints, that should you stop to read them, can lead you in new directions you never would have followed had you not read the sign. Of course, Burma Shave didn’t lead to world shattering events, but it did give a pretty good shave.
One of those road signs was a small classified ad for a dance at Waymart High School on that Saturday night. I put it in the back of my mind as something to do if things were dead in Honesdale, booming metropolis of 5200 souls, compared to Waymart’s 700 or so at the time. As I was heading into town, an old friend whom I hadn’t seen in over a year was coming the opposite way so we both pulled into the parking lot of the old bowling alley. "Hi, how are you", "I’m fine"..the usual chit chat until we decided that we should do something. He had no plans and neither did I so I mentioned the dance at Waymart High, and we were on our way. I had no sooner hung up my jacket when I saw this angel of a girl with the most beautiful eyes I had ever seen. They say if you look in someone’s eyes for 1 minute both of you will fall in love..I think it took me all of 5 seconds. I think I said something clever, like, "Hi"..Then I got involved in a controversy that made me look somewhat like a hero. The band the school had hired backed out and sent another band that was driven to the school by one of the kid’s mother because none of them were old enough to drive. The lead singer was 15. I walked past a couple of teachers who were ready to cancel the dance, and I put my two cents in by saying that they had a band, and even though they were young and not the band they hired, give them a chance. So the dance went on and those kids were good. Jack and the Rippers. I don’t know what happened to them, but that night, they were bigger than the Beatles. I started to mingle..I asked the girl with the most beautiful eyes to dance, and we danced.. and we danced and we danced. We also made plans for the following Saturday night. We stood outside and talked, even though it was February and we were in the midst of another brutal Northeast Pennsylvania winter with temperatures were below zero and had mounds of snow everywhere. It was a clear night that shone with a billion stars, and, it appeared that they were shining just for us.
Of course, all good things must end and we ended the night with my getting her number and address and her telling me that there was a grotto in front of the house. Now, to me, a grotto was a cave. All week I pondered, "Does she live in a cave"..I also did something else I had never really done much of, and that’s study, because I wanted suddenly to prove that I was as smart as I thought I was..And for the first time, almost made the honor roll..I missed that because me, Mr Student Athlete, had flunked gym. I refused to do flips on the trampoline, and Coach made me pay. He told me later that he didn’t know I was going to be making the honor roll otherwise he wouldn’t have flunked me. But I did pull up my other grades and that’s all that mattered, really.
All week I worked on not doing something stupid and blowing the whole deal. There was something in my heart and my soul that told me Patty was going to lead me to another path in my life. One that held great promise, and, at times, great financial reward. However, that same something didn’t tell me she wouldn’t be part of it. She was just there to start me on that journey.
The first date further proved that what I had felt when I first looked in her eyes, was the real deal. I was completely and totally in love by the time the night ended. I picked her up early. Actually, I drove past several times, first to find out what the hell a grotto was (a religious statue of The Virgin Mother), and then to time myself so I wouldn’t be late. I had said I’d pick her up at 7:30 but decided to come at 7 because I couldn’t wait to see her again. What I saw was hair full of curlers, and then heard a blood curdling scream as she disappeared into her room..Quickly..Then it was meet the parents time, one of the hardest things a suitor has to face.and, because I had gotten there a half hour early, it meant a half hour of meeting the parents, and a grandfather. Mike and I hit it off immediately and it turned out that the grandfather knew my grandfather and had actually done some work for him way back when. We hit it off so well, that when 7:30 rolled around, Patty had to drag me away. We went to the movies to see "Farenheit 411", a movie that continues to pop up on TMC or AMC and I can’t watch. We went to the overlook above the dry dam north of town, and listened to WABC as they played the perfect playlist of love songs. And I knew this girl sitting to my right was the one we all search most of our lives for and never find. Two weeks later, I gave her my ring.
The next 3 months were a whirlwind of activity as we spent every possible minute together and I prepared to become a radio star. There were Proms and graduation activities so we put a ton of miles on my old 61 Plymouth. It was about a 30 mile drive to pick her up and the drive there seemed so quick and the drive home seemed so long. She had, at first, an 11pm curfew that we got raised to midnight, and I never once missed that deadline, as now, being a parent of a grown child, missing curfew is one of the biggest things to turn a girlfriend’s parents against you. However, we did sit in the driveway, sometimes nearly all night listening to Dolly Holliday on WBAL in Baltimore, where I told her I wanted to work there one day, and actually had a job offer from them in 1974. However I turned it down because their format had changed from what it was in 1967, and I sadly realized it wasn’t for me.
