I had a great dinner this past Friday evening with some (I hesitate to say “old”) friends. But the topics of age, intermittent memory and aches & pains did come up quite often!
We’d all worked at the same radio station back in the 1980’s.
I think that, at times, we’ve all talked about life-long friends not seeing each other for years, and then picking up right where we left off. And this evening was a perfect example of that. Affectionate hugs were immediately followed by jabs and prods about long-past screw-ups and misadventures. I think the good-natured ribbing started before we even took our seats.
And I am not going to relate any of those here. I yearn to say we have too much respect for each other to make public any embarrassing goof-ups from the past. But the truth is, we’d probably sell each other out in a second if the others didn’t have such great stuff on us! It’s sort of our own version of a Mutually Assured Destruction scenario.
Conversations meandered from what’s new to growing children to old times. I was at one end of the table so I missed some of the conversation at the other end. But as dinner was finished, people got up and switched chairs so we could all have some time talking more closely with each of our old friends.
In an earlier blog post, I talked about a young man to whom I gave his start in radio. He is now a program director of a radio station in another state. I thought of him as I looked around the table. Heck, I am the oldest person at this table! I started at our radio station before all of these people. Wait a minute. Of my four former colleagues here tonight, I was instrumental in starting three of them in radio.
As the tête-à-tête and laughter continued, I paused to look at my friends. The young woman to my left was probably just out of her teens when her father asked if I could be of any help getting her a job. It just so happened that we needed a receptionist and I recommended her to the GM. She was terrific at her job and now is an Executive Assistant to the owner of a direct marketing company.
Her father was a dear friend and I still wear a ring of his that was given to me by his widow after he was senselessly murdered in a botched robbery. For a time before his death, the family had practically adopted me. As I looked at her now, I recalled family dinners at her house, she and her brother were barely, if at all, out of their teens. Such a warm, loving family and her father and I used to talk about how similar Jewish and Catholic families were. I used to joke that we were the same families with the same “guilt,” just different adornments on our walls.
Now here was my little “sister,” matured into womanhood and more breathtakingly beautiful than ever. I wished her father could have been there to see into what an incredible person she’d grown. But I know he watches over her.
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To her left was another friend. She’d joined us as a receptionist and in, what seemed like no time, moved up to be assistant to the General Manager. She and her husband had become good friends with one of my earlier wives and me. We had so many pasta dinners together, I can’t even recall them all. We both moved onto the same block on the same weekend. In fact, we pooled our resources and rented a moving van together and conned our other friends into helping both of us move.
Now they’ve raised two daughters and, despite a touch of gray hair on her husband’s head, they don’t look to me as if they’ve aged a day. And it was some goofy comment by him that made me laugh out loud and first think that we were just picking up where we’d left off the last time we got together a decade ago. Could it be that long since I’ve seen them? Well, I guess when someone lives in a special place in your heart, they’re always close by.
To my right, sat the instigator of this gathering. She was in town for her birthday weekend and had made a point of contacting everyone to plan this little reunion. I’d interviewed her back in the early 80’s for a job and had decided to hire her even before the end of the interview. Smart and beautiful cannot come close to describing the degree to which she was both. Is both. Still.
Frequently three steps ahead of anyone in a conversation, I always saw her as the head of a corporation or some other hugely successful endeavor. Today she’s married to a state senator and is raising two sons while producing a highly popular, nationally syndicated radio program.
Over the decades we have agreed on politics and have disagreed on religion. Though we are much closer in our beliefs than she realizes, we continue to have our sticking points. And I wasn’t the least bit surprised when she reached into her bag and handed me a book to read. Not the first time she’s done that. “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Fine, I’ll read it…”
“No you won’t!” she scolded, then proceeded to try and bribe me to finish the book. I promised to read it, though I doubt it will change my position.
I put the book into my pocket (love wearing my fly-fishing-cargo pants!) and was struck with how much she must care about me. After all these years, and the same sticking points about religion, she has found yet another book she thinks may persuade me to the path of (what she sees as) righteousness. What an amazing friend to, after all of these years and miles, to care so much about my everlasting soul to keep pestering me with reading material.
We exchange maybe two emails a year, and I am always a recipient of their family Christmas card. But we both have far different lives and don’t stay that closely in touch. Yet, here she is, picking up our conversation right where we left off ten or so years ago. It’s hard for me to put into words how deeply touched I am to have a friend who cares that much.
And to my final friend at the table… Boy, where to begin about him…
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He used to come and hang out in the studio with my morning show partner and I before he went to his high school classes in the morning. He was always a “good kid,” very witty and fun to have around. After his graduation, I gave him a job as a board operator. I think it may have even been a part-time weekend position.
