After my unceremonious leave of the KDKA-Radio premises, (At least I didn’t knock over any office furniture.) it took me a couple of weeks to get the courage to look for another sales job at a radio station in Pittsburgh. Working for a big city corporate owned radio station had been a stretch for me. I felt like I went from barnstorming in a one seater bi-plane to trying to fly in formation with the Blue Angels.
So at first all I wanted to do was hang around my apartment in Wheeling brooding and reliving my glory days at the local country station I’d worked for previously. But eventually I realized if I was ever going to feel good about myself, as much as it pained me, I had to reach of my comfort zone again and head back to Pittsburgh for a rematch.
In the three days it took to get my interview suit back from the cleaners I had time to use the big green Thomas Registry in the Wheeling library to research the most popular FM stations in Pittsburgh. My criteria for picking stations to apply to was straight forward- the level of competition they gave my last employer, and their close proximity to each other so I wouldn’t have to move my car from one parking garage to another, or heaven forbid, resort to using a map.
Unlike most salesmen in the 80s, who had a collection of maps somewhere in their car; in the back seat, filed in a milk carton in the trunk, or smashed in the glove box, my library of maps consisted of one big dog-eared, coffee stained, sheet of poorly folded paper that covered the major highways on W.V., PA. and Ohio. If I suspected my map wouldn’t get me where I wanted to go, I gave myself plenty of time to get lost, ask directions and then get lost again.
My plan was to leave Wheeling for Pittsburgh at 6 a.m. That gave me three hours to drive there, get turned around a few times, find a parking garage, take the hot rollers out of my hair, and find the first station on my list by 9 a.m. This was all accomplished by 8 a.m. so I took a walk around the block to calm my nerves. While walking, I noticed a poster in a store window advertising a Red Cross Blood Drive to be held that morning at the album oriented rock station WEWO-FM.
I’d heard of WEWO, but it wasn’t on my apply-to list because an album oriented rock station’s (commonly referred to as AOR) music and demographics – male, single, and 18-34 years old, were foreign to me, and I wanted to keep new experiences to a minimum this time around. But then I remembered WEWO was owned by a local Pittsburgh family not a big corporation. That meant their chain of command began and ended all in the same building- something I was used to.
Besides, a blood drive would mean a little confusion at the reception desk. I changed course and headed to WEWO. When I got there, I fell in line to give blood with everyone else. But as soon as I got the chance to break away I headed for the ladies room. After that stop, I was free to do a little wandering.
I know the idea of a salesman wandering around a business, without an appointment, trying to sell something, or meet someone, sounds sketchy. But in 1983 living breathing receptionists, normally women guarded the door and answered the phone. If they didn’t want you to contact someone, you just didn’t. So, I did what I had to do.
I hurried down the halls, reading doors, looking for the sales department. A red headed woman who looked like she was on a mission took a left. On instinct I followed her.
There it was- the sales bull pen- the familiar grey steel desks scattered over an open area, mostly men and a few women on the phone fiddling with rolodexes, a sulky traffic girl staring at a large green computer screen with a flashing C prompt. In many ways it reminded me of the two previous radio stations I’d worked for. Except that everyone looked like they lived in a small apartment in a city with roommates. The walls were covered with concert posters or signs supporting or condemning something.
“Hi!” I said as loud as I dared. “I’m here to see the sales manager.”
A tall, lanky, curly-haired guy who was walking through the bull-pen head down, and reading what sounded like ad copy, stopped in front of me and shouted into the air. “Greg! There’s someone here to see you!” He glanced over at me and asked, “You looking for a job?” When I hesitated he said, “Well, good luck anyway.” and kept on walking.
Before I could stop blushing, a short stocky guy with a brown mullet walked into the bull pen. He checked me out for a second or two and he told me to follow him to his office.
Greg was about my age and the only one in the office wearing a jacket. Robert Crumb’s ‘Keep on Truckin’ poster was hanging on the wall behind his desk.
I launched into my tale: I was successful at KDKA, but it wasn’t a fit. I brought in new business, but that wasn’t good enough. I got cash in advance, but that didn’t matter.
“I get it. They’re uptight idiots over there anyway. But they must have seen something in you.” He tipped back in his chair. “If you want a job, show up tomorrow at eight for a meeting about a station promotion we’re doing.”
“I’ll be there.” I said as fast as I could. I was scared to death of talking past the close.
The meeting for the station promotion was held in the break room. There were people draped on counters, sitting on the edge of the sink, and on the floor. The tall curly-headed guy who’d wished me luck the previous day was leaning against the frig. He introduced himself as Kurt. He told me he was the morning man there, and added right away that he used to work as the morning man at a station in Boston.
The red-headed woman that I’d followed to the bull pen was standing next to a table loaded with bagels. She let out what had to be a Tarzan yell. I found out later Pat worked a couple of nights a week at the comedy club, Laugh till it Hurts, and it had become something of a tradition for her to bring these meetings to order with her intimation of Carol Burnet’s famous Tarzan yell.
Greg got right into the promotion. It seemed that the actress Jennifer Beal was a childhood friend of Pat’s. She was in town filming a movie called Flashdance, and she’d promised Pat she would take part in an on-air promotion as a personal favor to her.
The idea was that Miss Beal would ride in a big hot air balloon along with Kurt, who would do the cut-ins with another announcer on the ground. They planned to take off from the station parking lot at 9 a.m. on a Saturday morning and head to her movie set in the produce district. While the balloon was floating to the movie location, Jennifer was supposed to toss out coins for listeners to find along the way.
“Pat, you’re sure you can count on Jennifer Beal?”
“Oh course darling!” Pat said, in what had to be an imitation of Bette Davis. People were still doing Bette Davis in the ‘80s.
“And you’re going to find us a sponsor to supply the coins?”
Pat bowed deeply from the waist. “Your wish is my command.”
“And what about the hot air balloon? Kurt?”
Kurt jumped to attention at the mention of his name. “No problem! I have it covered. I have a buddy who works at a company that rents those things, and I got us a great price.” Everyone nodded in approval.
“And you’ll get someone to operate the thing too?”
“Yeah, sure. Of course.”
When Pat told me his back story a few days later I understood why Kurt seemed so eager to please, and why he felt he had to tell me as soon as he met me that he’d been the morning man at a big radio station in Boston.
When Kurt was the morning man in Boston his time slot had a terrible rating period. Even his father pulled the advertising for his Mercedes dealership. As a result, he lost his job. Kurt took the firing extremely hard because he already felt he was a disappointment to his family. He’d been a drama major at Yale and they thought sitting behind a microphone was a waste of his talent. His eagerness to please seemed to me like an apology for doing radio instead of Shakespeare in the Park.
“Great. Good to hear Kurt. Okay everyone, I’m counting on you to work together and get this event coordinated. We’re heading into a ratings period, and I’m blowing the budget on this thing, so let’s make a difference!”
I was assigned to train with Pat, who besides being a part time comedian, was the senior sales rep on staff.
“It’s easy to pitch WEWO.” Pat told me. “Number one- every other stations’ listeners are old and don’t spend money. Number two- AM stations that still bother to play music are ridiculous. They should stick to doing what they do best-running an hour full of commercials. Number three- don’t worry, you’ll sell something. We’re cheap! Now let’s find a gold and silver buyer to sponsor this thing.”
We grabbed a Pittsburgh Press someone had left in the break room, and looked for big splashy ads with lots of dollar signs. There were a few gold guys in town that week, but Norman’s Gold and Silver Buyer at the Ramada Inn in McKeesport had the biggest advertisement.
We stopped at Pat’s apartment off Forbes Avenue near the University of Pittsburgh on the way to check her answering machine for news about her latest comedy gig. Her place was small and cluttered. I waited for the usual excuses about her messy living quarters, but none were forthcoming. Obviously, Pat was a busy person, and her priorities didn’t include stacking magazines in neat piles or carefully refolding newspapers once they were read.
There were numerous messages on her answering machine, beside the one from Laugh Till It Hurts. One was about late rent and another one was about parking tickets, but Pat was only had ears for the message from the comedy club.
On our way back to the car, we ran into some of her neighbors on the sidewalk. Pat spoke to everyone, and reminded them all about her show on Thursday night. She gave her Tarzan yell at least three times and never waited for a reaction from any of them. She just kept on walking.
When we first met Norman, the gold and silver buyer, in his hotel room, he was upbeat and full of conversation. Then we told him we were from a radio station.
To get him talking again, Pat did a few imitations, and I talked about WEWO’s young male listeners who probably had old class rings laying around to sell to him. This worked well enough for us to ferret out his hot button. Norman wanted to add a sense of legitimacy, stability and trust to his gold buying business. So we convinced him being part of a radio station promotion featuring a hot air balloon would do just that. I could see right away Pat and I were going to be a great team.
When the event was two weeks away the station started hyping it on air. The promos generated a lot of buzz. Listeners called the station with questions: how much money would be dropped, what was the route, and would Jennifer Beal be available for autographs.
But no one had any real answers because no one person or department was in charge of answers. The truth be told, this is the way a lot of radio station promotions in the 80s were put together.
Pat and I didn’t worry about these details. We were too busy talking up the event and working each up other up into frenzy over what a great promotion it was going to be. Not only did we generate a lot of energy and enthusiasm in front of the customer, when we were together everything turned dramatic, grave, or hilarious. It was fun being in the middle of a whirlwind of our own creation.
The morning of the promo Pat and I were so psyched we got to the station at six am. We were the unofficial cheerleaders for the event. When we got there, there wasn’t much to do but wait for the balloon and Jennifer Beal to arrive, so we just wandered department to department giggling and sipping coffee.
When Kurt got to the station around eight, he noticed right away that Jennifer Beal wasn’t there, and he started to worry. We assured him she’d be there. But by 8:15, when she still wasn’t there, I started to worry. At 8:45, Pat started to worry. She called everyone we could think of who might know something. She even called Jennifer Beal’s mother, who didn’t know anything, but was glad to hear from Pat anyway. Still no Jennifer Beal.
Meanwhile, Kurt was making calls of his own-to his buddy’s rental company. The balloon his buddy’s rental company sent over was not what Kurt or the rest of the station expected. When Pat and I first saw it we both screamed, and ran around the station looking for him. The balloon was in the shape of a giant green dinosaur. It had large black eyes with no pupils, and a huge mouth with a long red floppy tongue that whipped back and forth in the breeze. By the time we found Kurt, we’d also found out no one was coming to fly the thing.
It was interesting to see how Pat and Kurt reacted to these setbacks. Pat announced to the skeleton crew at the station that Jennifer Beal was not coming, murmured something about a mix-up, and ignored the grumbling; Kurt on the other hand went into psychological fetal position and groveled for forgiveness.
At this point the whole promotion had fallen apart. The only logical thing to do was cancel and reschedule when all systems were go. But Pat and I and were in our whirlwind and geared up for action.
“Kurt you and I can go up.” Pat said. “You can fly thing that balloon. You’re a smart guy. You went to Yale. So it looks like a dinosaur. So what?! I can dress like Carol Burnett when she does her Tarzan yell, and do my imitation. You know I’m good at it. It’s part of my act at Laugh Till it Hurts!”
The three of us stood on the back steps of the station watching the dinosaur sway in the wind. Kurt put his head in his hands, “I’m sorry Pat I don’t think that will work. What am I supposed to do up there? Interview you?”
“No! You can get into a costume too!” I shouted, in what I hoped sounded like a burst of inspiration.
At this point I had to feel sorry for Kurt. He was always eager to please and because of the dinosaur delivery we knew he was vulnerable. He didn’t have a chance.
We decided he’d dress up as Mr. T. because the A-Team was hot now. And Mr. T. had a good tag line. “I pity the fool!”
Kurt went into the men’s room and returned 15 minutes later with his curly hair Vaselined flat except for a hunk in the middle of his head that resembled a Mohawk in a dim light and from a distance. He’d also took off his shirt and put on a bunch of Mardi Gras beads that had been laying around the station since March when Greg went to New Orleans on vacation.
“Well!” Pat gushed. And gave a great Tarzan yell. “Let’s give away some coins!”
It was a beautiful clear day and the dinosaur went up without a hitch. Leo, the WEWO announcer on the ground who’d been covering Saturday mornings and late Sunday nights at WEWO for close to 15 year, through three different format changes, started the on-air play-by-play, explaining that Jane and Mr. T were riding in the WEMO hot air balloon today instead of Jennifer Beal and Kurt Strong for reasons that were left unstated.
