WMRI/WGOM: Life lessons from my first job

by Vance Meyer

As far as I knew, Tiny Tim hadn’t recorded a recognizable song since “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” more than 17 years earlier.  And his interview on the Marion, Indiana radio station where I worked was only happening because our station manager had generously promised someone in town that we would promote the novelty singer's starring role in a traveling circus performing at our local armory.  But, let’s face it, being an announcer for sister stations WMRI FM and WGOM AM was not exactly chock full of opportunities to meet famous people.

Oh, wait, a few months before I had been able to talk by phone with the producer for radio legend Paul Harvey.  The guy was all-business and in a hurry for local “color” to round out a nationally broadcast story about a bizarre thing that had happened in our city.  A teacher at Riverview Elementary School had gone to Florida and brought home a baby alligator for his students to see, and the crazy thing got loose.  This was right up the alley for a brilliant storyteller like Harvey.

When the producer called, I was the only radio “talent” in the building and was very nervous – even more so as it became increasingly evident that I was color-less when it came to this story.  I mean, the facts were what they were: School. Teacher. Gator. Loose. 

With nothing else to offer, I joked that the Marion Police Department had advised citizens that the gator would be wearing a sweater with a tiny man embroidered on the chest (a play on the Izod brand that dominated America’s preppy culture at the time).  

There was dead silence on the other end of the phone, except for the sound of typing. In the polite voice my mother used to use, I let us both off the hook.  "Anything else?," I asked.  I nearly fell off my studio bar stool when the producer asked if he could borrow the joke for Harvey!

Well, the fantasy that this isolated stroke of comedic genius would propel me to a staff-writing position at the Paul Harvey show in Chicago subsided within 48 hours or so, although in that limited time it had been fun to dream about moving close to Wrigley Field to impress my college girlfriend, Teresa Parrish, who idolized the Cubs.

But here I was with a far-less glamorous opportunity to help greet Tiny Tim at the station I used to anxiously listen to for snow-related school closing information.

The Tiny Tim assignment, I reasoned, fit with my duties as Public Affairs Director, an unofficial title I negotiated in the hiring process, in recognition of the public relations degree I had just received from Ball State University about an hour down I-69 in Muncie.  I mean, the P.A.D. could only write so many public service announcements for quilting shows, farm markets and the like. 

In the parking lot, the edges of Tiny Tim’s wavy mane blew slightly in the breeze from the corn field across the street.  He was the passenger of a chauffeured diesel pickup truck, the kind with four wheels on the back axle.  I asserted myself and called him Tim, assuming just Tiny wouldn’t do, and introduced myself as the station Public Affairs Director.

Leslie Stout, our youthful and very professional station secretary, was the kind of person who greeted you with a huge smile, and I was grateful that she always seemed eager to yuck it up with me, even though I was the low man on the totem pole at the station.  But when I entered the door with Tim, I sensed that Leslie was either trying to appear all-business, or hoping to avoid eye contact with this now overweight male soprano wearing a baggy black suit, clownish shirt and white rubber boots like the kind they wear in fish markets (circus gear, I assumed).

I escorted Tim directly to the small glassed-in studio of WGOM AM, our country music station, which shared a window with the WMRI FM studio.  The FM station played a wide variety of easy listening artists, including Percy Faith, Zamfir and his pan flute, and even the Carpenters on our “contemporary reel,” a name I made up and used on the air overnight when no one was listening.

Tim placed his ukulele on the laminate wood counter, just next to the microphone he would be using in his interview with Dirk Rowley, a radio prodigy and senior at Eastbrook High School in rural Grant County.  I admit it was humiliating to be passed up for a cherry assignment by a high-school kid, but he was seriously good, had worked there longer than I had, and was more mature and driven than anyone I knew in college. 

I asked Tim if he wanted a glass of water while we waited for Dirk to come in from the control room, where he had been boning up on the interview.  In lieu of the drink, Tim asked if he could borrow the phone.  Later that day, Leslie and I took a little grief from our cost-conscious station manager, Mike Day, for giving Tim access to our WATS line, a paid long-distance service.  It was a privilege Tim abused for an hour after the interview, before he had returned to the Holiday Inn to rest up for the circus.

Mike was a classic broadcast executive.  Very energetic, perfectly combed silver hair, and always accessorized with smart shirt-tie combinations that were a product of his good taste or that of his wife, Liz.  

I don’t know the whole story, but somehow our wealthy station owner had managed to recruit Mike years before from a major market station in Michigan.  Mike once told me an amusing story about a charity promotion he had organized with Detroit rocker, Ted Nugent.  Mike was a great story teller and characterized Nugent as a “real kook,” so I was careful not to reveal the fact that he had been my high-school idol, probably around the time Nugent was riding his chopper around the parking lot of Mike’s former station as fans cheered on.

Mike was a creative guy who knew how to stretch a dollar like nobody’s business.  One time, he organized a big festival-like open house for advertisers and others in the community.  After inspecting our preparations for the event, he decided to have Gene Miller, our station engineer, run out to Kmart for some red halogen holiday lamps.  He had me hide the lights in the lower corner of each production room with the red glow shining up on the equipment.  When the visitors came parading through the station, it looked like freaking NASA in there.  I stole the trick years later for a low-budget PR project.

