HOW TO QUIT A JOB

I had never quit a job before so I was searching what recesses I could find at the ripe old age of 25 to try and come up with something more creative than the usual letter of resignation with the standard 2 weeks notice. It wasn't the worst job in the world for someone with virtually no experience in my then newly chosen field. I was actually doing an afternoon radio show. It was music that I abhorred at the time on a station that was so small that it sold other dayparts to specific special interests that provided about a dozen listeners to each show and allowed me to “play” for a couple of hours in the afternoon for those few stragglers who hadn't made the effort to cross the room and change the station. I was in the process of earning my “stripes” and thrilled to be there, learning my trade. The day would begin with “Cousin Stan Ozimek and the New England Polka Express.” “Woo, woo, what fun,” Cousin Stan would blurt out after a particularly rousing rendition of “Who Stole the Kishka,” as the entire Polish population of New Britain, Ct. basked in the knowledge that the morning airwaves of WRYM belonged to them and, of course, the few stragglers from the day before who hadn't made the effort to change radio stations prior to going to bed and didn't mind a healthy dose of the “Beer Barrel Polka” first thing in the morning. Cousin Stan's show ran until 10am when the station made a sharp turn in programming to make way for “La Voz Latino Americana” with Walter & Omar, two guys from Argentina who played music for Argentine audiences during the 2 hours they had purchased from the crack sales team, which consisted of one guy who sat at a desk in the back of the room outside the studio. I knew the audience for Walter & Omar was as specific as it was when, one day, they failed to show up to do their show and the general manager, who knew I had lived in Puerto Rico, summoned me into his office and demanded that I “Go on the air and do their show.” I was extraordinarily unqualified to do this but he insisted so, I went into the studio, turned on the microphone and began to speak the street Spanglish that I was accustomed to using and I played music that I was familiar with and enjoyed. The phones began to light up more than I had ever seen at a station that generally had more telephone lines than listeners. “Wow,” I thought, “they actually like what I'm doing. I'm pulling this off.” Well, I couldn't have been more mistaken in my assessment of the seeming barrage of calls. It seems the consensus of all of these callers was, “Where the hell are Walter & Omar? Get that Puerto Rican off the air.” Needless to say, management strongly encouraged Walter & Omar to NEVER miss their show again. They didn't. When Walter & Omar went off the air at noon, the booth was taken over by a charlatan named Pastor Wendell Mullen who purported to speak on behalf of the Farmington Avenue Baptist Church in West Hartford. He would, as many of today's TV evangelists do, beg for money for the church and use it for himself. I had seen his car and the mansion in which he lived. I had also seen the church. It was painfully obvious where the money went but, more about him later. I came on at about 12:15, right after the 1/4 hour begfest and, for the next four hours, played music that was placed within the confines of what was then referred to as a “nice & easy” format. We featured the safest music of the day......Mantovani, the Clebenoff Strings, an occasional Rosemary Clooney number, which was never to be played back to back with another female vocalist.......The likes of Engelbert Humperdinck and the Carpenters were too close to rock & roll and would never find a spot on WRYM's turntables and if Mantovani showed his cojones by doing a version of a Beatles song, it would be scratched out with a can opener so it would be impossible to even play it by mistake. Pretty miserable for a young rock & roll disc jockey wannabe who would listen to Ted Brown on WNEW in New York and repeat his show the next day while trying to find a flicker of a creative flame from deep within. After my rousing 4 hours of stealing and butchering other peoples material, Cousin Stan returned to steer the “New England Polka Express” to the end of another broadcast day. “Woo, woo......what fun.” My initial attitude when I began working there was that if the boss told me to carry tires out to his car (which he had) I would simply ask, “Back seat or trunk?” That's how badly I wanted this career. That all changed after a pretty short time when I found my conscience, which was pretty easy to do, given one particular policy that was, basically, just part of the thinking of the times. Radio stations allowed smoking in the studios with no thought to the damage it could do to very expensive broadcasting equipment, not to mention to the people who provided the voices behind the mic. It was socially acceptable and everyone did it. I smoked cigarettes but, I would always bring a pipe to work that was ½ filled with a very nice cherry blend tobacco and ½ filled with a very nice grade of marijuana. One way or another I was bound and determined to enjoy a Clebenoff Strings arrangement of some bad song from the 30's or 40's. Unfortunately, the pot was never quite that good. I did, however, began to see the hypocrisy of station management in general and the noon panhandler in particular. Was this the reality of everything I had dreamed about? Was this “show biz?” I had had about all I could take from the good pastor and, on one particular occasion when the weed gave me a but of spunk, I took his theme music off the turntable and, as he was finishing his plea for funds (daddy needs a new Cadillac) I replaced it with “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones. He was livid but, for some reason, I managed to keep my job. My world began to look up one afternoon when I got a call from a beautiful music station in Hartford that was looking for someone to play Mantovani and the Clebenoff Strings from 6pm to midnight on a much bigger station with a much bigger audience in a much bigger market. I was about to make the massive leap from New Britain radio, which consisted of one station, to Hartford radio with, maybe, 8 or 10 stations. “Woo woo....what fun.” I accepted their offer right then and there. Before I had hung up the phone, I had a new job for more money at a much bigger and better station and it took no time to make my decision to quit that dead end job and head for the open road of my up and coming broadcasting career. The offer of a better job in itself was enough to get a few creative juices moving towards the flow I needed to make it in my chosen field. My next move became apparent immediately. As a Percy Faith was wrapping up some innocuous tune that was as insipid in the background as it was as a foreground piece, I had Jethro Tull's “Aqualung” album cued up on turntable #2 and ready to go right from track number #1, “Aqualung,” which was about an old lecher who was “Sitting on the park bench --eyeing little girls with bad intent. Snot is running down his nose --greasy fingers smearing shabby clothes.” That was followed by “Cross Eyed Mary,” the tale of a school girl prostitute. Just the kind of stuff that would cause management to blow a blood vessel or two. I started the record, turned on the microphone, walked out of the studio and got in my car to drive home, listening to the station and being entertained by the sounds of the GM scratching the record and cursing on the air. “Now THAT,” I concluded, "was some very good radio. Woo, woo.....what fun!”