At first Pat and I had a lot of faith in Kurt’s ability to fly the balloon. We truly believed he would be able to host the remote while steering the hot air dinosaur without breaking a sweat, but by the first cut-in it was clear that Kurt, Yale grad or not, was sweating. Not only were Kurt and Pat not getting into their new roles, and playing off one another like we’d hoped, it sounded like they were having a hard time keeping in an upright position and anywhere near the microphone.
None of the three of us knew that one ever really steers a hot air balloon, or that the most any person can do is heat or cool the air inside it and hope to catch a breeze going in the right direction. If we’d known that maybe we would have built a few contingencies in to the flight plan.
After the second cut-in with Leo, when a very scared sounding Kurt told the listening audience he was over a river but he didn’t know which one, and Pat’s attempt at a Tarzan yell sounded like a sick calf, Leo demanded someone get in a car and try to follow the balloon so we’d at least have a general idea where it was heading.
It was decided by the crew at the station that I should be the one to try to follow the balloon because I was one of the few people at the station that morning with a car, and I was a buddy of Pat’s and guilty by association.
I shouldn’t have been the one chosen to chase the dinosaur. My fear of getting lost or stuck on the wrong side of a bridge or tunnel should have been enough to disqualify me, but I was caught up in the moment, so I ran to the parking garage.
To make sure I had a clear field of vision, I put on sunglasses, stuffed my hair under a ball cap and gave the car’s windshield a once over. But all that wasn’t really necessary, because by now it was very hard to miss our dinosaur hovering not more than 100 feet above Pittsburgh.
By the time I got my car pointed in the same general direction as the dinosaur, people had started to call the station to ask about the big green creature hanging over the city. At first Leo thought that was great and took the questions on-air because it filled time and made additional cut-ins with Kurt and Pat unnecessary. But then the calls started sounding more and more concerned and there was even one call with kids crying in the background, so Leo thought it best to keep the rest of the calls off the air.
I could see the dinosaur skirting the golden triangle, moving in the opposite direction of the produce district. It was not so much sailing through the air as meandering around up there. The whole operation looked shaky. I wouldn’t have wanted to be in that basket hanging from his belly. It was obvious to me that shortly this flight was coming to an end.
After a frustrating 15 minutes of near collisions and dead ends, I ditched my car and went after the balloon on foot. I spent the next 10 minutes running as the crow flies; as much as anyone can in a city, through department stores, kitty corner across a parking lot, and through a small children’s playground next to an apartment building. I reminded myself there’s no law against running the wrong way on one-way streets.
At the intersection of Kaufmanns Department Store and Three Gate Way Center, I watched as the dinosaur caught a good gust of wind, and swooped over at least one block of buildings. It drifted out of my sight and took its time sinking on the horizon. I held my breath and prayed it would come down on clear solid ground.
I caught up with it on a lawn behind a building that might have been a museum. On its descent it knocked over a dozen or so round banquet tables that had been covered in thick white linen. One of the table cloths was now draped the dinosaur’s deflating snout and I couldn’t help but notice the remains of what looked like a tasty brunch scattered in the grass.
As I got closer, I could see a bunch of older distinguished looking men and women dressed for cocktails at the Hamptons coming out from behind the hedges to reclaim their lawn after it was obvious the balloon was harmless and rapidly deflating.
Kurt and Pat were just creeping out from under the basket. Kurt was apologizing to anyone everyone within the sound of his voice, and Pat was laughing and calling for help to get clear of the tangled lines that ran from the basket to the dinosaur, so I guessed they were OK.
Then it was a race to see who’d get to Pat and Kurt first, one of these people who were in attendance at what must have been a lawn party, or me.
A very trim, exercised, sixtyish female with pale skin, and salt and pepper hair beat me to them by a good fifteen seconds, and she was bearing gifts.
“Here! Take these!!” she handed champagne flutes to Kurt and Pat, or Mr. T and Jane depending on how you looked at it. They gulped down the champagne and held their glasses out for refills.
”Are you part of the fundraiser? What fun! Which committee hired you?”
Pat and Kurt were too busy checking their arms and legs to see if they were still intact to answer. So she refilled their glasses and continued. Pointing to Pat, she said “You’re…you’re…” she paused to think. “You’re Jane. Right?” Pat let out a Tarzan yell and explained she was channeling Carol Burnett’s Jane doing a Tarzan yell. To my surprise, that seemed to make sense to the woman.
She then turned to Kurt, “And you’re…Tarzan?”
“No!” a gentleman, also sixtyish, wearing seersucker pants and a bowtie ran up to join us. “He’s not Tarzan! He’s Mr. T! I Pity the fool! Right? Am I right?”
“Right.” Kurt admitted and sat down on the grass with his head down, but with his glass held out for a third refill.
By then I’d caught my breathe enough to ask the woman if she might have enough champagne for me too. When she returned, they both wanted to know who we were and again asked who hired us.
Since I was the most formally dressed of the three of us in a ball cap, sunglasses and acid washed jeans, I made the introductions, adding we were from WEWO and that our dinosaur/flash dance/ silver coin promotion had hit a snag, and we weren’t part of their entertainment. I was prepared to offer a much lengthier explanation as to why we had crashed landed in the middle of their party but it wasn’t necessary because as is often the case, they were more interested in telling us about themselves and what was going on there that day than hearing any more about us.
The woman introduced herself. “I’m Lillian.” She extended her hand to each of us. When none of the three of us lit up with recognition, she added, “Lillian Morris, and this is my husband Robert.”
We all murmured nice to meet you.
“I hope you know you’ve landed at the Pittsburgh Public Radio spring fundraiser.” Lillian whispered, “We have a very large goal this year, but Robert and I have been fortunate enough to line up some very generous matching funds.”
“Great, wonderful, good for you.” Pat and Kurt muttered, while I asked myself what matching funds were. “Perhaps you’d like to contribute?” Lillian asked. After five awkward seconds of silence she asked, “Are you at least listeners?”
Kurt told her he was, and that he was even a dollar-a-day member. Pat lied and said she was too, but I knew she wasn’t, she listened to old comedy tapes in the car and didn’t have a dollar-a-day for anybody. I admitted I wasn’t a listener, but I promised I’d start. It took another ten years, but it was eventually the truth.
“Robert! Guess What? Two of them are listeners,” she pointed to Kurt and Pat, “and dollar-a-day contributors!”
That pleased Robert no end. “Let’s all sit down and talk about this dinosaur promotion. Tell us how it is you attract listeners to your station. We use pledge drives. Have you heard?”
“You go on.” I said to Kurt and Pat, “I’ll head back to the station.” I made excuses to Lillian and Robert about having to deal with the deflated dinosaur that very minute and hurried to the sidewalk. I would have liked to have stayed a while longer, I would have really liked to get to know Lillian and Robert and the entire group of people there that day, but I starting to get that edgy, stretchy, out of my element feeling I hated, so I left.
For a while everything went back to what Pat and I considered normal. We still hung out together, ginning up excitement and drama where none existed, and even occasionally selling some advertising. Kurt kept at his morning gig, still aiming to please.
A few people mentioned how lucky we were that there weren’t any serious repercussions from what Pat and I came to consider “our promotion”. There were a few complaints about the lack of silver coins on the ground and no celebrity interview, but that all got quieted down with free albums, and concert tickets and no one mentioned the balloon promotion again.
Except for Pat and Kurt. After their chat with Robert and Lillian that morning at the crash site, both of them started to move in their crowd.
Kurt made enough contacts to wrangle a gig in public radio. Eventually he moved on to the Washington, D.C. bureau. His ratings were good, and his family was very happy.
Pat began providing entertainment for charity events attended by local TV personalities and various Pittsburgh movers and shakers. A year or so later she left Pittsburgh for L.A. to make a sit-com pilot. She played the funny friend. The show was picked up by one of the new emerging networks and lasted for two seasons.
Woody Allen’s been quoted as saying half of life is showing up. After I saw how life changed for those two after they crashed landed at a party and decided to stay a while, I came to believe the other half, the more important half, is hanging around.
Maybe if I’d stayed later that day and connected with Lillian and Robert, I’d have met someone who could have introduced me to be the world of NPR and professional fundraising. Maybe I’d have volunteered at a gala and met other people who could have influenced my life. But I couldn’t stay in a place so far out of my comfort zone, even for an afternoon.
Pat may have been single-minded to a fault, and Kurt’s eagerness to please may have been to his own detriment, but both understood that if fate is to be allowed to intervene, you’ve got to take a risk, and hang around long enough, even in places that are a stretch, for it to find you.
There was a format change at WEWO only a few months after the dinosaur promotion. Album oriented rock stations were dying, and WEWO went “Lite”. But I wasn’t around long enough to see who made it through the format change. My husband decided to move again; this time to Miami. I like to tell myself if Miami hadn’t sounded like such a glamorous place to live, I would have stayed behind. But the security I found in comfort zones not only kept me from experiencing new things and meeting new people, it kept me experiencing the same things over and over again with the same person. So in this case, I hung around a while longer.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Sunday, July 11, 2010
"Big Time Radio"
“Hey! I was looking for you.” Joe jumped up and brushed past the other salesmen’s desks to meet me at the front of the bull pen. He handed me a pink While You Were Out slip. Joe and I went back a few years as salesmen (the term salesperson wasn’t in use in 1983) at WWVA-Radio in Wheeling, WV.
“It’s an out of state area code, so I thought you might want to call back right away.” Joe watched my face for any sign of recognition, eager to see if I had any information to share. He returned to his desk disappointed.
It’s true I didn’t recognize the number, but I knew the area code meant Pittsburgh, and any number that ended in three zeros must be important, so I made an excuse to leave the bull pen, and head for the payphone in the back of the lingerie department of Stone and Thomas.
“Good Morning, KDKA-Radio, how may I connect your call?”
If country music giant WWVA-AM was the 50,000 watt voice of the Ohio Valley, the coal miners and the steelworkers, KDKA-AM was the 50,000 watt news and talk king of the neighboring tri-state region. It was also the voice of the Steelers, the Pirates, and the Penguins. KDKA was big time radio.
The number I dialed was picked up on the third ring, which I felt lent a very professional air to the call, and made me think of Loretta, our receptionist at WWVA, who answered our phone whenever she got around to it. Loretta was hired to work the front desk even though her husband was the sales manager for a competing station, because she had a great first name, like Loretta Lynn, and she was a greater fan of WWVA than her husband’s radio station. But she still wasn’t fast at answering the phone.
“May I speak to Gene Burrows please? I’m a sales rep at WWVA-Radio in Wheeling returning his call.”
I was on hold just a few seconds.
“Well hello! This is Gene Burrows, sales manager here at KDKA. We’ve been hearing some interesting things about you up here. I wonder if you’d like to interview for a position with us?”
I was excited to hear that Gene sounded black. I figured if a black man could be a sales manager up there in Pittsburgh, maybe a woman could be too. In preparation for the interview, I went to Sears and bought a grey suit, with an aqua pinstripe and a fake hanky in the breast pocket. It took me almost a week to find a blouse to match the pinstripe exactly.
My appointment was scheduled for the third floor conference room of the KDKA-TV/Radio offices in Three Gateway Center. This was the age of one of Pittsburgh’s first Renascence. There have been several since, but the one in the early 80s really took. There were new parking garages and downtown malls and lots of new ways to get turned around.
The day of the interview I was greeted as I came out of the elevator. Gene nearly shouted, “How ya doin’? Find your way all the way up here to Pittsburgh okay?” He was handsome and well dressed and seemed extremely at home in this big building. “And I see you bought a new suit for the occasion. Nice stuff!”
Gene walked me to a glass walled conference room with a long shiny table that could seat at least 16 people.
“Is anyone else joining us?” I asked while looking at all the chairs and deciding where to sit.
“No just us for now. Roxanne, our station manager may join us after we talk a bit.”
I took the chair at the head of the table and twirled around on it a bit. “Nice chairs!” I took a 360 degree twirl. “Do they all go around like this?”
Gene laughed. “They sure do.”
“Neat.” I took a minute to look out over the central area of the KDKA sales offices. There were a lot of young, good looking people walking around. They all looked like they had someplace important to go and were in a hurry to get there. A few stopped to glance in at Gene and me. “Who are all those people?” I asked.
“They’re secretaries, traffic coordinators, copy writers, producers...” He jumped up from his seat and tapped on the glass. “Hi Brad!” He pointed and waved at a handsome man in his late twenties dressed in a blue pinstripe shirt with a white collar. “That’s one of our salesmen over there. He’s doing a great job for us.”
