CELEBRITY TALES.......AS I REMEMBER THEM: FRANCIS ALBERT SINATRA

As I write this, the internet is inundated with everything you ever wanted to know about Frank Sinatra who would have been 100 years old this year. Most people have a tendency to venerate Ol' Blue Eyes. He is considered, perhaps, the greatest vocalist of all time, the singers singer, the most popular and influential musical artist of the 20th century. He is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold more than 150 million records worldwide. There is no denying the impact the skinny kid from Hoboken had on popular culture in general and music in particular. That being acknowledged, I am afraid I have to admit to being a bit of a “fair weather” fan. There is a period of his career that, to me, can never be equaled. It began in 1946 with his debut album, “The Voice of Frank Sinatra” and wended it's way through the 1950's with a series of albums that shaped the foundation for all vocalists to come. Classics like - “Dedicated to You,” “Songs For Young Lovers,” “Swing Easy,” “In the Wee Small Hours,” “Come Fly With Me,” “Frank Sinatra Sings For Only the Lonely,” “Nice 'N' Easy,” “Sinatra's Swinging Session,” and, at least, a half a dozen more by the time we got into the 60's. He always worked with the best arrangers in the biz. Billy May, Nelson Riddle, Don Costa, Quincy Jones, Neil Hefti, Sy Oliver, Gordon Jenkins – giants all who understood Frank and he them. Each was a match made in a different musical heaven and they were all magical. Some of the finest music ever made. Then came the 60's and beyond, when the guy who lambasted rock and roll began doing Beatles songs and the likes of “My Way” and “It Was a Very Good Year,” which I like to refer to as “Sinatra: The Boring Years.” Homogenized versions of unimaginative music designed to please the “masses,” and that it did. Even so, there are certain artists that everyone just has to try and see at least once in their lives and Frankie was on the top of the list. I never got to see Elvis live. I missed the Beatles, although I DID see George Harrison at Madison Square Garden. He was with Bob Dylan, which almost made up for the absence of Paul, John & Ringo. I missed Liberace.....I saw Frank Sinatra. The celebration of Frank Sinatra's 77th birthday was going to be in Las Vegas and it was by invitation only. There was to be a celebrity studded cocktail party and dinner and, then, a short walk down a red carpet that was roped off to keep everyone else out, to a theater for a private concert from Francis Albert, himself. I got an invitation and was beside myself until I realized that I had signed an agreement with ABC, the company that paid my bills, not to accept certain gifts including a couple of tickets to a giant event in Sin City. At the time, however, I was in between marriages and dating a reporter for the Chicago Tribune who had just been transferred to Los Angeles as their entertainment reporter. She had also been invited and hadn't yet signed away her nose to spite her face as I had, so, off I went to meet her Vegas. The record company comped us a very nice room and I was excited that I was finally going to get to see Frank Sinatra live. We got on the elevator from the third floor to meet a limo that would take us to the venue and, standing there, having gotten on at the 4th floor, was Leslie Nielsen. I found him to be very personable and funny. We chatted for a few minutes and got into separate limos, headed to the same destination. After our credentials were examined, we were ushered into a private dining room that was loaded with celebrities and a few media people. As we sat at the table, I couldn't help but notice that I had been seated next to Barbara Eden. That's not something you ignore if you grew up with “Jeannie.” It was like I was living in my own fantasy until I saw Spiro Agnew sitting on the other side of us. I was not a fan. We made small talk and everyone was having a lovely time. When I told my dad that I had chatted with the disgraced Vice President, he said, without missing a beat, “Yeah? Did you tell that son of a bitch I hate his fucking guts?” “No. I'm sorry dad....it didn't come up.” When we finished the cocktails and our dinner, we were herded back down the red carpet to the small theater where Frank would be performing. Outside the ropes was a mass of “civilians” trying to figure out who was who. I'm sure they are still wondering who, the hell I was. Our seats were in the front.....right at the stage. All we had to do was look up and he was there. We could have touched him but in the attempt to maintain as much dignity as possible – we didn't. Frank Jr. was the orchestra leader and had to, occasionally, remind his dad of the lyrics. Frank was 77, after all, and you know what they say about the mind and age – once you reach a certain point, the mind is the 2nd thing to go.......I forget what the first one was. He was older, his voice was not at it's peak and he forgot lyrics. But here we were, sitting mere feet from one of the greatest of all time. Hell, we all fade – this was Frank Sinatra and he was singing - just for us - at a private party. What a weekend! When it was time to leave, my friend and I took separate planes. Hers flew to L.A. and mine brought me back to Dallas. The only thing that could have made this weekend nothing short of paradisiacal would have been if I could have gotten home with more money than I went with. We took one last trip to the casino before heading to the airport. I must have pumped $50 or $60 worth of quarters into a one armed bandit that was intent on living up to it's name. She took a quarter, walked over to a random machine, pulled the handle and out came $200. We never saw each other again. Shortly after I returned, I began to audition people to be my side-kick on the air and met the woman who was to become my wife. 23 years later, we are still happily married and I can truthfully say that, even though I lost a bunch of quarters in Vegas, I won the heart of the woman who has proven, over the years, that my trip to Frank Sinatra's 77th birthday party became, in the end, the luckiest trip I ever took.

THANKSGIVING DAY FOOTBALL

My favorite day to watch football has always been Thanksgiving. I lived, for 20 years, in Dallas and the Cowboys always play on “Turkey Day.” On prior Thanksgivings, I knew I'd be with my brother-in-law, either at his house in Austin or at my house in Dallas. The constant being that he and I would enjoy a good cigar, perhaps a short adult beverage and some good football with some knowledgeable football conversation. I was always very thankful for Thanksgiving Day specifically for that reason. You see, the rest of the year, my wife is my "football buddy" when she happens to wander through the room. I have to give her credit for trying, but I suspected that something was askew the day that she asked which "costume" the Cowboys were wearing. Her attempts to understand the game, its rules and even it's mode of apparel are impressive. It's almost as though she really does care about what's going on, but then she'll ask "don't they get an extra kick?" or, on the punt, "why are they just kicking it to the other team, won't that give them the ball?" She even tries to be part of the Sunday football experience when she's not in the room. She will ask me about the status of the game and then try to make some sense of the answer. During a Cowboys/49ers game a few years back, I happened to mention a particularly good play where Tony Romo threw a bomb to Terrell Owens who caught the ball and ran it in to the end zone. It was a 75 yard play and resulted in a 6 point gain for the Cowboys. When I told my wife, she said "whoa…that's almost far enough for a touchdown." I said, "It WAS a touchdown," to which she shot back, "But you just said he caught it at the 75 yard line." I explained to her that there was no such thing as a 75 yard line. I'm not sure if she got it or was just saying that she did to calm me down and shut me up. Please don't take this the wrong way. My wife is a very smart person. She comes from a long line of extremely bright people and has been the impetus for much of the greatness I see in my kids. She's an amazing role model, a hard worker, a wonderful caretaker of her family, but, when it comes to sports, pretty much all of them, she's not the most astute observer and commentator. In fact, there isn't much she could care less about. She's just trying to make me feel comfortable on a Sunday afternoon, and who could fault her for that. For a wife to go out of her way like that to make her husband comfortable is a quality that I cherish in her. It's very special. It's just that it can make for a pretty exasperating and tiring few hours. After the game, I usually need a nap. She told me recently, that, when it came to sports in school, she was always the last one picked. Judging from our conversations during the game, I wouldn't be surprised if she was also the last one they let into the crowd.

THE LILAC GHOST

I don't believe in ghosts. That's what makes this such a curious story. It's about a close encounter, of the eeriest kind, with an apparition in an old building which, to this day, I have trouble making much sense of. To understand where I was and why, I refer you to an earlier blog called “How to Quit a Job,” which tells, what you might find to be, a very entertaining story of how I walked out of a job at a small radio station after putting on a record that was completely out of format and listened in my car on the way to my new job. You may enjoy finding it and using it as a precursor to this tale. Not a necessity but a fun read. The new job was at a beautiful music station in downtown Hartford and I was hired to do the 6pm – midnight shift. The station was in a very old house, referred to as The Mansion and I would be there by myself for six hours nightly. The Mansion, at the corner of Wethersfield Ave and Wyllys St, was the former Borden (Milk Company) town house for when the family was in the city. It was hundreds of years old. A plush red-carpeted curved stairway led the way upstairs from the lobby, past two beautiful stained glass windows. There were Italian marble fireplaces in every room, including the Control Room, which was in the second floor master bedroom. The original engineer had set up house speakers in the flues of the (non-operating) fireplaces, and the "beautiful music" seemed to come from everywhere. The "On-Air" light was an electric candelabra just outside of the studios. The owner kept a bachelor pad on the third floor and it was the engineer's job, aside from keeping the radio station running, to be sure his water bed was filled and set to the proper temperature when he would be in town from his other abode – a yacht, anchored offshore at Hilton Head, Hawaii. WKSS was a background station with innocuous music from the likes of Mantovani and the Clebanoff Strings. Non threatening versions of the popular music of the day sans any instrumentation that may be deemed offensive such as guitar or drums. Easy listening versions of rock and roll classics that would make Pat Boone's white bread interpretations of classic songs seem downright soulful by comparison. Imagine, if you can, Jefferson Airplane's “We Can Be Together” played by Zamfir. You just can't unhear the phrase “up against the wall, motherfucker,” when it's played on the pan flute. My job was to monitor the 3 hour long tapes and to break in twice an hour with weather updates, news headlines and station identifications. I would answer the phones according to formatics, “Kiss, WKSS, how may I help you.” The listeners would request songs that I knew we didn't play and I would promise to try and get them on, pre-programmed tapes notwithstanding. I wouldn't be surprised if some of those folks are still listening, even though the format has changed 5 times over the years. They were that dedicated. The stories of a ghost in the mansion never really bothered me. I don't believe in ghosts and took them with a huge grain of salt. Tales of the old lady in the grey sweater who would show up whenever the sweet scent of lilac enveloped the house were plentiful but I paid them no mind. I was alone in the mansion, in the second floor studio. Occasionally, I would hear sounds coming from the third floor. I knew we kept boxes of records up there that would never be played. I just assumed that, occasionally, one of them fell. At midnight, I would have to go down to the basement and set up the automation tapes that would keep the station on the air until the morning people would come in and begin the process anew. It was dark and cold and, non belief aside, I often felt a chill when I went down there that would only go away once I was in my car and on the way home. I may not have believed in ghosts but I have always had a pretty vivid imagination and could conjure up all kinds of goblins and ne'er-do-wells hiding in dark basement recesses, waiting to confront the person who was making sure that this awful music would continue to permeate the building despite the absence anything mortal other than the plants in the lobby. I suppose my disavowal of anything otherworldly gave me an almost perverse pleasure in making sure that if, indeed, they did exist, they had to listen to this crap too. I had been working in the mansion for about 9 months when I was included in a small cocktail party they were throwing in the lobby for advertisers by virtue of the fact that I was on the air at the time. I was allowed to come down, have a glass of punch and schmooze with clients until it was time to go back up to the second floor to change a tape and read a temperature. Then, I could go back down to join the folks in the lobby. I was standing by myself, looking for a conversation to join, when I was suddenly overcome by the unmistakable bouquet of lilac. I wasn't bothered by this in the least. Lilac is my favorite fragrance so I closed my eyes and took it in, not thinking much of it. When I opened my eyes, there, in the middle of a group of people, stood an old lady in a grey sweater. She looked at me and I, her. I then looked around to see if anyone else had noticed her but, when I turned back around........she was gone. So was the lilac. That was my last night in the haunted mansion. I quit the next day and began studying acting in New York before resuming my radio career, a couple of years later, at a small station in Plainfield, New Jersey. A station that was in an office building in a strip mall that no respectable ghost would even want to haunt. The owner of WKSS soon sold the station and the format was changed to rock & roll. I never heard another word about the old lady in the grey sweater who left a trail of lilac wherever she appeared. I suspect she was finally able to rest in peace once she was no longer forced to listen to lush, orchestral arrangements of Led Zeppelin songs in favor of the real thing. Apparently, she found a Stairway to Heaven that worked for her. I still don't believe in ghosts but I will swear on a stack of bibles that this really happened, although, it would be a moot point since I also don't believe in bibles.