I started broadcasting school in New York on the Monday following graduation and could only think how well the Happenings "See You In September" fit what I was facing. My father made arrangements for me to park my car at one of his friend’s house, and I hopped the bus the on Sunday and headed to The Big Apple. I stayed in New York for one weekend, and decided there was nothing that was going to keep me from where I wanted to be.
Every Monday, my father would deposit 60 bucks in my checking account to cover my share of the room at the Hotel Prince George, as well as eating and other living expenses. It was a fair amount in 1967, but my room was $24 a week, eating expenses should have wiped out the rest, but after one weekend alone in New York, I knew I wasn’t going to do it again. So, I started eating lots of Nedick hotdogs at their place around the corner from school, and when Friday rolled around, I had the $13.75 I needed for the round-trip bus ticket and enough left to take Patty out to the movies. The first time I had to pick up my car which meant walking for about a mile up a very long and steep hill. I also decided that was the last time I was going to do that so I asked Mike if it was ok if I left the car in the driveway and I’d take the bus into Waymart on Fridays, and he offered to take me to the bus in Honesdale on Sunday afternoon. Patty would pick me up in the Plymouth and I told her to use it rather than have it sit. One Friday I got off the bus at the old Tastee Freeze on Route 6 and no car, no Patty. I was less than happy, and as I started to walk, the less happier I got and I actually walked about a mile before I saw my Plymouth crest the hill. By that time I was livid, but too tired from walking to let out much more than a whimper. Besides, seeing her made the anger just melt away.
I guess, in the beginning, just seeing her smile and looking in her eyes was all that really mattered. We were so compatible that it was almost impossible to comprehend how deeply she had reached into my soul. My whole world revolved around her. It was something that most people don’t experience in their lifetime.
After a few weeks of taking the bus, I realized that it would only cost me about 3 bucks to drive into New York myself, plus I could leave later than 5pm. The first time was a comedy of errors. I was just a country boy who had never driven the big city, and to my credit, I left late enough that I didn’t hit the Lincoln Tunnel until a little after midnight, so traffic wasn’t an issue. By that time, I had moved in with 3 guys who were in my class, as one kid’s aunt was vacationing in Europe and he could house sit with some friends. The best landmark as to where were we lived is we were one block over from the subway and 2 subway stops from Shea Stadium. Finding Shea Stadium took me until 3 in the morning, and then backtracking to the house took another 2. The neighborhood looked much different at 5 in the morning. I just had time to clean up and get ready for school. The next trips into the city were very uneventful. Leaving the city at 3pm on a Friday afternoon was a whole different game. Sometimes it would take 2 hours to make it from my hotel on east 24th to the Lincoln Tunnel, a distance of about a mile and a half, if that. But getting home was my only goal and I accepted that challenge with no regrets.
I guess, in the beginning, just seeing her smile and looking in her eyes was all that really mattered. We were so compatible that it was almost impossible to comprehend how deeply she had reached into my very soul. My whole world revolved around her. It was something that most people don’t experience in their lifetime. And when it was gone, it left a gaping hole in that soul that never fully closed. After that love is gone, if it was real, the memories will always remain as vivid as the days you lived them.
They didn’t call the Summer of ’67 "The Summer of Love" for nothing. There was something special in the air that year for those lucky enough to have found that someone special. We didn’t do anything earth shattering that summer. About the most exciting thing we did was go to the Narrowsburg, N.Y. fireman’s picnic on the 4th of July. We parked above the Deleware River and were actually higher than the "bombs bursting in air". A truly differant perspective of exploding fireworks. It wasn’t anything that a thousand other people haven’t experienced, but it was just "Being" that mattered. Being together, Being in Love, Being in a universe of our own.
In August, I was offered the morning slot at a brand new radio station in Cape May, New Jersey. I asked my counselor about taking it and he said my grades were high and the reason I was going to school was to get a job in radio, and that was a job in radio, so what the hell, go for it. I turned it down because I wouldn’t have been able to make it home on my days off and even though the challenge of having my first job be to establish a new station was exciting, Patty was much more important. I was going after a job in my hometown.