I wanted to say, Well, I do a great job too. I’m the number one sales rep at WWVA. But since that wasn’t appropriate at the time, I waited for Gene to continue.
“We think you can do a great job too.” He said as he sat down.
Now we were back in track. “I know I can.” I said. “My specialty is opening new business.”
Gene nodded. “So I’ve heard. I know you took a few sales from us where our coverage overlaps in Washington, PA. The Taco Bell franchise was one. We’re hoping you can do that sort of thing for us.”
I nodded proudly, and looked out again over the offices. This place was nothing like the bull-pen back at WWVA. Everyone looked smart and sure of themselves. Everyone seemed to be on a mission. In Wheeling, the highlight of the day was lunch, when we decided whether to go to Rax or the diner near Ron Small’s Mobile Homes. Here, excitement seemed to self-generate. I felt energy here and I liked it.
At that moment I decided to say whatever I had to say to get this job. Long commute from Wheeling? No problem. No base of accounts to work on? No problem. The job was based mostly on commission? No problem.
After about an hour and a half of saying what I thought Gene wanted to hear, he called in Roxanne, who also complimented me on my suit, and offered me the job.
My only regret about leaving WWVA was that I knew I’d miss one of the other salesmen, Doug. I’d developed a serious crush on him that I felt guilty about since we were both married. I never acknowledged my crush, but I think he knew. And I always hoped he felt the same. Still neither of us ever crossed any lines. Doug never betrayed his wife Helen in the slightest, and that endeared him to me even more.
The guys back at the bull pen were shocked when they heard of my leaving, since no one left WWVA under their own power. That shock quickly morphed into a dogfight for my accounts, with Doug getting Ron Small Mobile Homes. This was only fair considering Doug was the one who got Ron to pay the bill for the remote I sold him. After that experience, I got cash in advance 90% of the time, and that was enough to make me a hero to station management.
I realized right away the atmosphere at KDKA was far different than anything I’d experienced. The sales people went out for cocktails, not beers, and the women dressed in complete coordinated outfits from big name department stores like Joseph Horne’s and Kaufman’s. Many of them were from other cities, like New York, Philadelphia and Boston. Hardly anyone was home grown.
My job was to “develop and expand” the base of accounts at KDKA. Normally that would mean convincing newspaper advertisers to spend their money with us instead of on print media. But in this case it mostly meant grabbing a share of the revenue generated by the salesmen at the competing FM stations.
FM stations were growing in number and in attractiveness to advertisers. Listeners were younger and the number of commercials sold was limited to eight minutes an hour. In contrast, the FCC allowed AM stations to run 18 minutes of ads an hour, and KDKA always ran the maximum. So besides spending time over the next few weeks practicing my phone pitch and learning about the station’s ratings, I spent hours learning how to combat this growing threat.
I was taught to tell clients if they advertised on an FM station, because the frequency was “line of sight”, their commercials would crash to the ground as soon as the radio signal hit a building. Then I was to assure them that if they bought ads on our AM station, their commercials would bounce mountain to mountain and would end up in Canada on a clear night. This would have been great if any of the businesses I called on had branches in Ottawa, but since none did, I didn’t have a lot of faith in this strategy.
And if I needed a clincher, I was to tell customers that in times of natural disaster, listeners turned to AM stations like ours for news and information. But since I couldn’t always count on a hurricane or tornado to make my quota, this angle never looked too promising either. In short, this was going to be a tough gig, and as always in sales, the clock was ticking.
Gene created an office for me in a little room with one small window near the ceiling, at the end of a brightly lit hall. The office was also used to store old advertising copy, and miscellaneous station give-aways. Brad and Laura, two of the more successful and established sales reps, shared an office “suite” across from me. Brad was from New York City, owned his own tuxedo, and got manicures. Laura was from Boston, and carried a designer handbag she bought at Saks. She spent quite a bit of time on the station’s watts line talking with her former sorority sisters who were located around the country. Both of them had desks big enough to pull chairs up to for visitors.
A lot of Brad’s and Laura’s sales calls were made to ad agencies right in the same building, which meant they could go on appointments in the winter, even if it was snowing outside without putting on a coat, much less several layers. Rumor had it that bigger things were in store for both of them.
Both of them stopped regularly in my office before or after calls to ask me how I was doing and just to hang out. Brad loved to hear about life in Wheeling and was fascinated with my apparent fear of getting stuck on the wrong end of a bridge or tunnel. Laura liked to talk about make-up and hair, and asked me several times where I had my hair permed.
Gene got into the habit of visiting me in my office every morning about nine o’clock. He’d walk in, look around the room like he was seeing it for the first time, and ask, “What’s new?”
Of course I took that to mean did you sell anything. It wasn’t very long before I started to dread this simple morning greeting because I had nothing concrete to offer up in return. I didn’t even have a nibble to report.
The same day Roxanne, the station manager, a very tall, very thin, Smith graduate with a perfectly cut blonde bob who pronounced negotiate, “ne-go-see-ate” with a long e, instead of “ne-go-she-ate” like most people, stopped in to ask me what was new, I took out the list of WWVA clients I had stuck in the back of my notebook for good luck, and found a map of the tri-state region.
The tri-state region ran east approximately to Altoona, Pa, south to Morgantown, West Virginia, north to Youngstown, Ohio and east to Zanesville, Ohio, home of the first Taco Bell in the region, and a must stop destination for Doug and I whenever we were in town to make a call or collect money from a delinquent advertiser. Doug always brought home a couple of tacos for Mary from those trips, which I saw as tremendously gallant.
WWVA and KDKA are both smack in the middle of the Valley, about 50 miles apart, with a definite overlap in coverage area. I looked at my desk calendar for a moment, noted the upcoming Fourth of July weekend, and knew where I could go to sell something.
I drove south on I-79, on the alert for any new or temporary signs near the highway or just off the exits. A small flat bed truck with an uncovered load of brightly colored cartons, signaling to make an exit, looked interesting. On a hunch, I followed it off the exit, parked on the shoulder, and watched as the flatbed followed a fresh set of tire tracks over the grass toward a big white tent with a couple of banquet tables placed out front. The driver got out and stapled a huge sign on what looked like a sawed off telephone pole stuck in the ground. The sign read: “Big Bang Fire Works! If It Explodes, and It’s Legal Anywhere, We Got it! Best Prices in the Tri-State!”
It would have been a very bad move to invade this guy’s territory without warning. Big Bang was what Doug and I called “shaky”, as in shaky shacks, our name for mobile homes, among other things. We used to drive down the highway and point at one business or another and pronounce it shaky based on its looks, or its history with the station, or just an instinct we had. Lots of things can be shaky. People, accounts, even situations, for that matter, can be shaky, and can fall apart at the slightest provocation. So I waved my arms and shouted from the shoulder of the road.
“Hey Dave! It’s me.” I walked slowly across the grass. Fortunately his name had come to me at the last second. “The sales lady from WWVA! Remember me from last year?” He put down his staple gun.
“Yeah! I remember you! You’re from W-W-V-A Radio.” He did a fairly good imitation of my phone sales voice. “And you want to sell me advertising! You want my money! You want my wallet!” He ran on like that for a while.
“I’m with KDKA now.”
A look that was wary, but maybe a little impressed, crossed his face.
“So no more free Saturday night Jamboree tickets.”
“No, afraid not, but I have something even better for you. New customers.” I pulled out my KDKA coverage map. “You can cover Wheeling, Steubenville, Weirton, and Pittsburgh with KDKA.”
“Maybe I want to try an FM station this summer, get a new younger, partyin’ crowd that likes to shoot it up big for the fourth.”
I let Dave bust me a little before I went on.
“Yeah, right, your ad will run all the way from the FM station’s tower to the first hill and splash! Into the ground! Look at the coverage I can give you! And on the Fourth of July, where else are you going to advertise?! KDKA was the first commercially licensed station in the United States, and it’s the only station with call letters that start with K east of the Mississippi!”
I don’t know what that had to do with anything, but it seemed to work. Dave was so sold on KDKA he gave me a bunch of firework samples to bring back to the station for the on air talent to play with. Dave didn’t know that while advertisers always want the announcers to try their product, the truth is, most samples end up in the sales department.
Since I wasn’t the only one in this conversation who knew Dave was shaky on payment, Dave walked back to the canvas tent, and returned with a cloth bag and a Redwing shoe box. He shoveled handfuls of fives, tens, and twenties out of the sack and into the box. Then he shook it a little to spread out the bills. “I bet that‘s fifteen hundred dollars.”
“And I bet you’re right!” I said, and added that the ability to estimate things was a sign of superior intelligence. “But we have to be sure. Pittsburgh accountants, you know.”
So we counted out the bills together, and I threw the shoebox and the samples in the back seat of my car, into the empty laundry basket I used for occasional dry cleaning runs. It was late and I wanted to get back to the station.
All the salesmen reported in at the end of the day to book their orders because of the 18 minute commercial limit. No one could risk getting shut out, and we were coming up on the busy Fourth of July weekend. It was first come, first served, which led to some pretty crazy races to the traffic desk and more than a few nasty blow ups. I hustled up I-79 in order to get to the station in time to strut around a bit before the race was on.
As I drove up to the station, Roxanne and Gene waved me down. I’d completely forgotten that we were supposed to make calls together that afternoon. Gene stuck his head in my window, “We knew you wouldn’t forget. What appointments do you have set for us? ”
Roxanne got in the front seat, Gene climbed in the back beside the laundry basket.
Before I could answer Gene asked, “What do you have here? Dynamite?”
Gene had a real nervous laugh. So did Roxanne.
“And in the shoebox, is this your money? I see a little grass in there too.” Another giggle. Roxanne turned to look, twisting her neck at an unnatural angle.
“No and no. It’s a surprise.” I told them. “You’ll see.”
We got back to the station at about a quarter to five, and I followed the two of them up to the offices happily carrying my basket. After a quick stop at my desk, I grabbed a few of the firework samples and hurried to the ladies room where I prepared to take advantage of what I felt was a unique opportunity to impress my fellow salespeople and sales management.
My sense of showmanship told me that before I could regale my audience with the tale of how I snatched a sale from the jaws of the FM enemy, I first had to get everyone’s attention. So when I hip checked the glass door to the sales department, I was all smiles and both hands were blazing.
At first there was just silence. It even got quiet around the traffic desk. I could hear Brad on the phone, reading a 30 second spot to his big account- a local chain of tire stores. He trailed off at about 20 seconds. I figured –they’re all mesmerized. So I reached in my jacket pocket and snagged a long roll of Chinese firecrackers with my pinky. I lit them with the sparkler in the other hand.
The secretary closest to me screamed first, followed by the girl at the traffic desk. Laura grabbed her purse and hid under her desk, pulling the phone down with her. Gene and Roxanne both ran out of their offices into the hall. The janitor pushed through the double doors with a stack chair over his head, ready to swing. He was a brave guy I guess, looking back at it.
At first, I tried to stomp out the firecrackers. When that didn’t work, I ran past the traffic desk to get the jug off the water cooler, but one of the other salesman stepped in first and extinguished the mess with a 7-11 big gulp of coke.
Shortly after that I heard a siren in the distance. Then I heard Brad and Laura and the rest of them laughing.
Roxanne called me back into her office the next day. Gene was there too.
“You understand, I’m sure, after yesterday’s visit from the fire department, we are not going to accept this order from your fireworks person- Big Bang Fireworks.”
“Why not?” Admittedly, things hadn’t turned out as I’d hoped yesterday, but this development still shocked me. “I got cash in advance! And now Big Bang will advertise on an FM station!”
“Be that as it may, there are many laws surrounding the sale of fireworks in the tri-state region. Group W, a Westinghouse Corporation, and owner of KDKA, does not want to incur any unnecessary litigation should there be an incident.”
“But can’t we have a disclaimer or something… we ran his spots at WWVA.”
“This is not WWVA, and I am not here to ne-go-see-ate with you.” Her blond hair quivered and bobbed. “Return the money with our regrets. And bring him a KDKA mug.”
I looked over at Gene. He looked at the crease in his pants. He told me he had to agree with Roxanne. No sale. Then he looked up and smiled, and asked me how I ever found this guy. I refused to smile back, and I certainly refused to tell him my trade secrets.
After the meeting I was even more resolved to make it at KDKA. I wanted to be invited for cocktails with Brad and Laura and the rest of the sales staff. I wanted to shop at Loehmans with Roz Goldstein, or be asked a glamorous question like could a person travel around Europe (Europe!) without knowing a second language. I wanted to be a person marked for bigger things.