In addition to his creativity and leadership qualities, Mike had a trademark quirk which took some getting used to.  Although I still wonder about its origin, he would add the words “on the thing” to the end of certain sentences.  “How you doing on the thing?”  “Let’s get moving on the thing.”  It didn’t really bother me, though, because it was integral to his big character, and because he had done a nice favor for me in my last few months at Ball State.

Around that time, while living in Muncie, I had written and produced a radio spot for my mother’s candidacy for Grant County Treasurer.  The spot, entitled, “Measure my Experience,” apparently left Mike and his pipe-smoking program director, Rich Coolman, with the notion that I could have some potential as an overnight announcer.

With no interview necessary, Rich, whom I had remembered growing up as the emcee for just about every important public event that happened in our community, called and put me to work.

I was very surprised at how little training was required before they entrusted me with the entire station – actually, two stations -- with their semi-automated music management systems and studio equipment.

In addition to the overnight shift, I sometimes relieved Brooks Clark on Sunday afternoons.  I really enjoyed that experience, until one Sunday when a severe weather alert came ringing across the National Weather Service machine, spitting rolled paper all over the floor.  There was a breathtaking amount of information on the long tape.  I panicked but would have felt awful calling Brooks at home, which was the procedure.  So, I ripped off pieces of the courier-typed paragraphs that looked relevant and started reading them live on the air.  My broadcast included a warning for citizens in the immediate area to locate their children and senior citizens, seek immediate shelter, look out for golf-ball hail and spontaneous tornadoes, and much more.  I was even beginning to worry for my own safety in our not-substantial studio facility.

Then something happened that never happened on Sundays at WMRI/WGOM: The phone actually rang.

Imagining that it might be the police or sheriff’s department calling to coordinate emergency response communication (something I had learned about in PR class), I quickly answered the phone while the weather machine kept spitting out copy.

 “Vance!” (I recognized the voice.)  “Mike Day here!”  

“Yes sir” I said, damned near in tears.

“Vance look out the window and tell me what you see.”  

 

“It’s sunny outside,” I responded.

“ITS GODDAM SUNNY ON THE THING!” he yelled back.

If I had a been a more seasoned announcer (or with a little more training, I pouted to myself), I would have known that everything I had just read to homes, businesses and automobiles across the county was standard boilerplate information that always came through on the tape, just in case you needed it later.  In a desperate move to save some small portion of my reputation in the community, I prayed for a hell of a storm that day, but it didn’t rain a drop.

It was very nice of Greg Bantz to come in early for the evening shift so he could help me calm down.  Greg was gifted in two areas.  First, he was born with an actual radio name.  Given that we were in a small-town market where everybody knew everybody, Mike wouldn’t allow us use fake identities on the air, in spite of some kick-ass names I had drafted on my Ball State Steno Pad before my first day at work.  Second, Greg had a wonderful deep voice that resonated from his large Adam’s apple.  On your radio he sounded seven feet tall, but he only stood up to my shoulders.

To take my attention off of my own problems, Greg shared with me that he had decided to tell Mike on Monday that he must be moved to the day shift or find other employment because his son was growing up without him.  Greg was the first to acknowledge that days would be a tougher putt for him because it required a lot of live reading of news and other information, which wasn’t his forte’.  In an unspoken exchange for his great advice on radio etiquette (“Always say partly sunny, never partly cloudy on FM”) I helped him out with some of the more challenging words that the very busy advertising staff members sometimes included in their copy. 

One night I was pulling out of the drive-through at McDonalds with WGOM tuned in, when one of Greg’s recorded ad spots for the Little Italy restaurant came over the air.  I squealed my tires and got right to a phone booth the minute I heard him urging restaurant patrons to come early for a glass of rose (as in the flower) or cha-bliss wine.  He answered the phone, said “oh crap, thanks,” and rushed to the station to rerecord the spot, which offered patrons a lovely “Rose’ and Chablis” by its next airing.

As we were transitioning between his shift and mine one Friday night, Greg went out to his trunk and came back in with a box of tapes he wanted me to hear.  They were from a country station in nearby Alexandria, where he used to work under the name Greggy-Poo Bantz.  It was a nighttime call-in show in which Greggy-Poo took song requests and flirted on air with farm wives.  It was really something.  I listened to all of the tapes, making occasional breaks to gently deliver the weather forecast on WMRI for easy listeners who slept with it on.  

I was happy for Greg when Mike told him he admired his commitment to his son, offered him a well-deserved afternoon assignment and even called a special meeting in his office to congratulate Greg in front of all of us.

Over the next few months, Rich Coolman started scheduling me for some weekday duties, which also helped me get to really know Craig Armstrong, another recent Ball State grad who sold advertising and organized our bowling team.  As a favor to build my confidence, I think, Craig began assigning me as the announcer for ad spots for his smaller clients, including Becky’s Babes and Bears and a local cosmetics boutique, which offered me the opportunity to read exotic words like “voluminous lips” and “magenta glaze.”   