DOES NOT COMPUTE

There are a few, particular areas of expertise where it's comforting to know you have someone you can trust to get the job done right the first time with no extra issues and no left over parts. Mechanics and computer repairmen are two that immediately come to mind. There is nothing worse than taking your car in for an oil change and driving out with a newly rebuilt engine and a bill for more than the car is worth in the Kelly Blue Book. I once brought my car to a major auto repair company......I'll try not to mention Firestone......to get a tire plugged. Of course, during the process of putting a rubber patch on a rubber tire, they found a number of issues that weren't there when I came in. I told the guy that, if they became a problem, I would bring the car back and I drove home. A few days later, the car was running pretty sluggishly. I called a friend who had a shop and asked him to look at it. The reason I didn't go to him in the first place was a simple matter of convenience. It would take 30 minutes to get to his shop and the previously mentioned unnameable major auto repair company was in the Firestone plaza just a few blocks from my house. When I got to the shop, My friend, who I will call Alex, because that's his name, opened the hood and said, “Where's your oil cap?” Turns out, the guy from Firesto....oops, sorry.....the unnameable auto repair company, had neglected to put it back when he was doing something other than what I brought the car in for. Sometimes, mechanics who lack integrity will go so far as to poke holes in hoses and other little “tricks of the trade” that will assure return business. My takeaway from that little excursion was that, no matter what the problem, I would drive a little farther so I could take it to Alex.....a mechanic I trusted rather than relying on a big name company that was conveniently located and that hired rip-off artists because they happened to own some tools. About two months ago, Alex moved his family and, consequently, his shop. He is no longer 30 minutes from my house. He is now across the state, about a 3 1/2 hour ride. Not necessarily a trip I want to make to find out if my oil cap is missing. I have taught myself to recognize that particular symptom and I drive very carefully. At least until I can find another trustworthy guy. In fact, to me, the very best position I can be in is when I “have a guy.” Someone who you can recommend to your friends. You'll gain points with your buddies and you'll enjoy the comfort of having “a guy.” “Know a good mechanic?” “Sure......I've got a guy.” “I'm looking for someone to mow my lawn and do a little landscaping.” “Look no further......I've got a guy.” “My computer is giving me problems.” “Relax........I have a guy.” These days, having a guy who can adequately repair your computers is a necessity. It's important to fine someone who is honest, almost to a fault. And, if he is.....he will get plenty of your business. I thought I had “a guy.” In fact, I recently brought him my Samsung laptop. It was a pretty powerful computer and cost about $800. I loved what I was able to accomplish on it but the case had begun to fall apart. The laptop was less that 2 years old and came with plastic hinges which, after a couple years of usage, were beginning to break and the body was splitting apart from itself. Easily remedied....if you have “a guy.” That trustworthy computer repair shop where you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you will get a prompt, stable fix at a fair price. The kind of service that, certainly, brings me back when there is an issue. Return business. For small businesses, that's paramount. So, I brought my Samsung to my guy - I'll call him Jason – and I waited to hear back. After a week, I called and asked what the holdup was. “I had to order the case from New York,” he told me, adding, “I found one nearby but they wanted $60 and I thought you might want to spend less so I ordered the one from New York for $30.” While I appreciated the sentiment, I was also fully aware that he would be tacking the extra 20 bucks onto my bill anyway. Not to mention his “labor' charge. It became a classic case of “six of one......half dozen of the other.” Two weeks later, I was still unsure of the status so I gave Jason a call. It seems that when he installed the new case, he cracked my screen and there was now a multi-colored series of lines running up the entire left side. “If you need it and you don't mind the lines, I can order a screen. I'll call you when it gets here,” he assured me. I had the computer home just long enough to get used to working with only the right side of the screen, when it stopped taking a charge from the power cord. I called Jason.......my “guy” when it came to computers....and was told to bring it back in. I did. When I hadn't heard from him for 2 weeks, I called and was told that the pin that makes the connection to the power cord was broken and that he was ordering a new one. It was beginning to feel like I had brought my computer to Firesto....um....that aforementioned unnamed auto repair shop. I waited and waited and waited. Weeks went by. This was becoming a major production which was, now, a good two months in the making. I would have contacted Jason sooner but my mother died and I had to go to New England. When I got back, there was nothing from “my guy.” I called and was told that every time he tried to fix one thing another thing broke. “I'm going to give you a computer,” he told me. “It's refurbished but, you'll be happy. I promise.” When I got to the shop he handed me a big, thick, clunky laptop that was, at least, 15 years old. It even had one of those little balls in the middle of the keyboard to serve as a mouse. He had converted my $800 Samsung into a pile of spare parts and was handing me a big box from before the turn of the century, telling me, “It's really fast. You'll love it.” I got it home, turned it on and hated it. It was very slow and, as I found out when I tried to write, had a dead letter “J” on the keyboard. The thing turned out to be completely useless but, this was now month #3 since bringing my laptop to Jason and I wasn't about to invest any more time in missing the work that I need my laptop for. I went to an electronics store and bought a new laptop. It was about half the price of my Samsung but, with technology moving as fast as it is, had nearly twice the bells and a few extra whistles. I transferred all my data from the klunker and decided to keep it as a back-up. At least I didn't have to “eat” the entire 800 bucks. I am now enjoying the transition back to, what I had considered to be, a semblance of normalcy with my new laptop. I am now left with just one pressing question that needs to be answered because I may, at some time, have the need to fix something on my computer. “Anyone know a guy?”