So I kept at it. I’d learned in life so far, that if I wanted something, I only had to work hard, laser my energy, and apply my ability to think on my feet. I put it in overdrive and I made a few sales. There wasn’t a lot of long term business developing, not a lot of repeat business, but I always got cash in advance. And none of businesses I sold ever bought ads on FM stations.
After a few months, I was called into Roxanne’s office again.
Once again Roxanne was behind her desk and Gene was playing lieutenant.
Roxanne started the conversation. “You’re one of the best, most talented reps we’ve seen here. No one in this room is saying you can’t sell. In fact we wanted to ride with you that day to see what it is you say to close these deals.”
Gene jumped in, “We thought after we turned down the fireworks order, you would have understood…”
He trailed off and waited for me to finish his thought, but I just sat there, and refused to help him out.
So he continued, “…we thought you understood. Our goal is to develop long term, solid business here. We want accounts that can grow with us, that have potential to be with us long term. These accounts you’ve brought us, they...” again he trailed.
“They all paid cash in advance is what they did …I never added a penny to the receivable problem you guys have.” I made the deadly pronoun switch from “we have” to “you have.”
Roxanne responded, ”Yes, cash is necessary at times for certain advertisers, like concert promoters, but the need to get cash in every case means we are dealing exclusively with bad credit risks. That’s not the portfolio of accounts we care to accumulate. Besides, half the sales you bring in here can’t be broadcast.
“But, but, but……” I actually stuttered. Roxanne put up her hand.
“Let me finish. This is a very high profile radio station and we all have very important jobs here. KDKA doesn’t advertise hair restorers. We don’t make outlandish promises on products that are not FDA approved. We don’t advertise DSMO for pain. My understanding is that DMSO, whatever that stands for, may be approved for use as horse liniment, but that’s all.”
“Well, I had two real testimonials, from grandmothers. And I know they were considering buying an FM station before I sold them.” I could literally feel my hair stand on end. “You said you wanted new accounts! All the big accounts are taken!"
Gene went on, “That professor who advertised with us for test subjects. His ad said he wanted healthy men and women between the ages of twenty two and thirty for an experiment at his university and he would pay them five hundred dollars each. He got a lot of responses, but we handled the fall out when the university found out he was conducting some sort of sex study, off campus, unsanctioned and without their knowledge.
“He was basically a voyeur for God’s sake.” Roxanne added, taking in deep breathes. She was way ahead of the curve and already into yoga. “When you took his money after his own campus radio station turned him down, didn’t that tell you something?”
“It told me I was scoring one for the AM side!” Now I was past ruffled, and onto wise cracks.
Roxanne ignored this. “Frankly, the most solid account you’ve brought us is the Starving Artist’s Group, and they only come to the Ramada once a year.”
From wisecracks I went to sarcasm. “Hey what about the gold buyers? Sometimes they stay in town for two weeks. And the Starving Artists come twice a year.”
“Still, you can’t build an advertiser portfolio based on the price of gold, or art sold by the yard. Needless to say, we have to wonder here at KDKA, if we have a match.”
I could have gotten mad. That would have been all right, natural enough. I could have cried, and been disappointed, again that would have been all right. But what I got was worse. I got humiliated.
That’s the worst response I could have had, because that kind of naked embarrassment makes a person want to fight and cry at the same time. It makes people want to hide away and beat up on themselves, but only after they’ve taken their anger and frustration out on the people who’ve made them fall so completely, so miserably, out of love with themselves.
Comments made to me over the past several months raced through my mind. Glen, congratulating me on my new suit. Roxanne laughing, and telling me I’d lived in Wheeling too long after I mistook a book case for a gun cabinet. Laura commenting on my perm for the twentieth time; with Roz following up, asking me if I wanted her to recommend a new hairstylist. Brad telling me to call the things that hold up men’s pants braces, not suspenders, and informing me that not only movie stars owned tuxedos.
I got up from my seat, walked silently to my office at the end of the hall, and sat on the edge of my chair. The view from the little window held me transfixed for at least fifteen minutes, and would have for a while longer, if I hadn’t noticed Brad and Laura hovering in the doorway. The realization that these two may have known what had gone on in my meeting was beyond contemplation, but definitely not beyond addressing.
“What do you two want!?”
Laura jumped a good foot. “Nothing!”
Brad tried a smile. “We just wanted to know if you’re all right.”
I stood up and grabbed a bunch of files, piling them in the center of my desk.
“All right? Am I all right? I’m all right. Are you all right?”
While Brad and Laura backed out of my doorway into their offices, I gathered as many files as I could in both arms, and grabbed my WWVA tote bag from under the desk. “Cause I’m all right. I’ve never been better!”
I remember shouting to no one in particular as the elevator doors shut, “I listen to FM radio as a matter of fact! Cause there aren’t so many damn commercials!!!!” and leaving a trail of manila folders from my desk to the main entrance of Three Gateway Plaza.
After I spent 15 minutes wandering in a daze looking for my car, I finally found it in an alley, and dumped everything in the back seat. Then I got lost and turned around a few times on one-way streets, searching for a sign pointing to I-79 South. Eventually I found my way to the mall in Wheeling which felt like a safe place to pace and disappear inside myself. I ended up at my favorite payphone which was in the narrow corridor closest to Sears, next to the water fountain and the ladies room.
“Hi Doug! How are ya ?"
“Ms. KDKA! What are you doin’ callin’ us good ole boys down here in Wheeling? I thought you were gettin’ too big time for us down here?” Doug sounded genuinely surprised to hear from me, but also genuinely pleased. “How’s everything goin’ up there in Pittsburgh, at K-D-K-A?” Doug strung the letters out slowly.
“Pretty good, I guess.”
“Just pretty good?”
“Well, pretty good, but, shaky.”
“Shaky?” He repeated. He spoke slowly. “Shaky people? Situations? Customers?”
“Everything. All three.”
“Well,” Doug said, “That’s pretty shaky alright.” There was silence on the line for a few seconds. “Hey, did you eat yet? There’s a special out at the diner. I can round up the other salesmen, and maybe after lunch, we can all stop in at Ron Small’s Mobile Homes. We can rattle his cage, get a payment from him. We can always use your expertise in these sorts of situations.”
“Anything I can do to help.” I said and I meant it. “Glad to be of use.”
“It’s an out of state area code, so I thought you might want to call back right away.” Joe watched my face for any sign of recognition, eager to see if I had any information to share. He returned to his desk disappointed.
It’s true I didn’t recognize the number, but I knew the area code meant Pittsburgh, and any number that ended in three zeros must be important, so I made an excuse to leave the bull pen, and head for the payphone in the back of the lingerie department of Stone and Thomas.
“Good Morning, KDKA-Radio, how may I connect your call?”
If country music giant WWVA-AM was the 50,000 watt voice of the Ohio Valley, the coal miners and the steelworkers, KDKA-AM was the 50,000 watt news and talk king of the neighboring tri-state region. It was also the voice of the Steelers, the Pirates, and the Penguins. KDKA was big time radio.
The number I dialed was picked up on the third ring, which I felt lent a very professional air to the call, and made me think of Loretta, our receptionist at WWVA, who answered our phone whenever she got around to it. Loretta was hired to work the front desk even though her husband was the sales manager for a competing station, because she had a great first name, like Loretta Lynn, and she was a greater fan of WWVA than her husband’s radio station. But she still wasn’t fast at answering the phone.
“May I speak to Gene Burrows please? I’m a sales rep at WWVA-Radio in Wheeling returning his call.”
I was on hold just a few seconds.
“Well hello! This is Gene Burrows, sales manager here at KDKA. We’ve been hearing some interesting things about you up here. I wonder if you’d like to interview for a position with us?”
I was excited to hear that Gene sounded black. I figured if a black man could be a sales manager up there in Pittsburgh, maybe a woman could be too. In preparation for the interview, I went to Sears and bought a grey suit, with an aqua pinstripe and a fake hanky in the breast pocket. It took me almost a week to find a blouse to match the pinstripe exactly.
My appointment was scheduled for the third floor conference room of the KDKA-TV/Radio offices in Three Gateway Center. This was the age of one of Pittsburgh’s first Renascence. There have been several since, but the one in the early 80s really took. There were new parking garages and downtown malls and lots of new ways to get turned around.
The day of the interview I was greeted as I came out of the elevator. Gene nearly shouted, “How ya doin’? Find your way all the way up here to Pittsburgh okay?” He was handsome and well dressed and seemed extremely at home in this big building. “And I see you bought a new suit for the occasion. Nice stuff!”
Gene walked me to a glass walled conference room with a long shiny table that could seat at least 16 people.
“Is anyone else joining us?” I asked while looking at all the chairs and deciding where to sit.
“No just us for now. Roxanne, our station manager may join us after we talk a bit.”
I took the chair at the head of the table and twirled around on it a bit. “Nice chairs!” I took a 360 degree twirl. “Do they all go around like this?”
Gene laughed. “They sure do.”
“Neat.” I took a minute to look out over the central area of the KDKA sales offices. There were a lot of young, good looking people walking around. They all looked like they had someplace important to go and were in a hurry to get there. A few stopped to glance in at Gene and me. “Who are all those people?” I asked.
“They’re secretaries, traffic coordinators, copy writers, producers...” He jumped up from his seat and tapped on the glass. “Hi Brad!” He pointed and waved at a handsome man in his late twenties dressed in a blue pinstripe shirt with a white collar. “That’s one of our salesmen over there. He’s doing a great job for us.”
I wanted to say, Well, I do a great job too. I’m the number one sales rep at WWVA. But since that wasn’t appropriate at the time, I waited for Gene to continue.
“We think you can do a great job too.” He said as he sat down.
Now we were back in track. “I know I can.” I said. “My specialty is opening new business.”
Gene nodded. “So I’ve heard. I know you took a few sales from us where our coverage overlaps in Washington, PA. The Taco Bell franchise was one. We’re hoping you can do that sort of thing for us.”
I nodded proudly, and looked out again over the offices. This place was nothing like the bull-pen back at WWVA. Everyone looked smart and sure of themselves. Everyone seemed to be on a mission. In Wheeling, the highlight of the day was lunch, when we decided whether to go to Rax or the diner near Ron Small’s Mobile Homes. Here, excitement seemed to self-generate. I felt energy here and I liked it.
At that moment I decided to say whatever I had to say to get this job. Long commute from Wheeling? No problem. No base of accounts to work on? No problem. The job was based mostly on commission? No problem.
After about an hour and a half of saying what I thought Gene wanted to hear, he called in Roxanne, who also complimented me on my suit, and offered me the job.
My only regret about leaving WWVA was that I knew I’d miss one of the other salesmen, Doug. I’d developed a serious crush on him that I felt guilty about since we were both married. I never acknowledged my crush, but I think he knew. And I always hoped he felt the same. Still neither of us ever crossed any lines. Doug never betrayed his wife Helen in the slightest, and that endeared him to me even more.
The guys back at the bull pen were shocked when they heard of my leaving, since no one left WWVA under their own power. That shock quickly morphed into a dogfight for my accounts, with Doug getting Ron Small Mobile Homes. This was only fair considering Doug was the one who got Ron to pay the bill for the remote I sold him. After that experience, I got cash in advance 90% of the time, and that was enough to make me a hero to station management.
I realized right away the atmosphere at KDKA was far different than anything I’d experienced. The sales people went out for cocktails, not beers, and the women dressed in complete coordinated outfits from big name department stores like Joseph Horne’s and Kaufman’s. Many of them were from other cities, like New York, Philadelphia and Boston. Hardly anyone was home grown.
My job was to “develop and expand” the base of accounts at KDKA. Normally that would mean convincing newspaper advertisers to spend their money with us instead of on print media. But in this case it mostly meant grabbing a share of the revenue generated by the salesmen at the competing FM stations.
FM stations were growing in number and in attractiveness to advertisers. Listeners were younger and the number of commercials sold was limited to eight minutes an hour. In contrast, the FCC allowed AM stations to run 18 minutes of ads an hour, and KDKA always ran the maximum. So besides spending time over the next few weeks practicing my phone pitch and learning about the station’s ratings, I spent hours learning how to combat this growing threat.
I was taught to tell clients if they advertised on an FM station, because the frequency was “line of sight”, their commercials would crash to the ground as soon as the radio signal hit a building. Then I was to assure them that if they bought ads on our AM station, their commercials would bounce mountain to mountain and would end up in Canada on a clear night. This would have been great if any of the businesses I called on had branches in Ottawa, but since none did, I didn’t have a lot of faith in this strategy.
