Chapter 36: The Ezra Show

As a kid, I dreamed of getting a magic lantern and rubbing it to awaken the genie who could grant my wishes. Not surprisingly, I never got that magic lantern. But when I was 10, I got a magic box. It didn’t come cheap. It cost $10.

I earned the money mowing lawns. I got 35 cents reluctantly from Doom for our house, 50¢ from the next-door neighbors and $1.25 from the folks with the double lot two doors down when their lawn man didn’t show up after a night of drinking. Which happened fairly frequently.

When I finally had the $10 – which took all summer because I kept spending down my cache buying baseball cards at Perry’s drug store – I took the bus to the E.J. Korvette discount store in downtown Hartford and bought my box – an eight-transistor radio, a little block of plastic not much bigger than a deck of cards. It was made in Japan, which Doom didn’t think much of. He had spent his time in World War II on a ship in the Pacific. But I loved it.

It was my window to the world, expanding the universe beyond my bedroom on Beverly Road in West Hartford, Connecticut to baseball stadiums and rock and roll stations all over the country. I may have been part of the TV generation, but my transistor radio was as important to me then as a cellphone is to a kid today.

With a bedtime that started before the games on the west coast did, I happily crawled into bed clutching my prized possession and, staying up past midnight, listened as the Yankees played the California Angels.

I listened to the wit and wisdom of the disc jockeys who alerted the country to the rock and roll music that was bursting on the scene. On week nights, I tuned into the local stations. But on Sunday nights, as the country quieted down and there was less electronic interference, radio signals from stations like WOWO-AM in Indianapolis and WBT-AM in Charlotte, North Carolina clearly beamed into my third floor bedroom.

Eventually, I also listened to the news. Because of the federal regulations at the time, even the rock stations were obligated to keep the country informed. Every hour at the top and bottom of the hour, the stations’ newsmen – and they were only men – droned on about local and world events, sports and the weather for five full minutes. As a teenager waiting for a favorite song to be played, it was a very long five minutes.

I wasn’t happy about hearing the news at first, but because I had to, I began to learn about the war in Southeast Asia, the ongoing troubles in the Middle East and the political unrest in America that led to riots and the assassinations of our next generation of leaders. Just as I had favorite disk jockeys, I began to have favorite newsmen. They seemed almost as cool as the DJs.

After dinner, my big sister washed the dishes and I dried. It was the only time of day when we were allowed to change stations on Mom’s kitchen radio. We’d tune in to the daily countdown of the top ten hits between 6 and 7 p.m., hoping that our favorite songs, like Runaway by Del Shannon, would make it to the top.  

Later, if the Yankees were on, Doom would set a small Emerson plug-in radio facing out of the living room window and we’d sit on the front porch to listen while cooling off on hot summer nights.

My world was no longer limited to the area between my house and my school three blocks to the west or the city park four blocks to the north.

When my 10th grade speech teacher, Harold Riemer, told me my voice was a gift and predicted that one day I’d be on the radio, I was thrilled. It was something I had been dreaming about but had never told anyone. I didn’t think it was possible. Mr. Riemer thought differently.

But then Mr. Riemer’s and his encouragement were suddenly gone. When we came back from Christmas break sophomore year, there was a long-term sub in his place. No one told us why he left in the middle of the school year. Wi