MAKES A CLOUDY DAY SUNNY

As I sit here playing around on my laptop, my cell phone is buzzing and my i-pad is beeping and yet, I'm still able to concentrate on the readin' or writin' or 'rithmatic that I'm having computer do for me. It's 2015 and that's the way things are. Oops......sorry....I had to check my phone – I have 5 e-mails and a bunch of FB posts.......I'll get to them later. Right now, I'm busy multi-tasking. A post, somewhere along the relatively beaten cyber path I take from day to day, made me think of when I was young. The fleeting paragraph suddenly brought a flood of memories from when I was about the age of my grandkids. I didn't have a laptop then. Nor did I have a cell phone or an i-pad. There was no Facebook, no “face-time,” no Twitter, no Angry Birds (is that even still a game?), no Instagram, no online banking from your phone, no possible way to stay in bed all day and still be able to live a relatively full life. Back then, we had one thing to play with. It was called “outside.” It came with a lot of accessories – sunlight, fresh air, baseball diamonds, ditches and woods to ride our bikes around and through........our bikes. Our Bikes were our tickets to freedom in a world where your level of communication depended solely on the technology of how loud you could yell. It was a different world and there were trade-offs. We may not have all of the bells, whistles, gizmos and doo-dads but we had a sense of safety as we rode all around town until the street lights came on. If you were late, you might have to walk the next day because you wouldn't be able to sit on your bike seat after the “whupin'.” Yes, our parents would hit us. A slap across the mouth or, for that matter, a slap across a mouth that's full of soap because of improper language. Even “hell,” “damn” and “ass” were considered “curse” words and would qualify us for an Ivory Soap appetizer before supper. It wasn't just our parents. Our neighbors and teachers were encouraged to “keep us in line” as well. I had a 5th grade teacher named Mrs. Little. One afternoon, when I had just finished working Mrs. Little's last nerve, she whacked me across the back of the neck with and over sized post card and told me to go home and tell my parents what I had done to deserve the punishment she had meted out. I am going to guess that, had I actually told them, they would have agreed that the “zets” she gave me was, indeed, warranted. “Serves ya' right. She shoulda given ya' a rap in da mout,” my dad would have responded, in his unmistakable Brooklyn accent before going back to the daily paper. Mrs. Little's first mistake was to trust a 10 year old me. Yes, we got the occasional “rap in da' mout” because we deserved it, we learned from it and we were none the worse for wear. Our most valuable commodity, however, disappeared somewhere along the way and it seems that, the more we grow technologically, the harder it will be to get it back. Somewhere in our quest to invent machines to do our bidding , we lost our imagination.........as individuals and as a society. Our imaginations wiped out our ability to imagine. Everything is smack, dab in our faces - all we have to do is push a button or swipe a finger. I remember the day I asked my dad for a truck. I was, I'm assuming from this particular memory, a young boy who still played with trucks. He looked around, found a nice stick, handed it to me and said, in his undeniably Brooklynese “brogue,” “Here.....here's ya' truck. Now, go tell ya' mutha' she wants ya'.” It was the best truck I ever had because it could be whatever truck I imagined it to be.' Imagination is a very powerful tool and can be extremely gratifying. Imagination is the ability to see things that are not real : the ability to form a picture in your mind of something that you have not seen or experienced. When I was about 13, for instance, I actually had a very intimate affair with Annette Funicello. Of course, she wasn't privy and I'm certain I wasn't the only young teen that was fooling around with her in that way. Makes her almost seem kinda slutty in retrospect, doesn't it? We are where we are because of the imaginations of countless people who are old enough to have been around when we still had them, who took the ideas, ran with them and created the technologies we continue to watch mushroom to this day.......long after they eliminated the competition from people who use their......say it with me now...........imagination. What's the solution? We used to get on our bikes when the sun came up, play all day long and be home by the time the streetlights came on or when we heard, in my case, a whistle. Kids can't really play outside anymore. It's too dangerous. I wouldn't let my kids ride their bikes to their friends' house, across the street, without chaperoning them to the edge of the neighbor's driveway. ALL my kids...........and the oldest is 40. People gave gotten so lazy and so unimaginative that they don't even look at each other to talk.....they're too busy texting each other. I have a sinking feeling, in the pit of my stomach, that our species is going to evolve into people with no hands........just mitten-like appendages with thumbs.........and our eyes will automatically point downward. And, in our heads will be.........no ideas. I feel sad at the loss of my old pal, imagination, even though, I have been able to retain a few remnants that allow me to do things like: write this blog or see a truck in a stick. Now, if you'll excuse me.....my phone is still buzzing and my i-pad is still beeping. Although I doubt it, there may be something important or, even creative going on that I need to know about – Hmm, Imagine!

NO DARK SARCASM IN THE CLASSROOM

I discovered what my lot on life would be at the tender age of 6. I was in first grade and lucky to have made it that far. My parents didn't fill my crib with toys. Instead, they put a bookshelf within my reach and filled it with all the Golden books they could find: Three Little Kittens, The Pokey Little Puppy, The Little Red Hen, The Golden Book of Fairy Tales – these were my toys. These were my friends. It wasn't until I learned to turn the books right side up that I realized that the kittens and Pokey weren't going through life standing on their heads. Quite a revelation for a 3 year old. By the time I was 4, I was reading, to some degree. I remember my grandfather holding up the New York Times and showing me off to his friends by having me read it. They weren't always thrilled with the news content but, took into consideration that it was coming out of the mouth of a 4 year old, not John Cameron Swayze. This wasn't the Camel News Caravan – it was Louis Brettschneider showing off the fact that his grandkid could pick out a few words on a printed page. I couldn't wait until September so I could start school. I had just turned 5 and the excitement of kindergarten was being programmed into my every fiber. “You'll love it,” they would tell me. “You'll learn exciting new things and meet new friends and have a lot of fun,” they would drum into me at every opportune moment. And, I was thrilled. I wanted to enjoy this world of wonder that I knew only from my parents' description. They had built it up and I was ready to venture out. I could hardly sleep the night before my new chapter. I was going to school. Finally, the big day came. I could barely contain myself when we got out of the car and my mom took me in to meet my teachers, Mrs. Donaldson and Miss Smith, which was obviously not her real name. She apparently could tell, early on, what was going to become of a few of us and wanted to avoid any blame. The classroom was filled with toys and blocks and finger paint stations and cubbies stuffed with small rugs that we used for our mid-day naps. There were kids everywhere. A few I had known from my block and others who would become lifelong friends. I had a ball. Kindergarten was only a half day, so I was home by noon and had thoroughly enjoyed my time in the “trenches” of lower education. School had been fun. Just like everyone said. The next morning, my mom came rushing into my room and shook me out of a deep sleep. “C'mon, let's go....it's time to get up,” she was screaming. “For what?” I asked. “It's time for school, let's go,” “But, I went yesterday,” I reasoned as I tried to turn over and go back to sleep. After finally convincing me that going to school was not like going to the zoo, it was something I had to do on a daily basis, I got up and went. Kindergarten was fun but we weren't doing anything but finger painting and napping. It lost it's luster after a few days. Now I couldn't wait until first grade, where I could finally put my reading prowess to good use. First grade, where I would learn that numbers would never be my friend and that if I wanted to know what 2 + 2 equaled, I would have to wait until someone invented a calculator. The time for what I considered to be “real” school finally came and I mustered up as much excitement as I possibly could as I headed back to Bowers school with the new friends I had made in kindergarten. We were about to embark on the next learning adventure in our young lives. There were no more toys, no more small nap rugs in our cubbies, no more cubbies. We each had a little desk, which a short, educational film called “Duck and Cover” directed us to get under in case of an atom bomb attack. The fact that we believed it would sufficiently shelter us from the bomb was enough to show how incredibly much we still had to learn. The desks were made of metal and wood and had inkwells in the upper right hand corner. They also had an opening for storage underneath the desk top. I don't remember what was stored in there other than lots of material for spitballs. On one particular day, midway through the first grade, I was clowning with some friends as I often did but this time I had apparently irked the teacher. She was busy with the task at hand – showing us the order of the letters that would magically spell “cat” when arranged properly. “Bobby B.,” she yelled, still not having the confidence to try and pronounce Brettschneider, “if you're going to act like a baby then you belong with the babies. Pick up your things and go back to the kindergarten.” I was embarrassed and walked, slowly, with my head hanging, down the hall to Mrs. Donaldson and Miss Smiths room full of finger paints and five year olds. As I opened the door, I noticed that there were grownups everywhere. It was a special parent day and everyone was eating cake and ice cream. As I picked up a plate and filled it with pure deliciousness, I realized that I had just learned the most important lesson of my entire school career to that point and beyond – comedy pays!

HIGHEST OF HIGHS

As I was digging, recently, into the recesses of my memory to locate a few high points in my life, I realized that the recesses weren't where I wanted to be. There's nothing there. That's why they're called recesses. My mental “SIRI” recalculated and I soon began to find high point after high point after high point. It didn't appear that I had ever had anything to be pissed off or depressed about. I did a lot of, what many would consider to be, neat stuff. I got to spend time with rock stars, writers, actors, athletes, scientists, philosophers and even a politician or two. Three times with a President of the United States. It was the nature of the beast and I learned, in short order, that these folk of note were no different than anyone else, outside of the opportunity to act like an asshole in front of a lot more people at any given time. I met some extremely cool people who did not disappoint and a number who did. They were all high points. I had had 42 years of growth in my industry and was practically enjoying high points on a daily basis. Which showed me that, in order to find that special moment, I had to look outside of my morning show experience. After I left ABC, I wasn't getting a lot of offers that would have made any sense when it came to supporting my family. It wasn't long before I realized that my “music radio” days, were, for any number of reasons, over. It was time to try and reinvent myself at the age of 60. But, I wasn't sure in which direction to turn. I knew that I had always paid attention to the news. The fact that I like to be informed mattered less that the fact that I HAD to keep up with current affairs so I'd have things to talk about on the morning show. You have to be informed if you want to compete and, in those days, radio was still a competitive medium. I was hired to work at a small company that was attempting to pioneer stock market news and programming exclusively on the internet. We are, of course, at a point now where practically everyone and their respective mothers have a podcast but, Market News First was one of the first. It could have been the best had it not been for the small technicality of stock manipulation. It didn't last long but they DID allow me to develop a morning news show so that I was able to give myself a basic lesson in news anchoring. I enjoyed it so, I figured the most logical next step would be to try and get an anchor job on the radio somewhere. It was a medium that I knew better and felt more comfortable with than in front of a camera. Unfortunately, I had nothing to send out in the way of a news audition tape. I could have done a “dummy” tape but I had no access to a studio and technology had not yet provided the affordable “home studio” capabilities that now make all those aforementioned podcasts possible. The best I could do was a tape from a smooth jazz station where I had worked a part time weekend shift while trying to keep our heads above water. I sent it to the #1 news station in Dallas, the #5 market in the country, knowing full well that the news director was going to get a pretty good laugh out of the concept and shove the tape into “file 13.” That was exactly what he did but before he threw the tape in the trash, he called his assistant news director into his office to share the hilarity. “Listen to this,” he said, “you're not gonna believe the balls on this guy.” She listened but rather than laughing, she said, “I know him. I taught with him at a broadcasting school and he is a real pro with a pretty impressive resume. He'll be a really quick study and we could use an anchor on the weekends.” The next day, the news director called and offered me a Sunday shift. It would be a great spot for me to learn about news anchoring while not putting the station into any ratings jeopardy. We then had a good laugh about my “smooth jazz” audition tape. I was the Sunday afternoon anchor for about 6 months and during that time, the most important lesson I learned was to pay close attention to everything. There was an awful lot to learn about gathering, writing and anchoring an objective and professional news cast. It was right about that time that the corporation that owned the radio station was bought by one of the other 2 or 3 corporations that are now controlling the industry. One of their first moves was to eliminate staff including the radio stations regular, weekday, afternoon drive anchor. One of the most important slots on the air. The news director was in a bind and called me into his office. “Look,” he began, “we have to find an afternoon anchor and I feel that you have learned enough to fill in until we can find someone. Think you can handle it?” “I'm sure I can” I replied, not at all sure if I could. I was pumped because this would give me more hours which I desperately needed to help pay the bills and I could learn more about what was becoming a real fun and interesting job. I became a sponge. I took in anything and everything I could about the machinations of a big time radio station newsroom. And I learned my lessons well. It wasn't long before I was re-called into the office where the news director said, “It looks like we've found our permanent afternoon anchor. The pay is embarrassing but if you would like the job we'd like to have you with us full time.” I, of course, accepted immediately and called my wife with the thrilling news that I was the new afternoon anchor on the #1 news station in the market, adding, “but the pay sucks so, if you wouldn't mind - hang on to your job for a bit.” It was while I was working in the newsroom that, perhaps, the high point of my career came along. A bucket list item that I never imagined would be at the end of the path I had traveled to that point. It was November 4, 2008. Election Day. History was about to be made and I was about to be given the opportunity to be part of the big picture. I had finished my anchor shift at 7pm and the election results were beginning to roll in. I was handed a reporting assignment, which was rare for anchors but it was election day and the regular staff of reporters was being spread a bit thin. “Go to Denton,” I was told, “and hit both party headquarters and call in county returns results. Then, as a decision nears, go to the bars and other hangouts near the college and get reaction.” I watched the results trickle in from around the county and phoned in my reports but I was at a coffee shop very near the school when it became apparent that Barack Obama was the winner and the nation now had it's first Black President. History was made in a way that I never thought I would see in my life time. I got the last of my audio, got in my car and cried. I then drove home and checked “Be a news reporter covering a monumental history making election” off my bucket list. Highest of high points – achieved. .