And if I needed a clincher, I was to tell customers that in times of natural disaster, listeners turned to AM stations like ours for news and information. But since I couldn’t always count on a hurricane or tornado to make my quota, this angle never looked too promising either. In short, this was going to be a tough gig, and as always in sales, the clock was ticking.
Gene created an office for me in a little room with one small window near the ceiling, at the end of a brightly lit hall. The office was also used to store old advertising copy, and miscellaneous station give-aways. Brad and Laura, two of the more successful and established sales reps, shared an office “suite” across from me. Brad was from New York City, owned his own tuxedo, and got manicures. Laura was from Boston, and carried a designer handbag she bought at Saks. She spent quite a bit of time on the station’s watts line talking with her former sorority sisters who were located around the country. Both of them had desks big enough to pull chairs up to for visitors.
A lot of Brad’s and Laura’s sales calls were made to ad agencies right in the same building, which meant they could go on appointments in the winter, even if it was snowing outside without putting on a coat, much less several layers. Rumor had it that bigger things were in store for both of them.
Both of them stopped regularly in my office before or after calls to ask me how I was doing and just to hang out. Brad loved to hear about life in Wheeling and was fascinated with my apparent fear of getting stuck on the wrong end of a bridge or tunnel. Laura liked to talk about make-up and hair, and asked me several times where I had my hair permed.
Gene got into the habit of visiting me in my office every morning about nine o’clock. He’d walk in, look around the room like he was seeing it for the first time, and ask, “What’s new?”
Of course I took that to mean did you sell anything. It wasn’t very long before I started to dread this simple morning greeting because I had nothing concrete to offer up in return. I didn’t even have a nibble to report.
The same day Roxanne, the station manager, a very tall, very thin, Smith graduate with a perfectly cut blonde bob who pronounced negotiate, “ne-go-see-ate” with a long e, instead of “ne-go-she-ate” like most people, stopped in to ask me what was new, I took out the list of WWVA clients I had stuck in the back of my notebook for good luck, and found a map of the tri-state region.
The tri-state region ran east approximately to Altoona, Pa, south to Morgantown, West Virginia, north to Youngstown, Ohio and east to Zanesville, Ohio, home of the first Taco Bell in the region, and a must stop destination for Doug and I whenever we were in town to make a call or collect money from a delinquent advertiser. Doug always brought home a couple of tacos for Mary from those trips, which I saw as tremendously gallant.
WWVA and KDKA are both smack in the middle of the Valley, about 50 miles apart, with a definite overlap in coverage area. I looked at my desk calendar for a moment, noted the upcoming Fourth of July weekend, and knew where I could go to sell something.
I drove south on I-79, on the alert for any new or temporary signs near the highway or just off the exits. A small flat bed truck with an uncovered load of brightly colored cartons, signaling to make an exit, looked interesting. On a hunch, I followed it off the exit, parked on the shoulder, and watched as the flatbed followed a fresh set of tire tracks over the grass toward a big white tent with a couple of banquet tables placed out front. The driver got out and stapled a huge sign on what looked like a sawed off telephone pole stuck in the ground. The sign read: “Big Bang Fire Works! If It Explodes, and It’s Legal Anywhere, We Got it! Best Prices in the Tri-State!”
It would have been a very bad move to invade this guy’s territory without warning. Big Bang was what Doug and I called “shaky”, as in shaky shacks, our name for mobile homes, among other things. We used to drive down the highway and point at one business or another and pronounce it shaky based on its looks, or its history with the station, or just an instinct we had. Lots of things can be shaky. People, accounts, even situations, for that matter, can be shaky, and can fall apart at the slightest provocation. So I waved my arms and shouted from the shoulder of the road.
“Hey Dave! It’s me.” I walked slowly across the grass. Fortunately his name had come to me at the last second. “The sales lady from WWVA! Remember me from last year?” He put down his staple gun.
“Yeah! I remember you! You’re from W-W-V-A Radio.” He did a fairly good imitation of my phone sales voice. “And you want to sell me advertising! You want my money! You want my wallet!” He ran on like that for a while.
“I’m with KDKA now.”
A look that was wary, but maybe a little impressed, crossed his face.
“So no more free Saturday night Jamboree tickets.”
“No, afraid not, but I have something even better for you. New customers.” I pulled out my KDKA coverage map. “You can cover Wheeling, Steubenville, Weirton, and Pittsburgh with KDKA.”
“Maybe I want to try an FM station this summer, get a new younger, partyin’ crowd that likes to shoot it up big for the fourth.”
I let Dave bust me a little before I went on.
“Yeah, right, your ad will run all the way from the FM station’s tower to the first hill and splash! Into the ground! Look at the coverage I can give you! And on the Fourth of July, where else are you going to advertise?! KDKA was the first commercially licensed station in the United States, and it’s the only station with call letters that start with K east of the Mississippi!”
I don’t know what that had to do with anything, but it seemed to work. Dave was so sold on KDKA he gave me a bunch of firework samples to bring back to the station for the on air talent to play with. Dave didn’t know that while advertisers always want the announcers to try their product, the truth is, most samples end up in the sales department.
Since I wasn’t the only one in this conversation who knew Dave was shaky on payment, Dave walked back to the canvas tent, and returned with a cloth bag and a Redwing shoe box. He shoveled handfuls of fives, tens, and twenties out of the sack and into the box. Then he shook it a little to spread out the bills. “I bet that‘s fifteen hundred dollars.”
“And I bet you’re right!” I said, and added that the ability to estimate things was a sign of superior intelligence. “But we have to be sure. Pittsburgh accountants, you know.”
So we counted out the bills together, and I threw the shoebox and the samples in the back seat of my car, into the empty laundry basket I used for occasional dry cleaning runs. It was late and I wanted to get back to the station.
All the salesmen reported in at the end of the day to book their orders because of the 18 minute commercial limit. No one could risk getting shut out, and we were coming up on the busy Fourth of July weekend. It was first come, first served, which led to some pretty crazy races to the traffic desk and more than a few nasty blow ups. I hustled up I-79 in order to get to the station in time to strut around a bit before the race was on.
As I drove up to the station, Roxanne and Gene waved me down. I’d completely forgotten that we were supposed to make calls together that afternoon. Gene stuck his head in my window, “We knew you wouldn’t forget. What appointments do you have set for us? ”
Roxanne got in the front seat, Gene climbed in the back beside the laundry basket.
Before I could answer Gene asked, “What do you have here? Dynamite?”
Gene had a real nervous laugh. So did Roxanne.
“And in the shoebox, is this your money? I see a little grass in there too.” Another giggle. Roxanne turned to look, twisting her neck at an unnatural angle.
“No and no. It’s a surprise.” I told them. “You’ll see.”
We got back to the station at about a quarter to five, and I followed the two of them up to the offices happily carrying my basket. After a quick stop at my desk, I grabbed a few of the firework samples and hurried to the ladies room where I prepared to take advantage of what I felt was a unique opportunity to impress my fellow salespeople and sales management.
My sense of showmanship told me that before I could regale my audience with the tale of how I snatched a sale from the jaws of the FM enemy, I first had to get everyone’s attention. So when I hip checked the glass door to the sales department, I was all smiles and both hands were blazing.
At first there was just silence. It even got quiet around the traffic desk. I could hear Brad on the phone, reading a 30 second spot to his big account- a local chain of tire stores. He trailed off at about 20 seconds. I figured –they’re all mesmerized. So I reached in my jacket pocket and snagged a long roll of Chinese firecrackers with my pinky. I lit them with the sparkler in the other hand.
The secretary closest to me screamed first, followed by the girl at the traffic desk. Laura grabbed her purse and hid under her desk, pulling the phone down with her. Gene and Roxanne both ran out of their offices into the hall. The janitor pushed through the double doors with a stack chair over his head, ready to swing. He was a brave guy I guess, looking back at it.
At first, I tried to stomp out the firecrackers. When that didn’t work, I ran past the traffic desk to get the jug off the water cooler, but one of the other salesman stepped in first and extinguished the mess with a 7-11 big gulp of coke.
Shortly after that I heard a siren in the distance. Then I heard Brad and Laura and the rest of them laughing.
Roxanne called me back into her office the next day. Gene was there too.
“You understand, I’m sure, after yesterday’s visit from the fire department, we are not going to accept this order from your fireworks person- Big Bang Fireworks.”
“Why not?” Admittedly, things hadn’t turned out as I’d hoped yesterday, but this development still shocked me. “I got cash in advance! And now Big Bang will advertise on an FM station!”
“Be that as it may, there are many laws surrounding the sale of fireworks in the tri-state region. Group W, a Westinghouse Corporation, and owner of KDKA, does not want to incur any unnecessary litigation should there be an incident.”
“But can’t we have a disclaimer or something… we ran his spots at WWVA.”
“This is not WWVA, and I am not here to ne-go-see-ate with you.” Her blond hair quivered and bobbed. “Return the money with our regrets. And bring him a KDKA mug.”
I looked over at Gene. He looked at the crease in his pants. He told me he had to agree with Roxanne. No sale. Then he looked up and smiled, and asked me how I ever found this guy. I refused to smile back, and I certainly refused to tell him my trade secrets.
After the meeting I was even more resolved to make it at KDKA. I wanted to be invited for cocktails with Brad and Laura and the rest of the sales staff. I wanted to shop at Loehmans with Roz Goldstein, or be asked a glamorous question like could a person travel around Europe (Europe!) without knowing a second language. I wanted to be a person marked for bigger things.
So I kept at it. I’d learned in life so far, that if I wanted something, I only had to work hard, laser my energy, and apply my ability to think on my feet. I put it in overdrive and I made a few sales. There wasn’t a lot of long term business developing, not a lot of repeat business, but I always got cash in advance. And none of businesses I sold ever bought ads on FM stations.
After a few months, I was called into Roxanne’s office again.
Once again Roxanne was behind her desk and Gene was playing lieutenant.
Roxanne started the conversation. “You’re one of the best, most talented reps we’ve seen here. No one in this room is saying you can’t sell. In fact we wanted to ride with you that day to see what it is you say to close these deals.”
Gene jumped in, “We thought after we turned down the fireworks order, you would have understood…”
He trailed off and waited for me to finish his thought, but I just sat there, and refused to help him out.
So he continued, “…we thought you understood. Our goal is to develop long term, solid business here. We want accounts that can grow with us, that have potential to be with us long term. These accounts you’ve brought us, they...” again he trailed.
“They all paid cash in advance is what they did …I never added a penny to the receivable problem you guys have.” I made the deadly pronoun switch from “we have” to “you have.”
Roxanne responded, ”Yes, cash is necessary at times for certain advertisers, like concert promoters, but the need to get cash in every case means we are dealing exclusively with bad credit risks. That’s not the portfolio of accounts we care to accumulate. Besides, half the sales you bring in here can’t be broadcast.
“But, but, but……” I actually stuttered. Roxanne put up her hand.
“Let me finish. This is a very high profile radio station and we all have very important jobs here. KDKA doesn’t advertise hair restorers. We don’t make outlandish promises on products that are not FDA approved. We don’t advertise DSMO for pain. My understanding is that DMSO, whatever that stands for, may be approved for use as horse liniment, but that’s all.”
“Well, I had two real testimonials, from grandmothers. And I know they were considering buying an FM station before I sold them.” I could literally feel my hair stand on end. “You said you wanted new accounts! All the big accounts are taken!"
Gene went on, “That professor who advertised with us for test subjects. His ad said he wanted healthy men and women between the ages of twenty two and thirty for an experiment at his university and he would pay them five hundred dollars each. He got a lot of responses, but we handled the fall out when the university found out he was conducting some sort of sex study, off campus, unsanctioned and without their knowledge.
“He was basically a voyeur for God’s sake.” Roxanne added, taking in deep breathes. She was way ahead of the curve and already into yoga. “When you took his money after his own campus radio station turned him down, didn’t that tell you something?”
“It told me I was scoring one for the AM side!” Now I was past ruffled, and onto wise cracks.
Roxanne ignored this. “Frankly, the most solid account you’ve brought us is the Starving Artist’s Group, and they only come to the Ramada once a year.”
From wisecracks I went to sarcasm. “Hey what about the gold buyers? Sometimes they stay in town for two weeks. And the Starving Artists come twice a year.”
“Still, you can’t build an advertiser portfolio based on the price of gold, or art sold by the yard. Needless to say, we have to wonder here at KDKA, if we have a match.”