On Labor Day, Patty and I drove up to WCDL on Salem mountain in Carbondale and I dropped off a tape and resume and later that week I called to see if it had been listened to. I was virtually hired on the spot and again I asked my counselor what to do and again he said go for it, graduation was only a couple of weeks away. So I took the job and my father never forgave me because I didn’t "physically graduate". I don’t know what his problem was. I had my diploma mailed and my transcripts had me in the high 90′s, and I was working the job I was educated to do, as I was the first in my class to actually get a job in radio. But the job would soon start taking it’s toll.
Next came an equally lousy airshift and somewhat less lousy money at a station in Port Jervis, New York. Monday thru Friday I was on-air from noon to 6, had Saturdays off, and then on Sunday did 2-midnight, a killer of an airshift. I was beginning to get a bit disillusioned, and left there to get somewhat of a more stable job. I worked first for a company that manufactured television picture tubes, and then several retail jobs that I disliked but I did have enough money left at the end of the week to do something on the weekends. I missed the microphone terribly but I hadn’t quite paid all my dues, and there weren’t many opportunities left for me to do that. At least not in Northeast Pennsylvania. Patty’s senior year in high school was relatively uneventful. I did miss her Senior Prom because Uncle Sam had sent an invitation that I was fighting like hell not to RSVP. I had developed ulcers for some reason and I supposedly, according to my father, had a heart problem from a youthful bout with rheumatic fever. At the last minute, I was given a health deferment and went home expecting to take her to the prom. She had accepted from somebody else and I was very upset that she wouldn’t cancel and go with me. I guess I hadn’t learned about integrity at the time. In retrospect, she did the right thing because nobody knew I was not going to Fort Dix, and why should she give up one of the more memorable moments of her high school years. I was able to go to two proms with her, and they were memorable, especially when we had a tire go down while heading from one of my senior year events to her prom and had a tire go down in the middle of Carbondale. It must have been a surreal sight to see two guys (we doubled) standing around the car in whiter than white dinner jackets trying to figure out who would pull the fender skirt and change the tire. Luckily, the one person still awake in town walked by and changed the tire for us. We would have given him 20 bucks but he refused any monetary reward.
After her graduation, Patty and I went through a few peaks and valleys. We broke up a couple of times and then got back together again. I had begun to treat her more like a possession than the soulmate she was. The term soulmate is getting a bad rap of late as now it’s anybody you can stand being with more than 10 minutes without fleeing is your soulmate. But in reality, some cultures believe the soul lives on after death and finds another body to live within, but the personality traits still live on as well, and so, if two people were lovers in a previous life, then if they meet in their new life, they will subconciously be drawn to each other. Radical theory but in reality, it does make some sense. But for whatever reason, she was my soulmate in it’s purest terms. But something started to go very wrong and either I didn’t notice it or I noticed but ignored. Maybe it was more my taking her for granted. My love for her never changed..If anything it got stronger, but I showed it less and less. I began to think more of me than of her. Looking back, I think that even though I was running in place, I was trying to find some way to move my career to a higher level and none could be found. I knew I wanted to give her everything she deserved but it became more and more apparent that Northeast Pennsylvania was not where my future lay. But I also knew that Patty would not make the journey with me so to keep her, I had to put my dreams on the back burner. That probably did more and more to alienate her against me, and one night after we broke up for the first time, I was driving home and on a long straight stretch of road called the Seeleyville Flats, I decided to pass a car that was going much slower than I would have liked. I missed an oncoming semi by no more than 3 feet. I think God gave me an extra 10 horsepower that night, because no way I could have missed running into it head on. That calmed me down and I drove slowly and sanely back into town. As I pulled away from a traffic light in town, I hit a pedestrian in the crosswalk, breaking his leg. We both had green so nobody was at fault. I called Patty and she stood by me as I was very shaken over the accident. I couldn’t go visit the person I’d hit because he was somebody I did know fairly well..The brother of my Father’s company attorney. I was afraid because I didn’t know what to say or do. Patty stood beside me as I made the visit to the hospital and strengthened my own courage as it wasn’t really needed as Bud Wenniger held no animosity and didn’t hold me to blame. Suddenly we were back together again. But I didn’t learn my lesson. I was still being myself at my best and sadly, my worst.