Inseparable? Being Funny Isn’t About Liking Each Other

As I write this, I have auditioned and received a callback for the play The Sunshine Boys, Neil Simon's hilarious tribute to Vaudeville. It's about the comedy team of Al Lewis and Willie Clark, who over the course of forty-odd years, not only grew to hate each other but never spoke to each other offstage throughout the final year of their act—or for the ensuing eleven years. Willie's nephew Ben attempts to put the team back together for a TV special about great American comedy but getting the two cantankerous actors into the same room for a rehearsal proves almost futile and provides most of the laughs in the play.  The fact that Lewis and Clark had so much chemistry onstage but couldn't stand each other offstage is less of a stretch than it seems. In fact, there are a slew of examples of this phenomenon that can make The Sunshine Boys' tiff seem tame by comparison. For instance: Bud Abbott & Lou Costello, one of the most popular comedy duos of their day, suffered a rift in 1945, at the height of their popularity, when Costello accused Abbott of hiring a servant that he had just fired; he then refused to speak to Abbott unless they were performing. Gene Siskel & Roger Ebert, while coworkers for many years, were not the best of friends off camera due, in part, to the fact that they worked for competing Chicago newspapers. Roger wrote in a tribute shortly after Gene's death, “Gene and I were known for our rages against each other.” William Frawley and Vivian Vance, I Love Lucy’s Fred and Ethel Mertz, were not at all fond of each other. In fact, “Their hatred for each other started very early on, in the first week or so of the show.” And Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, possibly the hottest duo in all of America in the early fifties, called it quits in July of 1956. In his book Dean and Me, Lewis says Martin angrily left, telling Lewis with he was “Nothing to me but a fucking dollar sign.”  And then, there was Fox & Leonard, my duo, the first two-man morning team on FM and Rock & Roll radio. When we first teamed up, we found we had pretty amazing chemistry and essentially had the ability to know what the other was thinking. Ours was the kind of chemistry that makes for entertaining radio, television, film, vaudeville stage, or any other venue where a comedy team might perform. Sonny Fox was the program director, and had hired me to do the morning show solo until he realized that he and I might be able to try something that had yet to be done on the FM band. We found that besides a mutual admiration for each other’s work, we shared an adoration of the radio comedy team Bob & Ray—we had both grown up listening to them. I was struck by the amazingly creative ideas that came from Sonny's fertile mind but sometimes that was far as it went. I provided the follow through. This balance made for a very good team. Every time the microphones went on, we were flawless, and for the first couple of years, we also spent a lot of time together off the air. But like in many relationships, that began to deteriorate after we got to learn more about personal lives, priorities, and most importantly, idiosyncrasies. He loved the faster side of life, with all of its perks and problems, and I liked to go to my quiet, suburban home after work, mow the lawn, yell at the kids, and take a nap. Towards the end of our tenure together, we understood that the twains would never meet and we parted. It wasn't necessarily by choice, however; he was fairly unceremoniously "let go," and disappeared without ever saying goodbye. Perhaps the fact that we hadn't really spoken to each off the air about anything but the business of the show for over a year had a little to do with that. Then, not a word exchanged for more than thirty years. We were The Sunshine Boys.  Why would anyone stay with a partner who is a polar opposite? Willie says it best in the play, when his nephew Ben asks why he stayed with Al for forty-three years when they couldn't stand to be in the same room together: “Nobody could time a joke the way he could time a joke,” Willie explains. “Nobody could say a line the way he said it. One person, that’s what we were.” That's exactly why Abbott and Costello would meet in the middle of the stage and make magic. It's why Fred and Ethel were the perfect couple on I Love Lucy and why Fox & Leonard had the highest ratings in Philadelphia. When it works, don't ignore it because of a minor technicality, like not getting along—milk it for all it's worth.  At the end of The Sunshine Boys, Willie and Al find out they will be neighbors in the old actors’ home. They sit down and start to chat, and the intense love and respect they have for each other immediately trumps any ill will harbored over the years. They seem to just pick up where they left off. When I moved to Florida from Texas, my route took me through Pensacola, where I knew my ex-partner Sonny was living. I called and he asked me to stop by and spend the night on my way through. When he opened the door, we hugged and it was like nothing had changed in the thirty years we hadn’t spoken.  Just like Willie and Al, reuniting for a CBS special on comedy, we were asked to put Fox & Leonard back together as our old radio station changed formats and was producing a reunion show of all of the talent from across the years. We did and like all great comedy teams, the chemistry was in tact. More than three decades of silence and the magic was still there.  We are now the best of friends, who understand the importance of the contributions we made to each other’s careers. The parallels between Lewis & Clark and Fox & Leonard were almost eerie, considering the play debuted just a couple years before we met and teamed up. At the time we had no knowledge of who Neil Simon was, what he had written, or how it would relate to us thirty years later. It seems that Fox & Leonard were Lewis & Clark then and today, which helps me understand what Mr. Simon was trying to say in The Sunshine Boys. It showed me that even after all these years in retirement, I was ready to go to that audition and I am ready to do this part when I go to the callbacks tonight and nail it.  ***  I got the part of Al and kicked ass and took names for eight weeks. It was a great theatre experience, and I hope the audience enjoyed it as much as I did.

BIRTHDAY GREETINGS, BOTTLE OF (AGED) WINE

Why do we celebrate birthdays? We are aging and with that process comes pain. Most of it is a visceral pain that dates back to many, if not all of the decisions we made when we were at an age that we didn’t mind shouting from the rooftops. Some of it is more of a “just below the surface” pain that’s located in places like knees and other joints that were the victims of many, if not all of the decisions we made when we were at an age when we did stupid things like climbing up on rooftops to shout. July is my celebration month. I have a lot to celebrate in July. My sister in law starts us off with a birthday on the 6th. Then, as we move along through the month, we find my nephew’s birthday on the 21st, mine is the 22nd, one of my daughters has a natal day on the 26th, my brother-in-law turns another year older on the 27th and my granddaughter has her party on the 29th. I’m sure I’ve forgotten a few people and can expect fewer gifts this year because of it. Not that I need any reminder of my own impending demise. This year I will officially be four years older than a Beatles song. A song I interpreted over the years as something my grandfather might relate to, but he’s been gone for a long time. Somehow, I have become the grandfather and I’m not quite sure at what point I turned that corner. Let’s see how well the song applies four years after the fact. Look at the very first line….. “When I get older losing my hair. Many years from now.”…… Well, I AM older and I AM losing my hair, and “many years from” has become now. I suppose I should have seen it coming a while back, when I started being able to comb my pillow in the morning. How about the line ……“If I’d been out ‘til quarter to three, would you lock the door”……Well, honestly, these days quarter to three is out of the question. Unless, of course, it’s quarter to three in the afternoon, so I can take advantage of the “Early Bird Special.” That way I can still catch a nap before I go to bed at 8:30. “Doing the garden, digging the weeds, who could ask for more?” Why would anyone ask for more. All that yard work is enough to make me want to take a nap. See a pattern forming here? “Send me a postcard, drop me a line, stating point of view.” OK, here ya’ go - “Having a wonderful nap. Wish you were here.” “Yours sincerely, Wasting Away.” I think one of my biggest concerns now is, when I have my grandchildren on my knee, do I have to call them Vera, Chuck and Dave? This aging thing can get confusing. So let’s all celebrate. Especially the month of July when so many of the people I love have reason to don a paper hat, let out a whoop and a holler of pure delight and blow out the candles. As for me, I am weathering this process, as I am dragged through it, kicking and screaming, as best I can, celebrating the comforting fact that my wife will still need me and will, indeed, still feed me....that'll be great...now that I’m sixty eight!

DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF CLOWNS

Robert Ira Brettschneider just wasn't a good name for a disc jockey in the late 60's when I began my career. No better than it is today. I thought it might have worked if I was a newsman back then. Kind of like Irving R. Levine or Jim Miklaszewski, “R. Ira Brettschneider, CBS News” would have worked but “It's Bobby Brettschneider playin' the hits”......not so much. Finding the right air name often takes no more creativity than having a program director who wants another “Johnny Dark” or “Charlie Brown” to take the place of the one they just “let go due to creative differences” without having to go to the expense of recording new jingles. I had to find a name that meant something to me and would define me as a personality. The first name I tried was “Bob Tracy” because, when I was home from basic training in 1966, I visited a new Rhythm & Blues station in my home town, Hartford, and was greeted warmly and shown a few “ropes” by their new DJ, Don Tracy, who left a few years later for a great career in Los Angeles. It worked for my first real radio job, which was a sign off shift at a small station in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts, where my job was to babysit long tapes of muzak and turn the transmitter off after the "sign off" at midnight. The "sign off" was easy. All I had to do was read the “This concludes another broadcast day.....” speech, turn out the lights and lock up. It was the best part of my day because I got to turn on the microphone and spend about 12 seconds as..........a radio announcer. “Tracy” served the purpose but just didn't feel very comfortable. Since my next radio job took me to San Juan, Puerto Rico, I decided to try a name that fit the situation. Once again, Brettschneider was off the table and I became Bob Santiago. For a couple of years, all went well, but the nature of radio being what it was at the time, it wasn't long before I was out of a job, back on the mainland and looking for work. Once I found a job, at a tiny station in Newington, Connectibut that played polkas in the morning, Spanish music in the midday and me in the afternoon. The polkas returned to end the broadcast day. I had the job......I needed a name. I have always considered myself a student of comedy, having been weaned on movies by the likes of The Marx Brothers, The Bowery Boys and Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis. My parents collected records and had a lot of great comedy. Everything from 78's by Sam Levinson to the LP's of Bob Newhart, Jonathan Winters and Lenny Bruce. I loved it all but I really perked up when I heard Lenny making the type of social commentary that I was so drawn to as a teen and young adult in the turbulent sixties and early seventies. I began to listen to Lenny's contemporaries like Mort Sahl, Dick Gregory and Lord Buckley and they were powerful but nobody spoke to my soul like Lenny Bruce. I listened to his material so much that I knew it word for word. “Christ and Moses,” “Pissing in the Sink,” “Thank You, Masked Man,” - comedy routines that inspired most of the great minds to follow. George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Bill Hicks, Sam Kinnison, Bill Cosby, Jerry Seinfeld, Lewis Black and Louis C.K. To name a very few. Comics with a dark side. Those who aren't afraid to ruffle a few feathers to make a socially relevant point. It was a comic darkness that I felt a kinship with and it seemed to fit my attitude and the idea of the radio personality that I wanted to be. I decided to call myself: Bob Leonard. The name served me very well for almost a half a century and gave me the inspiration and confidence to write and say a lot of what I wrote and said on the air over the years. It shaped my ideas and helped to define the personality I became, on the air and off. It took me to #1 in Philadelphia and Chicago and to 25 years in syndication around the world. I am not unhappy with the outcome, never imagining that such dark humor could spawn such a bright career. No good career defining move, like taking on a permanent air name, is complete without a healthy dose of irony. About two years ago, my mom told me that they weren't, originally, planning to name me Robert. They had a favorite relative that they wanted to name me for but, in their Jewish faith, they had to name me for someone who had died and this guy was still alive. His name was--------Leonard. Thank goodness that didn't happen. If everything had stayed the same I would have been "Lenny Leonard." Too Loungy!

CELEBRITY TALES.......AS I REMEMBER THEM: O.J. SIMPSON

The guest appearance was scheduled for a couple of days in mid summer, 2007, just about a month or two before a group of men led by O.J. Simpson entered a hotel room in Las Vegas and stole sports memorabilia at gunpoint. A crime for which he sits in a prison cell to this day. But, what did we know? This was, also, more than a dozen years after he had gotten away with murder, which was the reason for his guest shot in the first place. I was working for MN1, Market News First, an experimental IPTV station that reported on small cap stocks. We followed penny stocks, bringing news of the companies and interviews with key players to our viewers, we assumed, world wide by way of the internet. The concept and funding came from a 33 year old high school dropout named Josh who had conned his way into a job as a stockbroker, did it very well and was, at the time, worth millions. He was an irresponsible kid who once led police on a high speed chase in his Lamborghini, laughing all the way, just because he could. Unbeknownst to those of us who worked there, the whole project was just a front for a “pump and dump” scam. I wasn't hired for any particular stock market prowess......I have none. I had been a professional broadcaster for more than 40 years and would lend a sense of credibility to the on-air product. They figured they could teach me about penny stocks and I needed a job. The last I heard, Josh had been extradited from the Turks and Caicos islands and was doing time in a federal prison somewhere in Texas for stock fraud. It was Josh who had the idea to bring O.J. Simpson in to get some healthy publicity for MN1. This was supposed to be the biggest, most real appearance of the decade. I think it made the entertainment section of the Dallas Morning News. There was one major stipulation O.J. had to agree to, however. He had to take unscreened and unedited questions from the viewers, no matter how raw or probing, after his so called explanation. I'm not quite sure why he agreed but he did. At that point he was old news and, like I said, Josh was worth millions. I did a morning news block that always ended with a commentary. Sometimes they were funny, sometimes they were serious and sometimes they were opinionated – MN1 gave me carte blanche. I was asked to do a commentary as an opening to the session with O.J. I tried to remain as objective as I could and spent the 3 minutes or so, talking about the fairness of the platform we were providing and how great MN1 was for doing this and blah, blah, blah. It added an air of professionalism and made it look like we had an inkling about what we were doing, which we didn't. Thank goodness for my improv experience. I did, however, notice, while it was running, that O.J. Told everyone to shut up so he could hear the opening, which, apparently, met with his approval. O.J. then went into the booth and sat in front of the camera, delivering some lame excuse and listening to, what seemed to be a visiting convention of village idiots, calling in with nothing constructive to say, kind of like the Rush Limbaugh show. It was like watching some pretty good satire so there was a level of entertainment value that managed to creep in After the show, O.J. thanked me for the intro and we chatted about golf. “Too bad I didn't bring my sticks,” he said, adding, “We could go play 18. I call you next time I'm in town.” Things went from “pretty nifty” to “really cool” when someone suggested that we all go for a cocktail and a cigar at a very exclusive cigar bar in North Dallas. Again – Josh - worth millions. O.J. had been sitting and held his hands out for me to help him up because his knees were so bad. I gave him the leverage he needed to rise and watched him slowly waddle towards the door as a thought briefly raced through my mind - “How the hell could he have escaped after stabbing people to death when he can't even get up off a couch?” By the time we got to the cigar bar, our party had grown to about 20 but, O.J. and I had hit it off. We were only 13 days apart in age so we got all of each others references and had similar interests. He was very personable. A nice guy. “He's pretty bright,” I thought, “I liked him.” We smoked a cigar, had a little 12 year old scotch and some good conversation as he sat on another couch and I squatted down so we could hear each other over the noise. When it came time to get up, I couldn't. I looked at O.J. and said, “You're not gonna believe this,” as I held out my hands so he could help ME get up. My knees were as bad as his. It wasn't long after that night that O.J. Simpson entered that hotel room in Vegas. As I watched him being arrested, I had two fleeting thoughts, “OK, maybe not so bright!” and “I guess the golf game is off.”

THINGS CHANGE

Shortly after word of the closing of the venerable Connecticut School of Broadcasting a couple of years ago, I began hearing all of the criticism that came pouring out of the woodwork. Waste of good money….scam……they don’t pay their teachers, so they don’t get decent teachers…..they teach nothing that can be used in an actual broadcast. I can tell you from first hand experience that every bit of this criticism is misinformed. The summer of ’64 found me readying myself for my senior year in high school in the Greater Hartford area. It was a time when our major influence was Top 40 radio and the disc jockey who served as the soundtrack to our life’s adventures. That year, the new disc jockey in town, was Dick Robinson on WDRC. I had an inkling , somewhere in the back of my mind, that radio was the way I wanted to go, but, within a couple of years, I was sidetracked by military service and a little trip to Southeast Asia, where I dabbled in “playin’ the hits” on a local station'…for free. Upon return, I was pleasantly surprised to find a brand new school started by my then faceless hero, Dick Robinson……called The Connecticut School of Broadcasting. When I found that the GI Bill would pay for it, I jumped in with both feet. Lessons were taught by Dick and a few other local broadcasters who had a love for the business that they wanted, fervently to pass on to those they deemed worthy to carry the mantle. Classes were held in a hotel room in downtown Hartford and we learned, on an old reel-to-reel tape deck and a couple of turntables, all of the little technical tricks necessary to help make our dreams a reality. We also learned what we needed to know to pass the exam for the then requisite FCC license. One of the first and best lessons I learned was that nobody can teach anyone else to be a personality, but, if you are so well versed in all of the technical stuff that it becomes second nature and your hands automatically move to where they are supposed to be without thinking about it, you will be able to concentrate on your content and personality. I also learned that as competitive as the business was back then, if nobody could talk me out of it….I would, eventually, work in it. I have, now, for 43 years. Over the past 44 years or so, Dick Robinson has expanded his bona-fide love for the industry into 27 schools nationwide. And, as the criticism of trade schools in general and broadcasting schools in particular grew, so did Dick’s enthusiasm for turning out the best broadcasters possible. This has come to fruition countless times over the years and over the airwaves with the likes of MSNBC’s Rita Cosby, Bill St. James, the voice of Showtime and Nickelodeon and one of the most recognizable voices today and…I'm almost ashamed to admit.... Rush Limbaugh (cringe, to name but a very few. A few years back, Dick Robinson decided to sell his creation and the Connecticut School of Broadcasting was taken over by people who had no passion for broadcasting and no passion for their students. It was, kind of, mirroring the fate of most of radio today – taken over by corporate entities who have no clue about broadcast entertainment and care about nothing but the bottom line. I was privileged to teach at the Irving, Tx. campus for its first year in the DFW Metroplex, while Dick was still in charge. After he sold, I heard key people on the phone blatantly lying to prospective students to get them to borrow the money to come to the school and laughing about it after they hung up. It seemed as though everyone who called was awarded a “scholarship.” It became an unethical and greedy mess that I no longer wanted to be a part of. The world of radio has changed into something unrecognizable and the Connecticut School of Broadcasting followed suit with its new owners. When the students showed up, ready to go to work a few weeks ago, only to find the doors locked, all I could think was….wow, that’s the best lesson of all about the reality of the industry today. Welcome to radio.

