Talk radio made magic time

Talk radio is a for­mat that empha­sized talk and dis­cus­sion instead of music. Over the years, I have been a talk radio lis­tener — mostly NPR — as well as an occa­sional participant.

My first expe­ri­ence as a talk radio par­tic­i­pant occurred in the sum­mer of 1958 when I was 10. My boy­hood friend Jimmy Hast­ings and I were invited to be on KYW’s (1000-AM) “D.J. Jury.” Our moth­ers took us to down­town Cleve­land on Thurs­day after­noon in June so that we could pre-record the show.

As I recall, we first lis­tened to, and then graded, a num­ber of new pop­u­lar songs. We stuck together — Jimmy and I did — grad­ing the songs either quite high or quite low. One song that I remem­ber in par­tic­u­lar was Doris Day’s “Every­body Loves a Lover,” which turned out to be a chart buster, despite the low grades we gave it.

In addi­tion to grad­ing each son, we also had to give rea­sons for our grades, be they high or low. Some of the rea­sons included a nice lyric, a catchy tune, or a good beat. Since the show was pre-recorded, we were able to lis­ten to it a few days later back home in Oberlin.

Another talk radio expe­ri­ence for me hap­pened in he late sum­mer of 1999, when I ven­tured into Cleve­land to be inter­viewed, along with Ober­lin Col­lege Eng­lish pro­fes­sor Patrick Day, on Dee Perry’s WCPN “Around Noon Show.”

I had helped to orga­nize a 50th pub­lish­ing anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion of Jack Schaefer’s west­ern “Shane,” whereas she asked me about the exhibit of “Shane” books in some 30 for­eign lan­guages, as well as about exam­ples of Schaefer’s writ­ings when Schae­fer stud­ied here. The exhibit took place at Ober­lin College’s Mudd Library.

After the live inter­view, I received a tape when I left the WCPN studio.

One of my favorite talk radio pro­grams is “Black on Black Crime” with Cleve­land activist Art McKoy. His show occu­pies the 8 to 10 p.m. time slot every Sunday.

McKoy puts his heart and soul into his show. He is apt to yell a bit; nev­er­the­less, he exudes a sin­cere desire to help folks with their problems.

I have called the sta­tion twice to read him a poem on air. Since he claims he can make it rain, I let him know that I, too, can make it rain, so I read him this 1885 poem, “Rain,” by Robert Louis Stevenson:

The rain is rain­ing all around,

It falls on field and tree.

It rains on the umbrel­las here

And on the ship at sea.

Recently I had occa­sion to call WCPN’s morn­ing show, “The Sound of Ideas,” hosted by Rick Jack­son. He was inter­view­ing Pete Hamill, the noted New York City jour­nal­ist and novelist.

Hamill’s book “Snow in August” is one of my all-time favorite sto­ries. It traces the friend­ship between an Irish Amer­i­can lad and an Ortho­dox Jew­ish rabbi.

When I called the sta­tion, I thanked Hamill for writ­ing one of the loveli­est nov­els I have ever read. I went on to tell him I espe­cially liked the part of his book where the rabbi and the young man take in a Brook­lyn Dodgers game at Ebbets Field. His descrip­tion made me feel like I was right there.

I ended my shout-out to Pete Hamill by say­ing, “God bless you for writ­ing that book.” Hamill responded to my praise by telling me about the first time he ever saw Jackie Robin­son play in 1947, Robinson’s rookie year. He said Robin­son got hit by a pitch, stole sec­ond, and scored on a sin­gle. Three Ortho­dox Jews, who were sit­ting behind Hamill at that Ebbets Field game, yelled, “Yonkala, Yonkala, Yonkala!” — their ver­sion of Jackie.

For Pete Hamill, watch­ing Jackie Robin­son play for the first time was a magic moment in his life. For me, hav­ing the oppor­tu­nity to tell Pete Hamill how much his novel “Snow In August” has meant to me will always be a magic moment in my life.

Posted by Sid Comings on Jul 28 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.