Hard to believe that over 50 years have gone by since Bob Dylan composed “The Times They Are A Changin’.” Many of us might disagree on many things but I’m guessing there is an ever growing consensus that unfortunately, there are a lot of ways the times —our times since those times— have not changed completely for the better.
Talk radio is one of those developments that I’m pretty certain I could live without. My father used to have his car radio tuned permanently it seemed to Rush Limbaugh and so when I visited and borrowed the car I sometimes got a quick earful. When I was in the car with him and Limbaugh was on I got a serious earful. About the only thing I learned from Rush and his cohorts was that there’s no issue too complex that it can’t be reduced to fear and loathing. And if you’ll excuse my own rant, I’ll contend that the majority of talk show hosts are egomaniacs and most of their callers either stridently xenophobic on the right or blindly naïve on the left.
The late former sane governor of Texas Ann Richards was once asked why she didn’t have a talk show. Her answer: “The people who have time during the day to listen to me on the radio are not the people I want to be talking to.”
But I remember a kinder gentler time when talk radio was in its infancy and I was not much older. There was a program on WHUM in the city where I grew up in Pennsylvania on weeknights that I’d often go to sleep listening to. Its theme music, big band clarinetist Artie Shaw’s “Nightmare”, would play and Reading’s Night Mayor was on the air.
It might not have been the first radio talk show in the country but I’ll bet it was close. Paul Barclay was the host, a high school school teacher by day and back then, I’m guessing, his radio gig was barely making him vacation money. I don’t think he was even much of a local celebrity and he certainly wasn’t into spouting his own opinions to his audience. No diatribes, no insults, no spin but something else was missing from Barclay’s show that, despite his objectivity and neutrality, made him a very singular voice back in his day. His was in fact the ONLY voice.
In that pre cell phone and Internet era of long ago either the technology didn’t exist or his radio station couldn’t afford it. So listeners only heard one side of the conversation— the Night Mayor’s. Because of this much patience was required from its devotees. Calls all started the same way: “Hello, Night Mayor!” followed by a long silence as the caller made his point and the listener waited to hear Barclay repeat, and no doubt condense, what that point was. Each call was literally translated from English into English and even then, listening to the program plod along, it was awkward to the point of painful.
The theme music kind of scared me, too but I couldn’t resist tuning into the Night Mayor when I was growing up. My transistor radio back then brought me the world, although St. Louis was actually about as far as it could reach out into it on a good night. It was rock and roll from Buffalo, basketball from Boston and talk of the stench of Reading politics or on one occasion I recall the real thing– complaints about tardy garbage collection –from the callers to the Night Mayor.
And then one night I decided to call the Night Mayor myself. I had to. Something incredible had occurred on live television that afternoon and the Night Mayor was asking for a witness. I had just gotten home from school and seen it myself on a kitsch variety show hosted by Bert Parks.
It was a stunt gone amazingly wrong. A woman from the audience blindfolded and spun around while a lit fuse running on the floor was racing toward her husband. The studio audience implored to scream directions to help her find it so she could stamp it out with her shoes. Her husband sitting in a chair below a sack of flour hanging from the ceiling. The fuse attached to a firecracker and the firecracker next to the sack of flour and well… she didn’t find it. And when the firecracker exploded the flour ignited and the man instantly became a human torch. Aflame he rose from his seat as Bert Parks ran to him and probably saved his life by quickly covering him with his green master of ceremonies blazer. Yes, this actually happened!
I could barely believe I had seen it but I had and I was obligated to report it to the Night Mayor. I felt it my duty… Well partly, but mostly I just wanted to be the first one to call in. I dialed WHUM from the phone in my parents’ kitchen and as it rang and I waited my nerves started to get the better of me. Stage freight hit and I thought of hanging up. I was a kid, not even a teenager. What was I doing? Only adults called the Night Mayor.
With the suddenness of a car crash it was too late. “Hello, Night Mayor.” His voice sounded different on the phone. I surprised myself and didn’t hang up and as best I could began my account. The Night Mayor didn’t ask me my age. He had a show to do and now I was part of it and I was relieved that nobody was hearing me but him. He helped me along with tactical “ah huhs” and “um hums” honed from experience. I rambled around them and listened to the Night Mayor edit me as I went along. I reported what I had seen and The Night Mayor was relaying what I told him to possibly thousands of others. Was I articulate? Did I make sense? Who knows? But together we made it work and then it was over. I was alone in the kitchen and shaking a little but not embarrassed or scared. I was now officially a Night Mayor caller. Until writing this I’ve never told anyone.
Years later I became a journalist. I produced accounts of events for many others– millions in fact– to watch on the news for a living. But to this day I have never called another talk show.
Want to listen to Artie Shaw and His Orchestra play the Night Mayor theme? … Click below to get taken there…
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