I could have gotten mad. That would have been all right, natural enough. I could have cried, and been disappointed, again that would have been all right. But what I got was worse. I got humiliated.
That’s the worst response I could have had, because that kind of naked embarrassment makes a person want to fight and cry at the same time. It makes people want to hide away and beat up on themselves, but only after they’ve taken their anger and frustration out on the people who’ve made them fall so completely, so miserably, out of love with themselves.
Comments made to me over the past several months raced through my mind. Glen, congratulating me on my new suit. Roxanne laughing, and telling me I’d lived in Wheeling too long after I mistook a book case for a gun cabinet. Laura commenting on my perm for the twentieth time; with Roz following up, asking me if I wanted her to recommend a new hairstylist. Brad telling me to call the things that hold up men’s pants braces, not suspenders, and informing me that not only movie stars owned tuxedos.
I got up from my seat, walked silently to my office at the end of the hall, and sat on the edge of my chair. The view from the little window held me transfixed for at least fifteen minutes, and would have for a while longer, if I hadn’t noticed Brad and Laura hovering in the doorway. The realization that these two may have known what had gone on in my meeting was beyond contemplation, but definitely not beyond addressing.
“What do you two want!?”
Laura jumped a good foot. “Nothing!”
Brad tried a smile. “We just wanted to know if you’re all right.”
I stood up and grabbed a bunch of files, piling them in the center of my desk.
“All right? Am I all right? I’m all right. Are you all right?”
While Brad and Laura backed out of my doorway into their offices, I gathered as many files as I could in both arms, and grabbed my WWVA tote bag from under the desk. “Cause I’m all right. I’ve never been better!”
I remember shouting to no one in particular as the elevator doors shut, “I listen to FM radio as a matter of fact! Cause there aren’t so many damn commercials!!!!” and leaving a trail of manila folders from my desk to the main entrance of Three Gateway Plaza.
After I spent 15 minutes wandering in a daze looking for my car, I finally found it in an alley, and dumped everything in the back seat. Then I got lost and turned around a few times on one-way streets, searching for a sign pointing to I-79 South. Eventually I found my way to the mall in Wheeling which felt like a safe place to pace and disappear inside myself. I ended up at my favorite payphone which was in the narrow corridor closest to Sears, next to the water fountain and the ladies room.
“Hi Doug! How are ya ?"
“Ms. KDKA! What are you doin’ callin’ us good ole boys down here in Wheeling? I thought you were gettin’ too big time for us down here?” Doug sounded genuinely surprised to hear from me, but also genuinely pleased. “How’s everything goin’ up there in Pittsburgh, at K-D-K-A?” Doug strung the letters out slowly.
“Pretty good, I guess.”
“Just pretty good?”
“Well, pretty good, but, shaky.”
“Shaky?” He repeated. He spoke slowly. “Shaky people? Situations? Customers?”
“Everything. All three.”
“Well,” Doug said, “That’s pretty shaky alright.” There was silence on the line for a few seconds. “Hey, did you eat yet? There’s a special out at the diner. I can round up the other salesmen, and maybe after lunch, we can all stop in at Ron Small’s Mobile Homes. We can rattle his cage, get a payment from him. We can always use your expertise in these sorts of situations.”
“Anything I can do to help.” I said and I meant it. “Glad to be of use.”
"Jamboree"
Every July since 1977, WWVA –Radio in conjunction with Jamboree USA has broadcast a live country music festival, “Jamboree in the Hills”.
By 1982 when I was working at WWVA-Radio, “Jamboree in the Hills” was acknowledged to be the unofficial “super bowl of country music”, and its popularity was soaring. The attendance that year was in the 60,000 range, and by 2009 attendance had grown to over 100,000. The headliners in 1982 were first rate, Carl Perkins , Jerry Lee Lewis, the Oak Ridge Boys and Loretta Lynn.
Jamboree in the Hills brought celebrities, their entourages, and a lot of excitement to the Ohio Valley all summer long. Every town in and around the northern panhandle of West Virginia geared up, spruced up, and happily cashed in on the event, especially Wheeling. In addition, in 1982 country was very cool nationwide. John Travolta, Debra Winger had recently starred in “Urban Cowboy”. Mechanical bulls were in the every other bar and club. Tony Lama boots were a status symbol. Every singer wanted to record a song that could be considered country crossover. In fact, one of WWVA’s taglines that year was, “We were country before country was cool”. And, the WWVA sales staff was right in the middle of it.
The sales staff got free VIP back stage passes to the event for themselves and their immediate family. In my case that meant two passes. Everyone in West Virginia wanted one of those VIP passes. This pass not only allowed you to hang around the green room with the performers, you also got to eat and drink the same things they did, for free. By 1982 word got around that the WWVA sales staff got these free passes and we were stars ourselves every July. When the guys went to lunch at the diner next to Ron Small’s Mobile Homes they were stared at and whispered about, like the Rat Pack must have been in the 1960’s.
I secretly thought this was silly. As much as I tried, I never liked country music, even crossover, and the idea of listening to country music for a couple of days straight in the July heat didn’t appeal to me, even if I could hang out backstage and eat and drink the same things as Ronnie Millsap. But since it’s almost unpatriotic to admit to you don’t love country music in West Virginia, I tried to keep my lack of enthusiasm to myself.
In the summer of 1982, Joe, one of the salesman who has an unfortunate habit of setting his hair on fire with his cigarette, was at the very bottom of a three year sales slump. He had an target on his back, or he was on the bubble, or his stock was low, all phrases I’ve heard to describe a salesman who’s under scrutiny for underperforming.
Of all the salesman, Joe would take getting fired the hardest. WWVA was his life. He swore if he ever got fired he’d join the service if one of the branches would have him.
Harry didn’t want to fire Joe. Joe and Harry went back a long way and had been known to get a little over exuberant together after a good show at Jamboree USA and a few beers. So when Joe asked him if he could have his tickets early to use as give-aways at a remote broadcast he was trying to sell to Chickies’ Used Kitchen Dinettes, Harry made a very special exception for him and gave him his tickets three weeks ahead of time. All the other sales staff’s tickets stayed locked up in his office, in his desk, as they did every year, until the day before the event.
But somehow Joe’s tickets went missing the day before the remote. The details surrounding their disappearance always remained fuzzy. I heard something about a gambling debt, but more than likely he sold his tickets and gave the money to one of the club acts he booked on a part-time basis, to help them over a rough spot.
When the remote was a few days away, Joe had to face up to the reality of his situation. He simply had no tickets. So he went to Charlie, our senior salesman with his problem. Charlie went to Doug, the sales staff’s acknowledged voice of reason with the problem, and Doug, surprisingly, went to me.
“If we can get our hands on your VIP passes right away, would you give them to Joe to help him out?”
Doug must have had a hunch I wouldn’t be heartbroken if I didn’t make it to Jamboree in the Hills ’82, because normally asking someone to give up back stage passes to this event would be like asking someone to give up a kidney.
“Sure.” I said without hesitation. There was a collective sigh from the rest of the sales staff who were pretending not to listen.
It was decided Doug and I would do the actual taking of the tickets. We all called it “taking”, because no one wanted to say “break into Harry’s office, and his desk, and steal the tickets”. Since we all worked for the station, and went in and out of Harry’s office every day, we really weren’t breaking in. We were just going in his office very quietly after hours. We weren’t stealing the tickets either, because they were going to be mine anyway, eventually. We just wanted them earlier.
The day before Joe’s remote, Doug and I hung around after hours in the announcer’s booth recording and re-recording the one commercial we lent out talent to: Valley Discount Furniture. I was flattered to play the role of Ima Hogg to Doug’s Ura Hog. I believe the point of the spot was that Valley Discount Furniture’s sofas were sturdy enough to hold the whole family Hogg family, Ima, Ura and little Whata Hogg.
After we were sure Harry had left and the place was mostly cleared out, Doug and I went directly to the sales department. The door to the bullpen was left open but Harry’s door was locked.
Doug easily jimmied open Harry’s door with a credit card, “You just know he left his desk unlocked, don’t you? He was in a hurry to meet Lucy at Elby’s Big Boy tonight for strawberry pie.”
Lucy was Harry’s wife, a great looking blonde with a top heavy figure and dainty feet who owned the only Christmas store in town. This made her something of a celebrity, because Wheeling was the kind of town that prepared for Christmas all year long.
Doug was right, Harry’s desk was unlocked. We quickly rifled through papers, folders and half finished crossword puzzles until we found the manila envelope marked VIP PASSES. Just as Doug grabbed the envelope, we heard foorsteps. I choked on my spit and half whispered, “Doug, what’s that?”
“Don’t know. Get behind the door.”
I got behind the door we’d just jimmied open , and pressed myself against the wall.
“Hey, Doug! What are ya- sales manager now?”
It was my old friend, the elevator operator.
It was true that ever since the station held the big meeting about what does and what does not constitute a hostile work environment my old friend had stopped cursing at me whenever I was in earshot. But I could tell every time he looked at me he was swallowing bile.
‘Yeah Carter!” Doug said. “Didn’t ya hear? Lucy’s openin’ a big Christmas store in Pittsburgh and Harry’s moved up there to help get it open.”
I noticed for a country boy, Doug was pretty cool under fire.
Carter grunted. “Yeah, right, Harry’s gonna trail around after a woman… All though I have to admit, that Lucy is…”
While Carter went on about Lucy, I heard Doug slide the desk drawers shut. I figured if I could just stay pressed against the wall long enough for Carter to dissect Lucy’s anatomy to his satisfaction, he’d wander away, and Doug and I would be home free. But just as Cater finished his analysis of Lucy’s ankles, the air conditioner fan kicked in, and the door I was hiding behind swung shut. I was exposed as the VIP pass “taker” that I was.
“Hey!” Carter shouted, clearly in shock. “What’s going on here?!” For a guy who weighed close to 250 pounds, he could really jump.
“Hi Carter!” I waved, and smiled. “How are things going in the elevator? Everything OK?”
But Carter was not to be charmed. He directed his attention to Doug.
“Doug! Does Helen know about this?”
“Know about what?”
“This! Her! The lady salesman.”
I think Doug actually staggered at this point. “Whoa Carter! It’s not what you think…”
“Well what is it then? Me finding you in here alone after five o’clock is one thing. I know you Doug, almost from Kindergarten. But you bein’ in here with her! And her hindin’ behind the door! That’s another thing!” Carter’s shock had quickly turned to righteous indignation.
Look,” Doug said. “we were just checking for some ad copy we needed right away for a spot we’re doin’. Harry forgot to give it to us. See?” Doug picked up a piece blank paper, folded it, and put it in his back pocket. “Come on Carter, you said you knew me from Kindergarten!”
“That’s right,” Carter went on, “And I’ve got to say I’m surprised at you.” He pointed in my general direction. “But I’m not surprised at her!” Then he whispered, “She’s not from around here.
Stepping closer he zeroed in on the envelope in Doug’s hand. “What you got there? Are those Jamboree in the Hills tickets? Did she make you in here and get ‘em for her?, so she could sell ‘em or somethin’? Give ‘em to her friends?”
For once I wished I’d spread it around that I hated country music.
“What these? Oh, yeah, they should be in Harry’s desk.” Doug pulled open a drawer and threw them in.
“See? They’re in the desk,” Doug pointed, “where they should be……. So that’s it Carter. We have the copy we need so we’ll goin’ now.”
“What just a second, Doug.”
Doug waited. I did too.
“You know I work hard.” Doug nodded. I did too.
“You know no one loves country music and Jamboree in the Hills more than I do. Hell, I spent the night in a sleepin’ bag waitin’ for the openin’ of Jambo two years ago, so I could be part of the Redneck Run an’ stake out a spot near the stage. Broke my foot while I was at it.”
Doug nodded. This time I didn’t bother.
“And now Jambo’s so popular I can’t even afford general admission tickets, forget about me ever getting VIP passes.” He looked sideways at Doug.
This conversation was not headed in a promising direction.
Carter continued. ”Ya know, I’d hate to upset Helen, us goin’ back so far and all. And it’s not like I’m one to pass judgement, or anything like that if somethin’ really is goin’ on with you two…”
Carter paused for six excruciating seconds.
“ but I sure would love to hear Jerry Lee Lewis sing Great Balls of Fire while sittin’ next to Ronnie Milsap backstage.”
Doug hissed. “Carter, what exactly do you want?"
“Nothin’ much. Nothin’ you can’t get your hands on.” Carter pointed at Harry’s desk, then looked at his feet and shuffled a little before continuing.“Just two VIP tickets.”