Patty then went on to Lackawanna Junior College which, while not the greatest school of higher education, served as a pretty decent springboard to the business world. A degree from there wouldn’t open many doors in the New York or Philly, but it was well respected in Northeast Pennsylvania and, after all, it isn’t the education that makes a career, it’s the desire to learn from your successes and mistakes, more so the mistakes. I have no doubt that she made the best of of her talents and abilities, although I wasn’t around to see how high she soared. I don’t know when the end started. I knew the end was coming and one habit I had, and occasionally still have, is the believing that goodbye is forever. Keep your pride, walk away, no regrets and don’t think twice. A week after we said farewell, I did try to go back to try to put things back together but things went badly. Maybe I was too cocky. Maybe I didn’t hear what she was saying..or more than likely, the words I wanted to say either came out wrong, or didn’t come out at all. That was the day I walked away, and soon was being chased by the ghosts of a memory that quickly made me leave my home area, and try to spread my wings. I didn’t realize at the time that I wasn’t just walking away from someone I would never forget, who became a part of my very being and wouldn’t leave, but I also learned too late that I had lost my best friend..my confidant..my very being. At first, very briefly, I thought that I could now fly with the eagles. But my flight skills were bad and I crashed badly..I basically took a couple of airshifts with stations that couldn’t afford what they said they would pay, and I began a quick spiral down to the deepest depth of dispair I could never have imagined. I was in Bath, New York working at a station where my hours were cut in half and money was quickly running out. I knew the only place I could go was home. My car had been impounded because I couldn’t pay the taxes to get it registered so it was hop the bus and head home. I made it as far as Carbondale when the money totally ran out. It was early February and night temperatures were below zero. With no money, and no place to go, I had to do the only thing I could think of. I turned myself into the Carbondale Jail and declared myself a vagrant. That was when I finally realized I had to do something, but I still didn’t know what that was.
Memories
Pressed between the pages of my mind
Memories
Sweetened thru the ages just like wine
I don’t believe in fate. I believe that life gives you road signs, something like those that Burma Shave used to put up. Little hints, that should you stop to read them, can lead you in new directions you never would have followed had you not read the sign. Of course, Burma Shave didn’t lead to world shattering events, but it did give a pretty good shave.
One of those road signs was a small classified ad for a dance at Waymart High School on that Saturday night. I put it in the back of my mind as something to do if things were dead in Honesdale, booming metropolis of 5200 souls, compared to Waymart’s 700 or so at the time. As I was heading into town, an old friend whom I hadn’t seen in over a year was coming the opposite way so we both pulled into the parking lot of the old bowling alley. "Hi, how are you", "I’m fine"..the usual chit chat until we decided that we should do something. He had no plans and neither did I so I mentioned the dance at Waymart High, and we were on our way. I had no sooner hung up my jacket when I saw this angel of a girl with the most beautiful eyes I had ever seen. They say if you look in someone’s eyes for 1 minute both of you will fall in love..I think it took me all of 5 seconds. I think I said something clever, like, "Hi"..Then I got involved in a controversy that made me look somewhat like a hero. The band the school had hired backed out and sent another band that was driven to the school by one of the kid’s mother because none of them were old enough to drive. The lead singer was 15. I walked past a couple of teachers who were ready to cancel the dance, and I put my two cents in by saying that they had a band, and even though they were young and not the band they hired, give them a chance. So the dance went on and those kids were good. Jack and the Rippers. I don’t know what happened to them, but that night, they were bigger than the Beatles. I started to mingle..I asked the girl with the most beautiful eyes to dance, and we danced.. and we danced and we danced. We also made plans for the following Saturday night. We stood outside and talked, even though it was February and we were in the midst of another brutal Northeast Pennsylvania winter with temperatures were below zero and had mounds of snow everywhere. It was a clear night that shone with a billion stars, and, it appeared that they were shining just for us.
Of course, all good things must end and we ended the night with my getting her number and address and her telling me that there was a grotto in front of the house. Now, to me, a grotto was a cave. All week I pondered, "Does she live in a cave"..I also did something else I had never really done much of, and that’s study, because I wanted suddenly to prove that I was as smart as I thought I was..And for the first time, almost made the honor roll..I missed that because me, Mr Student Athlete, had flunked gym. I refused to do flips on the trampoline, and Coach made me pay. He told me later that he didn’t know I was going to be making the honor roll otherwise he wouldn’t have flunked me. But I did pull up my other grades and that’s all that mattered, really.
All week I worked on not doing something stupid and blowing the whole deal. There was something in my heart and my soul that told me Patty was going to lead me to another path in my life. One that held great promise, and, at times, great financial reward. However, that same something didn’t tell me she wouldn’t be part of it. She was just there to start me on that journey.