A TALE OF THREE NORMIES

When a newborn enters the lives of a Jewish family, they are obligated, by their faith, to name the child after a well respected, deceased relative. In my family, there must have been a pretty swell guy named Norman because, during my fathers generation, we had three Normans – all about the same age. There was “Big Normie,” “Little Normie,” and “Rock Garden Normie.” I have no information on “Big Normie” other than the fact that he existed. I had heard the name over the years and was always a little curious but never quite enough to make an effort to find out more. “Little Normie” was, ironically, my dads big brother. They called him “Little Normie” because he was smaller than the other two Normies. If the three ever posed for a picture together, he'd be.....the little one. “Little Normie” was a constant in my life. He was my uncle and we spent quite a bit of time with him over the years. He had two great kids who grew into wonderful adults but he followed my career as if I were another son and would get excited if I did something that got any type of recognition. When a “stunt” that I did on my morning show from our Chicago studios was covered by the local media and got picked up and featured on the Today Show, my dad's phone rang as it was airing. It was "Little (I called him Uncle) Normie" sounding like a kid in a candy shop. He was so excited. “Bobby's on the Today Show.....Bobby's on the Today Show,” he shouted over and over as my dad calmed him down and missed the entire piece. In my nearly half century on the air, I don't think I ever had a bigger fan than my beloved Uncle Normie. Ever the logicians, my family called the third Norman, “Rock Garden Normie” because he owned and ran a little nightclub in Willimantic, Ct. called “The Rock Garden.” His purchase of the club was a very thoughtful gesture as regards the rest of the family because it gave them a way to tell him apart from the other two Normies. It was “Rock Garden Normie”who took me farther aback than I had ever been taken. I was 23 years old and freshly home from Vietnam. I had spent 4 years in the Air Force and, as a 19 year old enlistee, ready to go off and, perhaps, die for my country, I couldn't legally drink a beer so, I had never been to the Rock Garden. I had heard stories over the years but never had the opportunity to “see for myself,” as it were. Now, I was home, I was of legal drinking age and I had a relative who owned a nightclub. Could the stars have been in any better alignment? My friends and I piled into someones car and took the 30 minute ride from Manchester to Willimantic and our magical evening at the mysterious Rock Garden. Having never see the inside, all I had to go on was my imagination. I'm not sure what I was expecting but when we walked in it was so nondescript that I, for the life of me, can't tell you a single detail about the place. We walked in and were greeted by “Rock Garden Normie” who had been alerted that we would be coming in. He immediately put his arm around my shoulder and started introducing me to patrons and boasting, “This is Jerry's kid. He just got home from Vietnam. We're very proud of him.” He was making it a pretty big deal. He hung out with us for a few minutes and then told us to have a good time. After a few more drinks and some of whatever was fun for a 23 year old in 1970, we decided to head home. I told “Rock Garden Normie” that we were leaving and he put his arm back around my shoulder and, once again, told me how proud everybody was and how happy he was that I would come out to The Rock Garden. He then handed me the check and walked away. That was my one and only visit to The Rock Garden. I don't think the club exists any more and “Rock Garden Normie” is long gone but the memory of that night will always give me a little chuckle.......and a little heartburn.

TALK TO ME..........PLEASE

“It’s so funny that we don’t talk anymore.” That’s a lyric from a Cliff Richard “sorta-hit song” from 1979. Little did he know just how prophetic his words were. Actually, I would venture to say that he didn’t have a clue, as he was referring to his lover…not the rest of humanity. But it’s true, we don’t talk. Oh, we communicate…we just don’t talk. Quick, what color are the eyes of the last person you had a conversation with? You can’t tell from a text message, can you? We text, we Facebook, we IM, we tweet.....we don’t talk. The art of conversation seems to have gone the way of of letter writing, which, I suppose I should explain to you younger folks. A long time ago, in a civilization far, far away, people would utilize an instrument known as a pen and touch it to a substance known as paper and move it around so that it would leave intelligible markings, known as letters. You should know what they are. You have them on your keyboards. They would put these letters together on the paper and then fold it, put it into a pocketed piece of paper known as an envelope and then into…are you ready….a mailbox, only to have it delivered to whoever you were trying to communicate with. They would read it and repeat the process to communicate back with you. I know it seems a bit archaic by today’s standards, but, it was very effective. Back in those days, people would look at each other and speak. While one person spoke, the other would listen and respond, constituting what was known as a “conversation.” This, too, was a very effective way to get a point across or, in many cases, just kill a little time. There were two instances, a few years ago, that tipped me off to just where my place would be in the changing communication climate. The first was when the phone rang. It was my then 23 year old daughter calling to ask if her mother would make some nachos for her. Not an unreasonable request when one is on their way home and, perhaps, in a hurry to get back out, as could be the case with any busy 23 year old. I asked my wife where she had called from, fully expecting a rather lengthy explanation. The answer I got? ”Her bedroom.” Her bedroom is a good 15 feet down the hall. Well, I suppose it IS a pretty long 15 feet. I then made the trek (at least 30 or 40 feet) into the kitchen and saw my then 14 year old at the computer. I asked what she was doing, to which she answered, “IMing my friend Cessie.” “Isn’t Cessie spending the night?” I asked. My daughter answered, “Yes, she’s in the bedroom, IMing me back.” I think that’s when my utter confusion started to show. The next day I was shopping for meat. I was at Costco, where meat, in bulk, is cheaper. As I looked at a package of a particularly great cut of about 4 steaks for $30 dollars, I noticed one package was marked $63 dollars. I told the “meat guy” who was restocking some N.Y. Strip steaks about it and he looked at me, without missing a beat, and said, “It’s REALLY good meat.” We both had a laugh and it was then that I realized that conversation, as an art form, is all but dead. You just can’t tweet that kind of spontaneity

FROM GREEN TO BLUE

Whenever, as a younger soul, the “green-eyed monster” reared it's ugly head in my direction, my dad always had a solution to drive it back to where it belonged – wherever the hell that was. It didn't matter what I was envious about, he would often use logic but sometimes he could even get the job done with a stick. “All the other kids have toy trucks, why can't I have a truck?” I would complain with the vengeance of a 5 or 6 year old, knowing I would, eventually, wear him down or annoy him to the point of caving in. Unfortunately, this was where his next move might be to pick up a stick and hand it to me with a glib “Here. Here's your truck. Have fun.” I wasn't sure if he was being a cheapskate or if he was trying to teach me a lesson in the evils of envy and greed. I have to admit, though, I usually did have fun with my skinny, little, wooden truck that was covered in bark. I may not have had a real truck but I had a real imagination, which, years later served me quite well. His sense of logic wasn't a lot better. “Well, Billy Hart's going trapping at the pond at 3am, why can't I go too,” I remember rationalizing as a cocky 12 year old who had no clue as to the world outside my block and the local playground. “If Billy Hart jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you jump off the Brooklyn Bridge?” was his favorite (and, pretty much, only) comeback to such a request. Even if I wanted to to something that was, perhaps, inadvisable for whatever stage of life I happened to be in, with someone else, my dad might get a little confused and, once again, push Billy Hart off the Brooklyn Bridge to make his point. Sometimes it worked.......sometimes it didn't. I actually did sneak out the window, on that particular morning at 3 o'clock to meet Billy and head off to the pond to check the traps that he had set the day before. Neither of us had any idea what kind of traps they were or what we were hoping to catch but we were pretty determined preteen trappers who, most probably, got our inspiration from an episode of Davy Crockett on “The Mickey Mouse Club.” That was about as worldly as we were. As I was climbing out the window to meet Billy, who was standing on the side of my house, my dog started barking. Instead of taking the most logical step, which would have been to back away from the window and go back to bed, my 12 year old mind said jump and run, which is just what I did. Before I knew it, we were at the pond, which was covered in ice, and began looking for the traps, which were buried in snow. I knew we would have caught something because, my imagination told me so. That same imagination that I had been nurturing since my dad gave me my first toy truck. Thankfully, they were all empty. Soon our attention was averted by the sound of a car headed our way. As it got closer, I could see that it was my dad's 1956 two toned Mercury. Not wanting to be caught, Billy and I immediately dove for the river bank that ran along the side of the road. The bank was also a solid sheet of ice. We slid down the into the running water of the small river that bled into the pond, my dad watching and laughing, having spotted us as we made our boneheaded move. He packed the two little blue, shivering trappers into the car and turned up the heater, dropping Billy at home and then telling me that I was not to play with him any more. Billy and I stayed best friends until his untimely death in his late 50's. As I look back, I can never thank my dad enough for the gift of imagination that he gave me with that “stick-truck.” It became the basis of an extremely satisfying career. His lessons also filled me with integrity and gave me a foundation with which to raise my kids. My only regret is that poor Billy Hart must have gotten pretty water logged after all those inadvertent swims in the East River.