Reluctantly, Doug went back to Harry’s desk, took two VIP tickets out of the manilia envelope and handed them to Carter. “Carter, for the record, nothing is going on here.”
‘What?” Carter asked, transfixed by the two tickets in his hand. “Yeah, oh sure. Right. Hey Doug! Do you think I could get one more for my niece, she loves Carl Perkins.”
“Don’t push it Carter.” Doug said.
“Ok, Ok,” Carter said quickly, fondling his tickets. “Just thought I’d ask… Well, like you said, looks like we’re all done here, so let’s lock up and get out of Harry’s office. Anybody for strawberry pie?”
Carter looked over at me and smiled. “Ladies first.”
And so Carter, the elevator operator who looked like he was tasting bile every time he glanced my way, ended up with my two Jamboree in the Hills VIP passes.
And Joe was still balancing a bubble that was about to burst. But we came up with another plan.
Early the next morning the sales staff convened at RAX Roast Beef. We had some thinking to do.
Charlie got right to business. “Joe, you’ve got to forget about VIP passes for your remote. It’s just not possible.” We all murmured in agreement. Joe took a gulp of coffee and started looking weepy.
Benny said, “You’ve got to come up with something else. You’ve got to figure a way to distract Chickie so she won’t ask about the passes. Boom! Maybe you bring in some kind of act! If you could, you’d be golden! Problems, over! Boom!!”
Joe just stared down at his coffee, lips quivering. The rest of us sat in silence.
“Finally Charlie spoke up, “Joe, what about Box Car?”
“Box Car Willie? Are you kidding? Maybe I can bring in one of the acts I book at the truck stops, but a real star?” Now the tears really flowed.
I spoke up. “It could be OK, Joe. I don’t think Charlie means the real Box Car. I think he means, you know… the other one.” I asked Doug if he would get Joe a refill and maybe grab a couple of napkins, since no one had any tissues.
The fake Box Car Willie was located twenty miles north in Steubenville, Ohio hanging around a giant flea market/bake sale held for the benefit of some striking steel workers. Joe got him to promise to show up at Chickie’s Used Kitchen Dinettes in a freshly washed set of overalls and a clean red bandana by 9 a.m. the next morning. All the fake Box Car, or FBC, as we sales people began to refer to him, wanted in return were albums, hot dogs, chips, soda, and it went without saying, a solid dose of attention. The entire sales staff planned to show up at the remote to take turns fawning over him.
Because we ushered our Fake Box Car in with such fanfare, and because he hit the microphone with such gusto, Lou, the announcer on the remote never bothered to ask the normal screening questions. In fact, FBC did such a stupendous job, cracking wise, blowing his whistle, and calling the Ohio Valley into Chickie’s Used Kitchen Dinettes, people said they never saw such a turn out for a kitchen dinette remote, much less a used kitchen dinette remote.
But the regular WWVA listeners weren’t the only ones tuned in that morning.
A last minute Jambo replacement, recruited to fill in for Mayf Nutter (the man who wrote and recorded the Jamboree in the Hills theme song back in 1977, but who had been forced to cancel that year because of a nasty encounter with a patch of poison ivy) was on his way to Wheeling and he was also listening to WWVA. In fact, he was listening with such interest, he asked his driver to make an unscheduled stop just outside of Wheeling at Chickie’s Used Kitchen Dinettes.
At first no one noticed the big white Lincoln town car with blacked out windows that pulled up in front of Chickie’s. But as soon as the real Box Car Willie stepped out of his town car, and struck a few poses in the parking lot, people took note.
“Hey, you must be the fake Box Car we heard about!”
“Have you ever been arrested for impersonating Box Car Willie?
“Aren’t you afraid to stop here when Box Car Willie’s doing a remote inside?”
It took only one or two of these comments for the real Box Car Willie to work up a solid head of steam. He brushed past the hecklers and threw open the door to Chickie’s with such force, two of the more lightweight dinette chairs near the front of the store flipped on their sides. He knocked over a couple of more walking back to our remote set up to see just what the heck was going on.
When the real Box Car Willie first laid eyes on our FBC he stood and stared for a few seconds, checking out his outfit, taking in all the details.
Then he started in. “I don’t wear a red bandana anymore you fool! That’s for hobos! I dress more like a railroader.” Then he paused, and added, “Idiot!”
I was hanging around the storage area in the back of the store with the rest of the sales staff listening to Charlie noodle on his banjo at the time, so I heard this go out over the air, along with what came next.
Bang! Thud! Scrape! “Holy Mother!” someone shouted. And then a sound like a microphone hitting the floor. Finally, dead air.
Since the only reasons for dead air in radio are serious technical difficulties or a comatose air personality, and we had reason to suspect both, we made it to the remote set- up in less than three seconds.
Doug grabbed the mike off the floor and handed it to Lou, telling him for the love of Pete, say something, while Charlie grabbed the real Box Car and led him to a seat at the featured dinette- a Danish modern that could seat eight. I led our FBC out of harm’s way to the back of the store near the “Make Me an Offer I can’t Refuse” corner.
Fortunately for all of us, Charlie, Grand Old Opray veteran that he was, and the real Box Car Willie shared a musical history; both started out playing for tips at volunteer firemen conventions, so Charlie could talk his language.
Rough translation of their conversation?
Don’t screw up this broadcast, just play along, and primo dates at Jamboree USA can be yours. After this conversation, the real Box Car Willie got that Wheelin’ Feelin’ and took command of the microphone like the professional trouper that he was.
“We had you fooled by golly! Ol’ Box Car had you fooled! My twin, my what do you call it ,my doppelganger showed up for me this morning here at Chickie’s Used Kitchen Dinettes, and I’m glad he did, because old Box Car was sleepin’ in, after a big night of celebratin’! That’s right! Ol’ Box Car Willie, the one and only Box Car Willie is gonna’ be performin’ at Jamboree in the Hills 1982! So let’s thank my stand in and give him a round of applause.”
The small crowd gathered around the real Box Car Willie cheered.
“Now my old friend Charlie here who works as a salesman at WWVA, home of Jamboree USA, where I’ll be playing several times over the next year, dates to be announced, is going to accompany me on the banjo while I sing a few of my greatest hits. We’ll start with Hank the Hobo.”
At the sound of applause, FBC came out of the stupor he had fallen into, cracked a smile and blew his whistle. He crept over to Charlie and the One and Only Box Car Willie and started to sing back up.
Of course Chicken couldn’t have been more thrilled. Customers started pouring in as soon as the music started. In fact, so many people came in, the dinette salesmen stopped taking “ups”, a system designed to force salesmen to play nice and take turns, and instead the salesmen chased the customers around in survival of the fittest mode. With all this business, Chicken never even mentioned VIP Passes.
Best of all, Joe got the cash for the remote that day, the full amount. Joe may not have been the greatest salesman in the world, but he was salesman enough to know it was best to ask for payment when the customer is most excited about his purchase, and before he’s had a chance to examine it too closely. In this case Chicken was most excited when FBC and the real Box Car Willie broke in to two part harmony during their finale, Divorce Me C.O.D.
After that Jamboree in the Hills, things started to change for me at the radio station. It got so the guys helped me out with everyday things on a regular basis, and I always tried to repay their kindnesses.
Charlie called the Animal Hospital for me when the vet wouldn’t treat my cat until I gave him the name of a man responsible for payment. I was married at the time, but Charlie knew I made more money than my husband and was just as responsible. He set the vet straight for me.
Benny went to a car dealer with me and made believe he was my husband so I could get someone to talk to me about a new car when my AMC Concord died. At the time a car salesmen wouldn’t waste their time on a woman who showed up without her husband or father.
Doug vouched for me with the investment counselor when the man from Prudential wouldn’t take my check to start a mutual fund account, and insisted I bring in cash instead. His policy was never to take a check from a married woman in case she was investing without permission from her husband. The husband might put a stop payment on the check, and it wasn’t worth the hassle.
It took a while, but eventually I became accepted as a member of the sales staff and the guys talked to me all the time. I almost fancied myself the Shirley McClaine to their Rat Pack.
But I knew I was really accepted as a full member of the sales staff when the bar at the corner would cash my paycheck--a privilege afforded only the mayor of Wheeling, the on-air personalities, select sales staff of WWVA-Radio, and of course the real Box Car Willie.
By 1982 when I was working at WWVA-Radio, “Jamboree in the Hills” was acknowledged to be the unofficial “super bowl of country music”, and its popularity was soaring. The attendance that year was in the 60,000 range, and by 2009 attendance had grown to over 100,000. The headliners in 1982 were first rate, Carl Perkins , Jerry Lee Lewis, the Oak Ridge Boys and Loretta Lynn.
Jamboree in the Hills brought celebrities, their entourages, and a lot of excitement to the Ohio Valley all summer long. Every town in and around the northern panhandle of West Virginia geared up, spruced up, and happily cashed in on the event, especially Wheeling. In addition, in 1982 country was very cool nationwide. John Travolta, Debra Winger had recently starred in “Urban Cowboy”. Mechanical bulls were in the every other bar and club. Tony Lama boots were a status symbol. Every singer wanted to record a song that could be considered country crossover. In fact, one of WWVA’s taglines that year was, “We were country before country was cool”. And, the WWVA sales staff was right in the middle of it.
The sales staff got free VIP back stage passes to the event for themselves and their immediate family. In my case that meant two passes. Everyone in West Virginia wanted one of those VIP passes. This pass not only allowed you to hang around the green room with the performers, you also got to eat and drink the same things they did, for free. By 1982 word got around that the WWVA sales staff got these free passes and we were stars ourselves every July. When the guys went to lunch at the diner next to Ron Small’s Mobile Homes they were stared at and whispered about, like the Rat Pack must have been in the 1960’s.
I secretly thought this was silly. As much as I tried, I never liked country music, even crossover, and the idea of listening to country music for a couple of days straight in the July heat didn’t appeal to me, even if I could hang out backstage and eat and drink the same things as Ronnie Millsap. But since it’s almost unpatriotic to admit to you don’t love country music in West Virginia, I tried to keep my lack of enthusiasm to myself.
In the summer of 1982, Joe, one of the salesman who has an unfortunate habit of setting his hair on fire with his cigarette, was at the very bottom of a three year sales slump. He had an target on his back, or he was on the bubble, or his stock was low, all phrases I’ve heard to describe a salesman who’s under scrutiny for underperforming.
Of all the salesman, Joe would take getting fired the hardest. WWVA was his life. He swore if he ever got fired he’d join the service if one of the branches would have him.
Harry didn’t want to fire Joe. Joe and Harry went back a long way and had been known to get a little over exuberant together after a good show at Jamboree USA and a few beers. So when Joe asked him if he could have his tickets early to use as give-aways at a remote broadcast he was trying to sell to Chickies’ Used Kitchen Dinettes, Harry made a very special exception for him and gave him his tickets three weeks ahead of time. All the other sales staff’s tickets stayed locked up in his office, in his desk, as they did every year, until the day before the event.
But somehow Joe’s tickets went missing the day before the remote. The details surrounding their disappearance always remained fuzzy. I heard something about a gambling debt, but more than likely he sold his tickets and gave the money to one of the club acts he booked on a part-time basis, to help them over a rough spot.
When the remote was a few days away, Joe had to face up to the reality of his situation. He simply had no tickets. So he went to Charlie, our senior salesman with his problem. Charlie went to Doug, the sales staff’s acknowledged voice of reason with the problem, and Doug, surprisingly, went to me.
“If we can get our hands on your VIP passes right away, would you give them to Joe to help him out?”
Doug must have had a hunch I wouldn’t be heartbroken if I didn’t make it to Jamboree in the Hills ’82, because normally asking someone to give up back stage passes to this event would be like asking someone to give up a kidney.
“Sure.” I said without hesitation. There was a collective sigh from the rest of the sales staff who were pretending not to listen.
It was decided Doug and I would do the actual taking of the tickets. We all called it “taking”, because no one wanted to say “break into Harry’s office, and his desk, and steal the tickets”. Since we all worked for the station, and went in and out of Harry’s office every day, we really weren’t breaking in. We were just going in his office very quietly after hours. We weren’t stealing the tickets either, because they were going to be mine anyway, eventually. We just wanted them earlier.
The day before Joe’s remote, Doug and I hung around after hours in the announcer’s booth recording and re-recording the one commercial we lent out talent to: Valley Discount Furniture. I was flattered to play the role of Ima Hogg to Doug’s Ura Hog. I believe the point of the spot was that Valley Discount Furniture’s sofas were sturdy enough to hold the whole family Hogg family, Ima, Ura and little Whata Hogg.