A board operator, in those days, was a very necessary, yet very boring job. Our AM signal was a satellite feed from the ABC Radio Networks. The board operator would sit there for a six-hour shift, look at the programming log, and make sure the correct commercials were inserted into the tape machine. Back then, commercials were each on a cartridge that was the same size as the 8-track tapes we used to have in our cars.
The signal would come into the board, via satellite, and then when it came time for the commercials to play, the network would send an inaudible signal to the stations and the tape machines would fire and the tape would roll and the commercial was broadcast. The board op then checked off the commercials as they aired, and reloaded the tape machine for the next break.
There were some technical things you had to do, make sure the right channel was turned up to the proper volume, make sure you played and logged the correct commercials, turn down the network feed at the top of the hour and turn up the feed for the network news. All of it can be intimidating the first day, but soon after, tedium reigned. One could read the entire newspaper in a shift or read (or write!) the great American novel. It was pretty boring and it was always difficult to find someone reliable enough to show up weekend after weekend.
But this kid was not only reliable, he was eager to do his job and take on any extra shifts or assignments I had. And whenever I asked him to do something extra, he always brought back more than I’d asked for. He’d say something like, “I know you wanted these lists, but I also alphabetized them…” or, “The disc jockeys will eventually need them this way, so I already did it in that order for them…”
The instant I had a full-time position open, I asked him if he wanted it. And he took it! I asked him at this dinner the other night, if his mother was still mad at me. He laughed and said, “No. Now that I can take care of myself, she’s OK with my decision!”
See, the opening I had for him was the overnight board operator. The shift was midnight to 6:00AM, six days a week. He thought it would be good to be able to work full time, and have a job where he could get his homework done while working, and still go to classes during the day. What he didn’t plan on was being so tired that he’d fall asleep in his car in the parking lot at school and miss class. Or that he’d actually fall asleep once while taking a test.
So, he quit school and kept working and told me his mother was mad at me because he’d dropped out of college.
His job now? He’s still at the station. Only there are five radio stations in the group now, and he is the General Manager.
Twice I have been invited to be a guest instructor for a college radio and television class. At both colleges, when I was asked about the best way to break in to a radio job, I told the students about how I did it. And I told them about this young man and how he always made himself available when I needed someone and how he always gave more than was asked of him.
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I have a vivid memory of my early days in aerospace in Orange Country, California. I had the cool assignment of taking one of our contractors to Disneyland on the Saturday of his visit. As we walked across the parking lot, we were talking about my job and I remember saying, “…well I am not going to do any more unless they’re willing to pay me for it…” And he said, “No! I doesn’t work that way!” But I was young and not too bright and I only, perhaps, understood intellectually what he was saying.
But this young man demonstrated it to me. Being the boss, I was on the other side of it by that point. But he certainly demonstrated the value of someone who, without being asked, goes above and beyond. Whenever yearly evaluations came, I always gave him the maximum raise my GM would allow me to give. Whenever I had an opening for advancement, I offered it to him.
He and I now laugh about the times youthful stubbornness got him into hot water. But he weathered those times well. And how he is GM of five radio stations and knows more about the business than I ever hoped to know.
I’m not saying that everyone who shows some initiative will rise to the level of my friend. He is exceptionally intelligent and talented. But I think his attitude and willingness to put forth an effort points the way to success.
Many years back, after I had left that station, he became the Director of Station Promotions. I used to crack up when I’d see pictures of their crew out on a live remote broadcast and he’d be there, dressed as a large banana or in an Elvis costume or something. He was always willing to do more than the average promotions manager.
He has remained a friend to this day and always treats me with kindness, again, above and beyond the call of friendship. He even tries to take me to an Angels/Yankees game once a year!
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As our gathering was breaking up, he asked me to accompany him to the parking lot. At his car he gave me a Yankees T-Shirt, guidebook and a Mickey Mouse dressed as a Yankee. He’d gone on E-Bay to pick them out for me.
I did my best to thank him, but was a bit at a loss for words. He said, “I thought, heck, if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be here.” It was quite humbling and not quite true. I am sure he would have been a success at whatever he wanted to do in life. And if I weren’t able to get him into radio, someone else would have.
It was a terrific way to spend a Friday evening. What a wonderful evening of memories with life-long friends! Dinner was paid for and I had a full tummy but, more than that, I had a heart warmed by the companionship of true friends.
Thank you, my friends. I am in your debt!