The Summer of ’67
You ask me if there’ll come a time
When I grow tired of you
Never my love
Never my love
The Association-Never My Love-1966
The next 3 months were a whirlwind of activity as we spent every possible minute together and I prepared to become a radio star. There were Proms and graduation activities so we put a ton of miles on my old 61 Plymouth. It was about a 30 mile drive to pick her up and the drive there seemed so quick and the drive home seemed so long. She had, at first, an 11pm curfew that we got raised to midnight, and I never once missed that deadline, as now, being a parent of a grown child, missing curfew is one of the biggest things to turn a girlfriend’s parents against you. However, we did sit in the driveway, sometimes nearly all night listening to Dolly Holliday on WBAL in Baltimore, where I told her I wanted to work there one day, and actually had a job offer from them in 1974. However I turned it down because their format had changed from what it was in 1967, and I sadly realized it wasn’t for me.
I started broadcasting school in New York on the Monday following graduation and could only think how well the Happenings "See You In September" fit what I was facing. My father made arrangements for me to park my car at one of his friend’s house, and I hopped the bus the on Sunday and headed to The Big Apple. I stayed in New York for one weekend, and decided there was nothing that was going to keep me from where I wanted to be.
Every Monday, my father would deposit 60 bucks in my checking account to cover my share of the room at the Hotel Prince George, as well as eating and other living expenses. It was a fair amount in 1967, but my room was $24 a week, eating expenses should have wiped out the rest, but after one weekend alone in New York, I knew I wasn’t going to do it again. So, I started eating lots of Nedick hotdogs at their place around the corner from school, and when Friday rolled around, I had the $13.75 I needed for the round-trip bus ticket and enough left to take Patty out to the movies. The first time I had to pick up my car which meant walking for about a mile up a very long and steep hill. I also decided that was the last time I was going to do that so I asked Mike if it was ok if I left the car in the driveway and I’d take the bus into Waymart on Fridays, and he offered to take me to the bus in Honesdale on Sunday afternoon. Patty would pick me up in the Plymouth and I told her to use it rather than have it sit. One Friday I got off the bus at the old Tastee Freeze on Route 6 and no car, no Patty. I was less than happy, and as I started to walk, the less happier I got and I actually walked about a mile before I saw my Plymouth crest the hill. By that time I was livid, but too tired from walking to let out much more than a whimper. Besides, seeing her made the anger just melt away.
I guess, in the beginning, just seeing her smile and looking in her eyes was all that really mattered. We were so compatible that it was almost impossible to comprehend how deeply she had reached into my soul. My whole world revolved around her. It was something that most people don’t experience in their lifetime.
After a few weeks of taking the bus, I realized that it would only cost me about 3 bucks to drive into New York myself, plus I could leave later than 5pm. The first time was a comedy of errors. I was just a country boy who had never driven the big city, and to my credit, I left late enough that I didn’t hit the Lincoln Tunnel until a little after midnight, so traffic wasn’t an issue. By that time, I had moved in with 3 guys who were in my class, as one kid’s aunt was vacationing in Europe and he could house sit with some friends. The best landmark as to where were we lived is we were one block over from the subway and 2 subway stops from Shea Stadium. Finding Shea Stadium took me until 3 in the morning, and then backtracking to the house took another 2. The neighborhood looked much different at 5 in the morning. I just had time to clean up and get ready for school. The next trips into the city were very uneventful. Leaving the city at 3pm on a Friday afternoon was a whole different game. Sometimes it would take 2 hours to make it from my hotel on east 24th to the Lincoln Tunnel, a distance of about a mile and a half, if that. But getting home was my only goal and I accepted that challenge with no regrets.
I guess, in the beginning, just seeing her smile and looking in her eyes was all that really mattered. We were so compatible that it was almost impossible to comprehend how deeply she had reached into my very soul. My whole world revolved around her. It was something that most people don’t experience in their lifetime. And when it was gone, it left a gaping hole in that soul that never fully closed. After that love is gone, if it was real, the memories will always remain as vivid as the days you lived them.