CELEBRITY TALES - AS I REMEMBER THEM:PETER FRAMPTON

“Nice day for soccer,” I thought as I trotted onto the field at Veteran’s Stadium in Philadelphia on that gorgeous Saturday in 1977. This was going to be a star studded event and I was asked to be the honorary co-captain of a brand new team for this charity raising game. After all, WYSP was the #1 rock & roll station in town with a good deal of the credit going to the top rated morning team of “Fox & Leonard.” Two man morning radio was unheard of on FM back then. FM was still a relative newcomer and most rock & roll disc jockeys whispered. They were just THAT cool. All of the ratings and, subsequently, advertising dollars, went to the big AM stations. That was a time when the words “clear channel” had everything to do with a transmitter. It was not yet the name of a company that would come along later and monopolize the business, contributing to the downfall of all that was entertaining and fun about radio for the listener AND the practitioner. Being the “Leonard” half of the team didn’t hurt when it came time for perks and this was a good one. Veteran's Stadium was filled with luminaries. Rick Wakeman and Mick Jagger were part owners of the new team, Paul Simon was there, James Taylor had lagged behind just a bit because he was holding the door for “regular folk” who had come to the extravaganza. I told a joke and the woman in front of me swung her head around and laughed. How flattered I was when I realized that I had just gotten a mouth full of Gilda Radners hair. Like I said, this was a star-studded event and the stands were packed with people who probably couldn’t have cared less about soccer, but, were fans of the likes of Yes, the Rolling Stones and Fox & Leonard. I couldn’t help but notice the amount of people in the stands. And, here I was, on the field as part of “the show.” I saw that Peter Frampton was an honorary co-captain of the opposing team. Not a bad choice, as “Frampton Comes Alive” had been released a short time earlier. It was recorded live at Winterland and had soared to the top of the charts. He was riding high with a huge hit record. As I crossed the field towards him, I held out my hand to shake his and when I got close enough, I introduced myself. “Hi, Peter, I’m Bob Leonard from WYSP. I’m the honorary co-captain of the other team. Welcome to Philly.” He looked at me, turned and walked away, completely ignoring my greeting and my hand. A lot of people witnessed this cold shoulder, so it came as no surprise the next day when I was on the air and the promotion person walked into the studio to announced the arrival of Peter Frampton who was going to come on my show to plug the album and try to pick up a few more sales. “Not on MY show,” I said and I asked the promo guy to close the door behind him. The general manager then came in saying, “Hey, that’s Peter Frampton, don’t you realize that he has the #1 album in the country?” “Yes, I do,” I responded, “If you want him on the air that badly, YOU do the interview.” and I walked out of the studio. Peter Frampton did not go on the air at WYSP that day but, fortunately, I had ratings and I still had my job.

AMAZED, FLUMMOXED AND BEWILDERED........AM I

I live in a world of convolution……and yes, it is a word. It means puzzlement. I have imagined, over the years, that the more steps something takes, the more satisfied I will are with the results. I sometimes even show a tendency of taking the long way from point a. to point b. because it then makes it seem as if I've accomplished a great feat when, in reality, it's probably as easy as....oh, I don't know……going from point a. to point b. I have a tendency to get lost, however, if there are more than two or three steps. Just like any other puzzle......I always seem to have parts left over when I'm done. I am always looking for the easy way out. And yet, I never seem to think in simple terms when it comes to trying to solve a puzzle. It seems more thorough to consider all possible angles that will lead to a solution. That's why I prefer word puzzles. There won't be any letters left to throw in a box like extra screws when I'm done. One day recently, I picked up the phone and heard no dial tone. Immediately, I panicked and began to imagine all of the scenarios as to why the phone wasn't working. I was making it too complicated right off the bat. I began to go over my checklist of things that could have gone wrong. First, I checked the other phones in the house and, sure enough, they were all silent. My first instinct, since we have our phones bundled with the TV and computers on our cable system, was to curse the cable company and all of it's perceived incompetence, while shaking my fist in the air like a Three Stooge. That I did well. Then I tried turning on the TV. It worked as did the computers, so it wasn't not a signal problem. My next move was to use a little trick the cable guy taught me the last time all of my communication with the outside world was cut off. I went to the modem, pulled out the battery,, unplugged it (which was a puzzling step in itself because both turn off the power) and counted to thirty. I suspect twenty nine would not be enough time and thirty one would be too much, so, at thirty on the dot, I plugged it back in and re-installed the battery - or was it the other way around, I never can remember the order of that step. Needless to say, the phones were still dead. Must have hit the thirty one second mark. Now it was time to call the cable company on my trusty, little flip phone so I could get one of their crack associates to walk me through whatever steps I had to take to get my phones back. The guy with the foreign accent named Chip (or was it Teddy) told me to find the phone jack on the back of the modem and follow the cord to where it plugged in to the wall. To do that I had to go into the bedroom and move the desk and the bed and the dresser.. That's where the cord went......or so I thought. When I got to the other end, I realized that all of the furniture rearranging was totally unnecessary as the phone jack for the room was on another wall under the window. It turned out I really didn't need to follow the little gray "yellow brick road" that lead me to the wall jack. It was right next to - on the wall. It was when I reached my final destination, however, that I realized how in vain the entire day had been. That was where I pushed the plug back into the wall, picked up the now working phone and dialed the cable company so I could thank Chip or Teddy for his expert assistance in getting me to the phone jack in my bedroom from a call center in Manila. I have, since, invested in a "smart" phone. One that is, ultimately, quite a bit smarter than I am. The next time I forget to connect our land line, all I have to do is tell my "smart" phone to "call the cable company" so that Chip or Teddy can remind me to check the plug. Now, if I could only tell my "smart" phone to do actual "plugging," I can even cut out the middle man, whether it is Chip OR Teddy. I'm pretty sure there's an App for that but now I'm puzzled about how to find it on my smarter-than-me-phone.

CELEBRATE APRIL

I saw a sign while driving the other day. It was a flashing sign that said “Work Zone Awareness Week.” I wasn’t sure if I should buy a cake, send a card or just be aware of work zones, which I kind of thought I already was. Shouldn’t we be aware of work zones whenever we drive? If we aren’t, we could, conceivably hurt someone or break our car through the simple act of being oblivious. There are a lot of similar celebrations that we are probably unaware of. I did a little research because I don’t want to walk through life with blinders on and because, like everyone else, I’m always looking for an excuse to have a party. I found some pretty good ones. Daily, weekly, monthly….people will celebrate just about anything, and why not? Some things just don’t get the recognition they deserve. April, for instance is Straw Hat Month. I don’t think I’ve actually ever seen anyone wearing a straw hat except in movies about the 20’s and 30’s when people wore straw hats on their Sunday walks by the river. It’s also Fair Housing Month, which in our economy is almost an oxymoron. There doesn’t seem to be very much that’s fair about the housing market these days. In April we have International Whistlers Week…for all of those people worldwide, who’ve forgotten the words. There is also Sky Awareness Week for everyone who’s apparently been looking down for the rest of the year. There is another week that, according to the calendar I am reading, is set aside for Passover or Pesach, whichever you want to celebrate. Take your pick. I don’t have the heart to tell them that Passover IS Pesach and vice-versa. And, who doesn’t get excited over Cowboy Poetry Week…..”There once was a varmint from Nantucket”…well, WEST Nantucket, but I think you get the picture. As for the celebratory days in April, there are far too many and too little space. Here are a few I thought you might enjoy: Tweed Day…..right smack, dab in the middle of Straw Hat Week…making April also Early 20th Century Fashion Statement Month. St. Stupid Day….that’s a mass celebration, attended by millions worldwide. They simply go though their lives just being themselves. They don’t even know it’s a holiday. There is Tangible Karma Day…I'll do a good deed if you give me something tangible in return. Cash is always nice karma. April 15th is, of course, Income Tax Day AND, ironically Take a Wild Guess Day, which has been my tax filing philosophy for as long as I can remember. It is also That Sucks Day, which, I imagine, is just a more creative way of saying Income Tax Day. There are others…..National Hairball Awareness Day, Hug an Australian Day, National Chocolate Covered Cashews Day and, my personal favorite, Blah! Blah! Blah! Day……you know that one. It falls on the 17th…yadda, yadda, yadda. This is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg and only for April. The other 11 months are equally as fulfilling when it comes to holidays that we’ve never knew existed, but, just reading through April began to make my head spin. As I continued my journey through the celebratory days, weeks and month long lists, I decided to try and find a day where absolutely nothing was going on…and I was hard pressed to find any. There is not a single day when something isn’t being feted. Not one day where we could say…..”Look, there is nothing happening today, why don’t we celebrate the peace and tranquility of nothing and call it “Nothing Day.” Too bad…it might have been a good reason to throw a party

CELEBRITY TALES.......AS I REMEMBER THEM: AL JARREAU

I remember a particular Wednesday in 1993 when the door to the ABC studios in Dallas became the door to opportunity for me and the people of Shanghai. Each week, for seven years, I did two specialty shows for Radio Shanghai, the Peoples Republic of China. They were each an hour long and revolved around American pop music. I'm proud of the fact that it was the first American music program to ever run in the People's Republic. The first show of the week was a basic grab bag that featured all of the top pop music of the day. I spoke slowly enough for an interpreter to understand what I was saying and successfully translate it so the listeners would know that Michael Jackson had sung the last song or that Madonna was coming up later in the show. We consciously kept it very simple and played the music we knew they liked. Just like we did in everyday broadcasting here at home. It was programmed based solely on research and, usually, turned out a very safe and boring product. Nothing exciting, invigorating, educational or entertaining about it. Just the basics -“This is.....”, “…....that was...” - like I said, very safe and quite boring. Show number 2, however, was a different story. Each week, I would feature an artist or group and, within certain language constraints, was able to to be informative and introduce the listeners to the artists as human beings, not just melodic voices in the background. I was given full creative control of these shows and as time progressed, I found myself straying from just pop music and experimenting with different genres and artists who were not necessarily in the mainstream. I had to show restraint with some genres, of course. Punk Rock or Heavy Metal music might have gotten our plug pulled by the Central Committee in Beijing. Nothing subversive or political but the amount of material I had left to work with was staggering. One week I might feature the music of Jim Croce and another week, perhaps, the music of Andrea Boccelli and the next week, maybe The Winans. It was a really fun show to do. On this particular Wednesday in 1993, however, while I was on my way to the production studio I had reserved (as I did every Wednesday at this time) to record the show, I was panicking because I had no one to feature. I had gotten a bit busier than usual with my morning show and had overlooked, what I called, “The China Show.” I was preoccupied as I walked, wondering what I was going to do. I only had the room for so long and I was totally unprepared. My head was down and I was moving with a purpose and, yet, I couldn't help but notice, out of the corner of my eye, a medium sized guy wearing a hat, standing, nonchalantly at the front door of the network, brazenly puffing away on, what appeared to be, a Marlborough red. Feeling that it was my civic duty, as an employee in good standing of ABC, to inform the gentleman that smoking was prohibited in the building, I approached him and immediately had two revelations – he was, indeed, smoking a Marlborough red and.......he was Al Jarreau. At that point, I stopped caring whether he was smoking or not and introduced myself, trying to throw in a little charm while asking if I could help him. We started chatting and, before long, I found myself trying to impress him with my love for and knowledge of Jazz. The conversation turned to the legendary John Coltrane and, before I could catch myself, I blurted out the chant from “A Love Supreme.” Al picked right up on it and added the saxophone solo in scat which actually made my background chant sound more like a contribution to a great song and less like I had just had a Tourettes episode. Before we knew it, we had a small crowd in the front lobby. We laughed, gave each other high fives and a hug and that was when I realized that the door to opportunity had just swung open about as wide as it could. I told him about the “China Show” and said that, if he could spare an hour of his time, I could treat the fine folks of Shanghai to the wondrous music of Al Jarreau with a special treat – the artist would be in the studio with me. He very graciously consented and for the next hour we played his hits, “We're In This Love Together,” “Take Five,” the theme from “Moonlighting,” he even did “Mornin'” live in the studio. It was a pretty magical hour and I have no doubt the Peoples Republic of China was a little richer, culturally, for it. At least that's my assumption. I got plenty of mail from the listeners but it was all in Mandarin and the only person I knew who could translate was a waiter from local Chinese restaurant and since, by tradition, I only ate Chinese on Fridays and Christmas – the busiest times in a Chinese restaurant – it took a little longer than I would have liked. We did, indeed, get a consensus: they loved the show. And I learned a valuable lesson - sometimes, on the other side of the door of opportunity, you might just find some Kung Pao Shrimp.