I didn’t handle days exceptionally well at first, partly because there were more people running in and out of the station and more programming elements to be multi-tasked.

One day in the studio I was reading a news story about a heated contract dispute between the Marion Teachers Union and the school board.  The very public union official who always spoke to the media (let’s call him Ron Smith), was a really smart and forceful advocate for the teachers, but also happened to be excessively large and disheveled.

 

My delivery of the story was going well until I teed up his soundbite:  “Union representative Ron Smith had this to say about the matter..."

“Ah, wouldn’t you love a delicious donut right now?”

Dear God, I had played a commercial for Vogels Donut Shop downtown.  Fortunately, Greg had taught me to just let erroneous tapes play out, rather than stopping them in mid-sentence for everyone to hear. 

Later that day, perhaps to put me back on the horse, Norm Wolf, who ran our one-man news department, asked me to go interview the school superintendent Mayer David to get his side of the story.

In those days, the superintendent and his department heads were housed in an office suite located at the north end of the old Marion basketball coliseum downtown.  I made the ill-advised move of showing up to the office with no appointment.  I guess I just had some idea in my head that if the press showed up, a public figure like this guy this would drop what he was doing.

David's secretary had a big hairdo and wasn’t nasty or anything, but made it clear that I should wait outside – literally outside – until he was ready.  I sat on the curb overlooking the parking lot and the Mississinewa River with my microphone and tape recorder on the sidewalk.  To give you an idea of what a deep thinker I was in those days, I actually pondered the irony that I could see Vogels Donuts immediately across the river.

I gave the superintendent more than enough time but soon noticed that the sun was beginning to set and the doors were locked.

“Ok, ok,” I thought to myself.  “Wolf is going to be pissed. Two rookie mistakes in one day and he has no interview for tomorrow morning’s newscast.”  This essentially meant that he would have no information to offer listeners beyond what he had “paraphrased” from the local Chronicle-Tribune.

Now, when I was a little boy, my Aunt Reba, who lived across the street, assured me that I had never enjoyed a real “treat” until I tried a chocolate ice cream soda from the Freel and Mason drug store and soda fountain downtown, a truth which was validated on numerous city bus trips we made there together.

I needed a treat, even if it was undeserved, so I shot across the Washington Street bridge just before Freel and Mason closed.  I consumed the excellent concoction too quickly from a Styrofoam cup while sitting in the Mustang with my recording equipment lying in the back seat next to my uninstalled Jensen stereo speakers.  Out of nowhere I slammed my fist on the steering wheel, which hurt like hell.

“What am I doing?" I demanded to know of myself.

One of my closest buddies had already completed an international tour with the Army.  Another really talented friend was already a disco star in Europe.  A fellow student from the Ball State PR department was editing an investment newsletter in New York City.  Yet here I sat in my old high-school ride, just five minutes from the tiny house they brought me home to from Marion General.  And, come on, after four years of spending my parents' hard-earned money on a university education, I still lacked the communication skills to provide a legitimate commentary on a goddam Everglades alligator running wild in the cornbelt.

The rest of my time at WMRI/WGOM is a blur, right up to the point where I received a call on the studio phone from a recruiter at General Electric.  Fred Woodress, my mentor and professor in the Ball State PR department, had recommended me for a job editing a weekly house organ for the huge GE operation in Fort Wayne.  Too eager to begin my new life, I rented a big-ass U-Haul truck before I realized I could have fit almost everything I owned in the Mustang.

Fred's call and the ensuring drive up I-69, with two suit cases and my old bed banging around in the back of the empty truck, were my gateway to places and experiences I could have never imagined while sulking on that curb at the old coliseum.  And, to make it even better – and although we never got to live next to Wrigley Field -- I’ve lived out that dream with Teresa Parrish from Ball State and our two boys who are now starting their own journeys.

A few years after leaving WMRI/WGOM, I was alone behind the wheel of a rented BMW going the equivalent of 110 miles per hour on the German Autobahn.  I turned on the radio and was amused by the number of English words and American colloquialisms that peppered the German dialogue between songs, and I wondered if the DJ lived at home with his parents.

For a stretch of about 45 minutes or so I took notice of arrowed signs for Ausfahrt. 

“This must be the largest town in Germany, and I’ve never heard of it,” I thought to myself before finally figuring out that ausfahrt is the German word for Exit.  

Still alone in the car, I laughed myself to tears and looked forward to sharing the story with Teresa when she woke up in the U.S.  

For some reason the overused adage about life being a marathon and not a sprint popped into my head, and I realized, at that moment, that 50 years from now, Tiny Tim, Greggy-Poo Bantz, and ausfahrt would all be parts of the mosaic of awesome experiences I would collect over a lifetime.

Vance Meyer is a former corporate communication and marketing professional whose blog, myTMI, contains short stories about his life which he hopes that his boys, Samuel and Noah, will enjoy in their later years.