They didn’t call the Summer of ’67 "The Summer of Love" for nothing. There was something special in the air that year for those lucky enough to have found that someone special. We didn’t do anything earth shattering that summer. About the most exciting thing we did was go to the Narrowsburg, N.Y. fireman’s picnic on the 4th of July. We parked above the Deleware River and were actually higher than the "bombs bursting in air". A truly differant perspective of exploding fireworks. It wasn’t anything that a thousand other people haven’t experienced, but it was just "Being" that mattered. Being together, Being in Love, Being in a universe of our own.
In August, I was offered the morning slot at a brand new radio station in Cape May, New Jersey. I asked my counselor about taking it and he said my grades were high and the reason I was going to school was to get a job in radio, and that was a job in radio, so what the hell, go for it. I turned it down because I wouldn’t have been able to make it home on my days off and even though the challenge of having my first job be to establish a new station was exciting, Patty was much more important. I was going after a job in my hometown.
On Labor Day, Patty and I drove up to WCDL on Salem mountain in Carbondale and I dropped off a tape and resume and later that week I called to see if it had been listened to. I was virtually hired on the spot and again I asked my counselor what to do and again he said go for it, graduation was only a couple of weeks away. So I took the job and my father never forgave me because I didn’t "physically graduate". I don’t know what his problem was. I had my diploma mailed and my transcripts had me in the high 90′s, and I was working the job I was educated to do, as I was the first in my class to actually get a job in radio. But the job would soon start taking it’s toll.
One thing Mama never told me was that radio was a business of whims. WCDL-FM was new to the game, back when FM was "Don’t talk much and play lots of old fart music". The AM had been around for years and was established as a "variety" station. That mean’t, Andy Williams, The Beatles, and Polka’s, not necessarily in that order. My day off was Tuesday. (good luck finding something exciting to do with the love of your life on a Tuesday night) The rest of the work week was 5-11 and then 6-11 AM and 5-11 PM on Sunday. But she stuck with me, which is more than anybody else would have. And I was BAD..Boy did I have alot to learn. I told Patty one day I would be on the air at WARM which was the area’s #1 station and one of the most famous in the country, as at that time they had more listeners per 1000 population than any other station in the country, even more than WABC in New York and WLS Chicago combined. WARM was the stepping stone for the big time and I wanted a piece of the action. But first I had to pay my dues. And that meant a lousy air-shift for lousy dollars. But I was doing something that I wanted to do, just not there
Next came an equally lousy airshift and somewhat less lousy money at a station in Port Jervis, New York. Monday thru Friday I was on-air from noon to 6, had Saturdays off, and then on Sunday did 2-midnight, a killer of an airshift. I was beginning to get a bit disillusioned, and left there to get somewhat of a more stable job. I worked first for a company that manufactured television picture tubes, and then several retail jobs that I disliked but I did have enough money left at the end of the week to do something on the weekends. I missed the microphone terribly but I hadn’t quite paid all my dues, and there weren’t many opportunities left for me to do that. At least not in Northeast Pennsylvania. Patty’s senior year in high school was relatively uneventful. I did miss her Senior Prom because Uncle Sam had sent an invitation that I was fighting like hell not to RSVP. I had developed ulcers for some reason and I supposedly, according to my father, had a heart problem from a youthful bout with rheumatic fever. At the last minute, I was given a health deferment and went home expecting to take her to the prom. She had accepted from somebody else and I was very upset that she wouldn’t cancel and go with me. I guess I hadn’t learned about integrity at the time. In retrospect, she did the right thing because nobody knew I was not going to Fort Dix, and why should she give up one of the more memorable moments of her high school years. I was able to go to two proms with her, and they were memorable, especially when we had a tire go down while heading from one of my senior year events to her prom and had a tire go down in the middle of Carbondale. It must have been a surreal sight to see two guys (we doubled) standing around the car in whiter than white dinner jackets trying to figure out who would pull the fender skirt and change the tire. Luckily, the one person still awake in town walked by and changed the tire for us. We would have given him 20 bucks but he refused any monetary reward.