CELEBRITY TALES..........AS I REMEMBER THEM: WHAT A SURPRISE

Robert Hall was not only a clothing outlet where you could get a decent suit for cheap but one of the pioneers at Satellite Music Network. He was the guy who hired me for an experimental project in satellite radio programming in 1981. He was the program director of my format and the midday disk jockey as well. That was before we grew into the ABC Radio Network and he came off the air to handle his duties as vice president of programming. He was also my friend and we acted accordingly, even in the professional atmosphere of radio where the “grown up” thing to do in, say, an inter office water fight, would be to go out and by a big boys' super soaker. We played racquetball and ate kimchee at a Korean restaurant almost daily. On a few occasions when I was in need of video equipment, for one reason or another (I had kids), Robert would give me the key to his house and tell me to just go get his camera, which was, almost every time, set up, strategically, over his bed (he didn't have kids). We were friends to the extent that he once told me that, as long as he was working there.......I had a job. He was there until he lost his hearing. Before he left the industry forever, he gave me a hug and said, “There's just no place in radio for a deaf guy.” It was one of the saddest days of my career. I never saw him again. Robert was unmistakable in his size, shape and color. He was a tall blonde guy whose hair was long enough go just past his collar. He had a mustache and was quite pale. He was very easily recognized from the front, back and all sides. You always knew when Robert was in the area. He could cast a mighty shadow. So, there it was.....a normal day at the network. We had most of the practical jokes out of our system and were getting about the business of entertaining the masses from our little studios in Mokena, Illinois where there was a sticker on the console that paraphrased ZZ Top and read: “We're bad........we're nationwide.” I was walking down the long hall in the bank building that was now housing our studios and production facilities in North Dallas. A door opened in front of me and out walked two very recognizable figures with their backs turned to me as they headed off in the same direction I was walking. The shorter guy was Lee Abrams. Lee was not too tall, starting to gain weight from all of his forays to exotic restaurants and had, what was then, long-ish, dark, curly hair. Next to him was the aforementioned tall blonde guy with hair reaching just past his collar. It was Lee and Robert, walking down the hall in front of me, giving me the perfect opportunity to hit my fellow practical joker with a “zinger” before the end of another broadcast day. I would sneak up, quietly behind him, I strategized, and put my knees into the back of his knees, which is a sure fire way to get someone to lose their balance and tumble to the floor. It's pretty funny when you are young and silly and find things like that funny. I took a deep breath and quietly tip toed behind the tall blonde guy until my knees were in the perfect position to deliver the defining blow of the “bit.” As I started driving my knees past the point of no return, I noticed Robert Hall walking towards us with a look of panic on his face. Down went my victim. I had just sent Justin Hayward of The Moody Blues to the floor like a sack 'o' rocks. He was Robert Hall's doppelganger. He looked up and, as I apologized profusely and held out a hand to give him a lift, very appropriately said, “Hey.....What did I do? I'm just a singer in a rock & roll band.” I had just traumatized a Moody Blue. From that point forth, I was always extremely careful with my at work acts of whimsy and mirth. I didn't want to “take out” any more rock stars, authors, politicians, actors or any other dignitary who happened to be at the network to grace our airwaves with whatever they happened to be plugging at the time. From that point forth, I never attacked from behind.

GUESS WHO CAME TO DINNER

I never realized that I personally knew a member of the storied 1% until my recent 50 year high school reunion where we were able to round up about 10 guys from our private school graduating class which consisted of 56 altogether. Taking into consideration the ravages of age and things like illness and death, that really wasn't a half bad turnout. It was wonderful seeing people I haven't even thought about for a half century of life with all of it's tribulations. Some have done better than others but, at the end of the day, these were guys I spent 3 very important years of my life surrounded by in class rooms, dorm rooms, dining rooms and study halls and they really hadn't changed a bit. All except one. He had become a member of the 1% and was careful to make sure everyone knew it. The school, itself, was a haven for the children of the rich and, occasionally, famous. It was a prep school in Connecticut where those who could afford it would send their kids to get discipline, to get an Ivy League equivalent high school education or to get rid of them so they could do whatever it was they did to make more money and travel. These were the sons of privilege and power. The first born of the Chief of Police to the King of Thailand, the nephew of the guy who assassinated President Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, the offspring of the owner of the Biltmore Hotel in NYC (they lived in the penthouse) – I was out of my element and in over my head. We weren't part of this crowd. I grew up in a working class household with parents who toiled and sacrificed for me and my brother. I couldn't relate to the guy who came from one of the most expensive address in Paris or the ship builder's son from Brazil. We struggled for what little we did have and did without many things I saw my friends with. My school friends had lots of “stuff”.......I had a work ethic and a tight budget. I was only in the school by virtue of the fact that my grandmother was a personal friend of the wife of the school's owner and headmaster. They had worked on a number of projects together, not the least of which was finding a way to get me into that school. Most of my friends, however, did not come out of that environment particularly entitled. They all went on to make it - or not - on their own merits. Some did fairly well, some not so much but they did it themselves. With the notable exception of one guy who showed up for the reunion. Now, here it was, 50 years later and 10 of us had arranged a dinner in South Florida. The retired college professor was there as was the filmmaker, a couple of guys who had owned their own businesses and done relatively well while maintaining their “down to earth,” good guy qualities, a guy or two who just,plain worked hard for their families and were hoping to be able to afford to retire and me, a retired scam artist who had managed to fool enough people for enough years to have a career entertaining the masses, to successfully and, eventually, to retire. All pretty normal stuff. We each had our own separate health issues as well but, at our age, that's part of the territory. You get up each day, find the “new normal” and move on. Then there was Artie (his name has been changed to protect me after he informed me how easy it would be to kill me because he had a gun) who let us know, in no uncertain terms, that he was to be called Arthur now. He had taken over a successful business from his dad and kept making lots of money for, as he told us (almost ad nauseum) doing nothing. He was wealthy and powerful and was enjoying every minute he gloated about it. In South Florida, even 5 star restaurants expect customers to wear shorts. They are all very informal, understanding that folks are here escaping the winter doldrums and are spending money. It's a tourist haven and everyone dresses comfortably. Not Artie. He showed up wearing what was, obviously, a very expensive, custom tailored suit, a pricey watch, a spray on tan and dyed hair. He looked rich and wasn't about to let us forget it. He spoke about his 4 houses (2 in New England, one in Florida and one in the islands). He told us that his new wife was flying in and, when asked if he was going to pick her up at the airport, he responded,”Hell no.....I sent my driver.” Artie (I won't call him Arthur) regaled us with stories of his power and kept saying, “I'm the job creator. I'm the guy who signs the FRONT of the check.” When my friend's wife said, “Well what about all of us who sign the BACK of the check and are just trying to make it in the world,” he responded, “I don't care about them. I sign the FRONT of the check.” The conversation then started to “go south.” Artie had had a couple of drinks by this time and began to character assassinate ALL Muslims. He felt that the world would be better off if they were all eliminated. He couldn't accept the idea of a radical faction that has hijacked the faith and was making things look worse than they actually were on a global scale. The camel back breaking straw for me came when he laughed while telling us the story of standing on a street in Boston when a woman in a hijab and two small children walked by and he put his hand in the shape of a gun and pointed at her to simulate shooting her and the kids. He then commenced to tell me how little I knew about anything. He kept drinking. Thank goodness for my wife who, always “having my back,” changed the subject by asking about his kid. All in all, the reunion was a smashing success. We are all in our late 60's and that's what people walking by us saw. A bunch of old guys acting like teenagers which is what we were when we all lived together in the dormitories and shared every aspect of our lives. We felt like we are 16 and 17 again and were acting accordingly. Except Artie who gave off a vibe of self importance and seemed to feel as if he was doing us all a favor by showing up for the dinner. I can't wait for the next time we can all spend some time laughing and reminiscing and celebrating life long friendships. It's safe to say that Artie won't be there. He'll be too busy “hobnobbing” with his 1% colleagues to be bothered by the peons he went to high school with. Besides, he already graced us with his presence once. I'm sure he feels that was more than enough for this lifetime.