Whatever it is you do
However you get it done
It’s gonna be done times two
When you do it one-on-one

We drove from L.A. to Tucson in an old Packard convertible.  My father, who was an automobile mechanic, had warned me about buying this car.  He said “That car won’t even make it home.” But it did, and now it was taking us to Tucson. Almost.  I remember we were somewhere in the middle of the desert when the head lights began to grow dim and dimmer and then dimmerer and ... out.  A moment later, the car itself gave out. It was very late.  It was very dark. And the road on which we were now stalled was very narrow.   A brand new Lincoln going much too fast on that very dark and very narrow road slammed into the back of our grand old Packard.  He hit us so hard his radiator ended up in our back seat absolutely demolishing the rear half of the car.  I got a mean whack on the head and Cath cut her knee. We were okay but the driver of the Lincoln broke a couple of his ribs and he was crying.  Cath was crying too, not because of her knee but because everything behind the front seat of our car was destroyed and everything behind the front seat was just about every thing we owned.   

 Somehow or another the Highway Patrol showed up and called for a tow truck.  It took about an hour for the tow truck to get there but it took them only a minute to rip that new Lincoln right out of the back seat of our old Packard.  I asked the driver of the tow truck if he could put a quick charge on my battery, he said, “Sure, but there ain’t no way that pile of junk is gonna go nowhere.  That pile of junk is ... a pile of junk.” But he gave the battery a quick charge, promised he’d be back for us and towed the big old Lincoln away.  The Highway Patrolmen figured we’d had enough problems and we got off with a warning;  “If your car doesn’t have any lights you better not park it in the middle of a dark road in the middle of the desert.”  They left us there in the middle of the night.  

It was too damned dark to really judge the extent of the damage to our car but I was able to start it and it actually moved, even though when it did it sounded like the screeching of brakes you hear right before a terrible accident. The back rear wheel was severely twisted and the tire was shoved up against the frame of the car which was also pretty badly bent out of shape.  But the car did move.  That back tire was hung up against the frame of the car and the smoke from that burning rubber was even worse than that demoralizing screeching.  My once beautiful Packard convertible clinked down the road for a couple of miles and just pooped out. 

It was about four o’clock in the morning when I left my new wife sitting in that car with that stinking rubber and her bleeding knee.  I walked back to a service station we had passed about fifteen minutes before this disaster.  I asked for help but the most they could do was loan me a huge old sledge hammer which they suggested I could use to pound the wheel away from the body of the car.  They were right.  I could.  But with every whack of the sledge I was also ripping the gas tank away from the body of the car.  I think I started to cry when I heard that tank clank to the ground.  Luckily the fuel line from the tank to the engine somehow remained intact.  I was able to strap my belt around the pipe which feeds the gas into the tank and tie the badly battered tank to the twisted frame of the poor old Packard.  We limped  the rest of the way to Tucson so I could talk on the radio.

I explained my situation to Mr.  Wallace and asked if he could advance me fifty dollars so I could get a place to stay.   “Sorry,” he said, “We don’t have it.” 

The station doesn’t have fifty bucks. Oh my God.  What have I gotten into? 

 “But, I’m supposed to be making two hundred and fifty dollars a month.  If you don’t even have ...” 

“Payday’s in two weeks.  I’ll either be able to pay you then or we’ll be dark.” 

“We’ll be what?” 

“Dark.  Off the air.  Out of  business.”    

“Oh.” 

“You want the job, or don’tcha?” 

Radio school never covered this.  But, I didn’t have money enough to go anywhere else anyway, so I said, “Absolutely.” 

“Well, you sure don’t have much of a voice.” said Mr. Wallace, who of course had a very beautiful radio voice, having been the voice of NBC out of Chicago. 

Catherine and I moved in with her father, a wonderful man who lived in a very, very small house, much too small for a father-in-law and two newlyweds.  He loaned us a hundred dollars and we rented a small room in the back of the even smaller house next door to his.

The station made it through the two weeks.  And it wasn’t long before we were able to move into a small house large enough for the two of us.  It was about that time that we learned the two of us were about to become a the three of us with the welcome addition of our daughter Cathy Anne.  

The two weeks became five years.  Five years learning my trade, or at least, the basics  of how to succeed in radio when you don’t have much of a voice.    

Today, voice quality isn’t often an issue, but in those days radio was populated almost exclusively with pear-shaped tones emanating from mostly pear-shaped people.  I was the exception to both those things — a skinny little kid with a skinny little voice. But, as it turned out, not having much of a voice was going to be a great blessing.  I was so aware of this huge weakness  I taught myself to do funny little cartoonish voices and created a whole cast of characters to hide behind.  A lot of people have done this since and if I wasn’t the first I was certainly among the pioneers and I actually got pretty good at talking to myself. 

My program, which I called, Let’s Play Records, featured these voices a good deal of the time doing little entertainment kinds of things; mostly amusing (?) little skits introducing a record or commenting on a news event or the weather, or even little commercials which I wrote with the help of a ton of Robert Orben joke books.   I figured if I couldn’t attract an audience with a mellifluous voice I would have to give them lots of other reasons to like me better than the next guy.   

“Let’s Play Records”  became Number One in some strange audience measurement service called, Merlin Media, or something like that and I thought, “Yeah.  This is it. Anybody can play records, it’s what you do between the records that makes the difference.  Entertaining people is what it’s all about,  Give them something to smile about, give them an “affirmative emotional experience.”   I learned to love that phrase. Matter of fact, safe to say, my entire radio career and later the successes I had creating advertising were all based on those three words..                                                        

Another indelible lesson: To attract and keep an audience you offer them, as a reward for their listening, something to which they will have an affirmative emotional response.  Nothing cerebral about it.  It’s something they like without having to think about it at all ... a positive emotional reaction to whatever it is you do.  Like they say in the song ... “That’s entertainment_” 

And you don’t stray too far from the menu.  Whatever it was that got ‘em there, be certain they get it there every time.  And without having to wait for it.  Whatever it is, it has to be there for them every time, anytime, all the time.  Wow, that’s at least three indelible lessons.  

The next really important thing that happened to my career was, my wife got the flu. Those nasty little flu bugs aggravated her dormant asthma condition and that sent her to bed for several days. “Listen to me today. ” I said as I left for the station, “I’m gonna lay my whole program right in your lap, or maybe on the bed right next to you.” 

And I did.  All during my program I had this mental image of her with a thermometer in her mouth, in her bed, in her misery and everything I said was directed right to her. 

As I left the announce booth after the program, the receptionist, I remember her name was Sally,  said, “What were you doing in there?” 

“What do you mean?” 

“I swear, I thought you had come out here and were talking to me.   I kept turning around to answer and I realized you were still in the booth, still on the air.  But you were talking right to me.  I even actually answered you a couple of times.   Really.   It was weird.”