After her graduation, Patty and I went through a few peaks and valleys. We broke up a couple of times and then got back together again. I had begun to treat her more like a possession than the soulmate she was. The term soulmate is getting a bad rap of late as now it’s anybody you can stand being with more than 10 minutes without fleeing is your soulmate. But in reality, some cultures believe the soul lives on after death and finds another body to live within, but the personality traits still live on as well, and so, if two people were lovers in a previous life, then if they meet in their new life, they will subconciously be drawn to each other. Radical theory but in reality, it does make some sense. But for whatever reason, she was my soulmate in it’s purest terms. But something started to go very wrong and either I didn’t notice it or I noticed but ignored. Maybe it was more my taking her for granted. My love for her never changed..If anything it got stronger, but I showed it less and less. I began to think more of me than of her. Looking back, I think that even though I was running in place, I was trying to find some way to move my career to a higher level and none could be found. I knew I wanted to give her everything she deserved but it became more and more apparent that Northeast Pennsylvania was not where my future lay. But I also knew that Patty would not make the journey with me so to keep her, I had to put my dreams on the back burner. That probably did more and more to alienate her against me, and one night after we broke up for the first time, I was driving home and on a long straight stretch of road called the Seeleyville Flats, I decided to pass a car that was going much slower than I would have liked. I missed an oncoming semi by no more than 3 feet. I think God gave me an extra 10 horsepower that night, because no way I could have missed running into it head on. That calmed me down and I drove slowly and sanely back into town. As I pulled away from a traffic light in town, I hit a pedestrian in the crosswalk, breaking his leg. We both had green so nobody was at fault. I called Patty and she stood by me as I was very shaken over the accident. I couldn’t go visit the person I’d hit because he was somebody I did know fairly well..The brother of my Father’s company attorney. I was afraid because I didn’t know what to say or do. Patty stood beside me as I made the visit to the hospital and strengthened my own courage as it wasn’t really needed as Bud Wenniger held no animosity and didn’t hold me to blame. Suddenly we were back together again. But I didn’t learn my lesson. I was still being myself at my best and sadly, my worst.
Patty then went on to Lackawanna Junior College which, while not the greatest school of higher education, served as a pretty decent springboard to the business world. A degree from there wouldn’t open many doors in the New York or Philly, but it was well respected in Northeast Pennsylvania and, after all, it isn’t the education that makes a career, it’s the desire to learn from your successes and mistakes, more so the mistakes. I have no doubt that she made the best of of her talents and abilities, although I wasn’t around to see how high she soared. I don’t know when the end started. I knew the end was coming and one habit I had, and occasionally still have, is the believing that goodbye is forever. Keep your pride, walk away, no regrets and don’t think twice. A week after we said farewell, I did try to go back to try to put things back together but things went badly. Maybe I was too cocky. Maybe I didn’t hear what she was saying..or more than likely, the words I wanted to say either came out wrong, or didn’t come out at all. That was the day I walked away, and soon was being chased by the ghosts of a memory that quickly made me leave my home area, and try to spread my wings. I didn’t realize at the time that I wasn’t just walking away from someone I would never forget, who became a part of my very being and wouldn’t leave, but I also learned too late that I had lost my best friend..my confidant..my very being. At first, very briefly, I thought that I could now fly with the eagles. But my flight skills were bad and I crashed badly..I basically took a couple of airshifts with stations that couldn’t afford what they said they would pay, and I began a quick spiral down to the deepest depth of dispair I could never have imagined. I was in Bath, New York working at a station where my hours were cut in half and money was quickly running out. I knew the only place I could go was home. My car had been impounded because I couldn’t pay the taxes to get it registered so it was hop the bus and head home. I made it as far as Carbondale when the money totally ran out. It was early February and night temperatures were below zero. With no money, and no place to go, I had to do the only thing I could think of. I turned myself into the Carbondale Jail and declared myself a vagrant. That was when I finally realized I had to do something, but I still didn’t know what that was.
I had thought, in the past, that getting my radio engineering license was the answer and the holy grail was a school called REI in Fredricksburg, Virginia which didn’t teach you electronics, it just taught you the answers to the FCC engineering exam. The license was needed to be on air at higher powered stations and I had thought that was my salvation. So after a very cold and very unnerving night in jail, I swollowed my pride the next night and called my father and told him I was stranded and broke. He sent a cab and the trip home took about 40 minutes and I went back to where I had sworn I would never spend another night. I was the ultimate prodigal son. Broke, unshaven, and as dirty as a Bowery bum. My father didn’t say much to rub it in. I guess he figured that I had been through enough. A couple of days later he gave me a 100 dollar bill and a bus ticket to Fredricksburg, Virginia to get a job and enroll in REI, neither of which happened. Instead, I realized that to turn everything around, I had to make a drastic change. And that was to see what Uncle Sam had to offer me. Maybe that change would help me win back the girl who wasn't just a girl friend, but my best friend which is worth so much more. That didn't happen either.
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