After we were sure Harry had left and the place was mostly cleared out, Doug and I went directly to the sales department. The door to the bullpen was left open but Harry’s door was locked.
Doug easily jimmied open Harry’s door with a credit card, “You just know he left his desk unlocked, don’t you? He was in a hurry to meet Lucy at Elby’s Big Boy tonight for strawberry pie.”
Lucy was Harry’s wife, a great looking blonde with a top heavy figure and dainty feet who owned the only Christmas store in town. This made her something of a celebrity, because Wheeling was the kind of town that prepared for Christmas all year long.
Doug was right, Harry’s desk was unlocked. We quickly rifled through papers, folders and half finished crossword puzzles until we found the manila envelope marked VIP PASSES. Just as Doug grabbed the envelope, we heard foorsteps. I choked on my spit and half whispered, “Doug, what’s that?”
“Don’t know. Get behind the door.”
I got behind the door we’d just jimmied open , and pressed myself against the wall.
“Hey, Doug! What are ya- sales manager now?”
It was my old friend, the elevator operator.
It was true that ever since the station held the big meeting about what does and what does not constitute a hostile work environment my old friend had stopped cursing at me whenever I was in earshot. But I could tell every time he looked at me he was swallowing bile.
‘Yeah Carter!” Doug said. “Didn’t ya hear? Lucy’s openin’ a big Christmas store in Pittsburgh and Harry’s moved up there to help get it open.”
I noticed for a country boy, Doug was pretty cool under fire.
Carter grunted. “Yeah, right, Harry’s gonna trail around after a woman… All though I have to admit, that Lucy is…”
While Carter went on about Lucy, I heard Doug slide the desk drawers shut. I figured if I could just stay pressed against the wall long enough for Carter to dissect Lucy’s anatomy to his satisfaction, he’d wander away, and Doug and I would be home free. But just as Cater finished his analysis of Lucy’s ankles, the air conditioner fan kicked in, and the door I was hiding behind swung shut. I was exposed as the VIP pass “taker” that I was.
“Hey!” Carter shouted, clearly in shock. “What’s going on here?!” For a guy who weighed close to 250 pounds, he could really jump.
“Hi Carter!” I waved, and smiled. “How are things going in the elevator? Everything OK?”
But Carter was not to be charmed. He directed his attention to Doug.
“Doug! Does Helen know about this?”
“Know about what?”
“This! Her! The lady salesman.”
I think Doug actually staggered at this point. “Whoa Carter! It’s not what you think…”
“Well what is it then? Me finding you in here alone after five o’clock is one thing. I know you Doug, almost from Kindergarten. But you bein’ in here with her! And her hindin’ behind the door! That’s another thing!” Carter’s shock had quickly turned to righteous indignation.
Look,” Doug said. “we were just checking for some ad copy we needed right away for a spot we’re doin’. Harry forgot to give it to us. See?” Doug picked up a piece blank paper, folded it, and put it in his back pocket. “Come on Carter, you said you knew me from Kindergarten!”
“That’s right,” Carter went on, “And I’ve got to say I’m surprised at you.” He pointed in my general direction. “But I’m not surprised at her!” Then he whispered, “She’s not from around here.
Stepping closer he zeroed in on the envelope in Doug’s hand. “What you got there? Are those Jamboree in the Hills tickets? Did she make you in here and get ‘em for her?, so she could sell ‘em or somethin’? Give ‘em to her friends?”
For once I wished I’d spread it around that I hated country music.
“What these? Oh, yeah, they should be in Harry’s desk.” Doug pulled open a drawer and threw them in.
“See? They’re in the desk,” Doug pointed, “where they should be……. So that’s it Carter. We have the copy we need so we’ll goin’ now.”
“What just a second, Doug.”
Doug waited. I did too.
“You know I work hard.” Doug nodded. I did too.
“You know no one loves country music and Jamboree in the Hills more than I do. Hell, I spent the night in a sleepin’ bag waitin’ for the openin’ of Jambo two years ago, so I could be part of the Redneck Run an’ stake out a spot near the stage. Broke my foot while I was at it.”
Doug nodded. This time I didn’t bother.
“And now Jambo’s so popular I can’t even afford general admission tickets, forget about me ever getting VIP passes.” He looked sideways at Doug.
This conversation was not headed in a promising direction.
Carter continued. ”Ya know, I’d hate to upset Helen, us goin’ back so far and all. And it’s not like I’m one to pass judgement, or anything like that if somethin’ really is goin’ on with you two…”
Carter paused for six excruciating seconds.
“ but I sure would love to hear Jerry Lee Lewis sing Great Balls of Fire while sittin’ next to Ronnie Milsap backstage.”
Doug hissed. “Carter, what exactly do you want?"
“Nothin’ much. Nothin’ you can’t get your hands on.” Carter pointed at Harry’s desk, then looked at his feet and shuffled a little before continuing.“Just two VIP tickets.”
Reluctantly, Doug went back to Harry’s desk, took two VIP tickets out of the manilia envelope and handed them to Carter. “Carter, for the record, nothing is going on here.”
‘What?” Carter asked, transfixed by the two tickets in his hand. “Yeah, oh sure. Right. Hey Doug! Do you think I could get one more for my niece, she loves Carl Perkins.”
“Don’t push it Carter.” Doug said.
“Ok, Ok,” Carter said quickly, fondling his tickets. “Just thought I’d ask… Well, like you said, looks like we’re all done here, so let’s lock up and get out of Harry’s office. Anybody for strawberry pie?”
Carter looked over at me and smiled. “Ladies first.”
And so Carter, the elevator operator who looked like he was tasting bile every time he glanced my way, ended up with my two Jamboree in the Hills VIP passes.
And Joe was still balancing a bubble that was about to burst. But we came up with another plan.
Early the next morning the sales staff convened at RAX Roast Beef. We had some thinking to do.
Charlie got right to business. “Joe, you’ve got to forget about VIP passes for your remote. It’s just not possible.” We all murmured in agreement. Joe took a gulp of coffee and started looking weepy.
Benny said, “You’ve got to come up with something else. You’ve got to figure a way to distract Chickie so she won’t ask about the passes. Boom! Maybe you bring in some kind of act! If you could, you’d be golden! Problems, over! Boom!!”
Joe just stared down at his coffee, lips quivering. The rest of us sat in silence.
“Finally Charlie spoke up, “Joe, what about Box Car?”
“Box Car Willie? Are you kidding? Maybe I can bring in one of the acts I book at the truck stops, but a real star?” Now the tears really flowed.
I spoke up. “It could be OK, Joe. I don’t think Charlie means the real Box Car. I think he means, you know… the other one.” I asked Doug if he would get Joe a refill and maybe grab a couple of napkins, since no one had any tissues.
The fake Box Car Willie was located twenty miles north in Steubenville, Ohio hanging around a giant flea market/bake sale held for the benefit of some striking steel workers. Joe got him to promise to show up at Chickie’s Used Kitchen Dinettes in a freshly washed set of overalls and a clean red bandana by 9 a.m. the next morning. All the fake Box Car, or FBC, as we sales people began to refer to him, wanted in return were albums, hot dogs, chips, soda, and it went without saying, a solid dose of attention. The entire sales staff planned to show up at the remote to take turns fawning over him.
Because we ushered our Fake Box Car in with such fanfare, and because he hit the microphone with such gusto, Lou, the announcer on the remote never bothered to ask the normal screening questions. In fact, FBC did such a stupendous job, cracking wise, blowing his whistle, and calling the Ohio Valley into Chickie’s Used Kitchen Dinettes, people said they never saw such a turn out for a kitchen dinette remote, much less a used kitchen dinette remote.
But the regular WWVA listeners weren’t the only ones tuned in that morning.
A last minute Jambo replacement, recruited to fill in for Mayf Nutter (the man who wrote and recorded the Jamboree in the Hills theme song back in 1977, but who had been forced to cancel that year because of a nasty encounter with a patch of poison ivy) was on his way to Wheeling and he was also listening to WWVA. In fact, he was listening with such interest, he asked his driver to make an unscheduled stop just outside of Wheeling at Chickie’s Used Kitchen Dinettes.
At first no one noticed the big white Lincoln town car with blacked out windows that pulled up in front of Chickie’s. But as soon as the real Box Car Willie stepped out of his town car, and struck a few poses in the parking lot, people took note.
“Hey, you must be the fake Box Car we heard about!”
“Have you ever been arrested for impersonating Box Car Willie?
“Aren’t you afraid to stop here when Box Car Willie’s doing a remote inside?”
It took only one or two of these comments for the real Box Car Willie to work up a solid head of steam. He brushed past the hecklers and threw open the door to Chickie’s with such force, two of the more lightweight dinette chairs near the front of the store flipped on their sides. He knocked over a couple of more walking back to our remote set up to see just what the heck was going on.
When the real Box Car Willie first laid eyes on our FBC he stood and stared for a few seconds, checking out his outfit, taking in all the details.
Then he started in. “I don’t wear a red bandana anymore you fool! That’s for hobos! I dress more like a railroader.” Then he paused, and added, “Idiot!”
I was hanging around the storage area in the back of the store with the rest of the sales staff listening to Charlie noodle on his banjo at the time, so I heard this go out over the air, along with what came next.
Bang! Thud! Scrape! “Holy Mother!” someone shouted. And then a sound like a microphone hitting the floor. Finally, dead air.
Since the only reasons for dead air in radio are serious technical difficulties or a comatose air personality, and we had reason to suspect both, we made it to the remote set- up in less than three seconds.
Doug grabbed the mike off the floor and handed it to Lou, telling him for the love of Pete, say something, while Charlie grabbed the real Box Car and led him to a seat at the featured dinette- a Danish modern that could seat eight. I led our FBC out of harm’s way to the back of the store near the “Make Me an Offer I can’t Refuse” corner.
Fortunately for all of us, Charlie, Grand Old Opray veteran that he was, and the real Box Car Willie shared a musical history; both started out playing for tips at volunteer firemen conventions, so Charlie could talk his language.
Rough translation of their conversation?
Don’t screw up this broadcast, just play along, and primo dates at Jamboree USA can be yours. After this conversation, the real Box Car Willie got that Wheelin’ Feelin’ and took command of the microphone like the professional trouper that he was.
“We had you fooled by golly! Ol’ Box Car had you fooled! My twin, my what do you call it ,my doppelganger showed up for me this morning here at Chickie’s Used Kitchen Dinettes, and I’m glad he did, because old Box Car was sleepin’ in, after a big night of celebratin’! That’s right! Ol’ Box Car Willie, the one and only Box Car Willie is gonna’ be performin’ at Jamboree in the Hills 1982! So let’s thank my stand in and give him a round of applause.”
The small crowd gathered around the real Box Car Willie cheered.
“Now my old friend Charlie here who works as a salesman at WWVA, home of Jamboree USA, where I’ll be playing several times over the next year, dates to be announced, is going to accompany me on the banjo while I sing a few of my greatest hits. We’ll start with Hank the Hobo.”
At the sound of applause, FBC came out of the stupor he had fallen into, cracked a smile and blew his whistle. He crept over to Charlie and the One and Only Box Car Willie and started to sing back up.
Of course Chicken couldn’t have been more thrilled. Customers started pouring in as soon as the music started. In fact, so many people came in, the dinette salesmen stopped taking “ups”, a system designed to force salesmen to play nice and take turns, and instead the salesmen chased the customers around in survival of the fittest mode. With all this business, Chicken never even mentioned VIP Passes.
Best of all, Joe got the cash for the remote that day, the full amount. Joe may not have been the greatest salesman in the world, but he was salesman enough to know it was best to ask for payment when the customer is most excited about his purchase, and before he’s had a chance to examine it too closely. In this case Chicken was most excited when FBC and the real Box Car Willie broke in to two part harmony during their finale, Divorce Me C.O.D.
After that Jamboree in the Hills, things started to change for me at the radio station. It got so the guys helped me out with everyday things on a regular basis, and I always tried to repay their kindnesses.
Charlie called the Animal Hospital for me when the vet wouldn’t treat my cat until I gave him the name of a man responsible for payment. I was married at the time, but Charlie knew I made more money than my husband and was just as responsible. He set the vet straight for me.
Benny went to a car dealer with me and made believe he was my husband so I could get someone to talk to me about a new car when my AMC Concord died. At the time a car salesmen wouldn’t waste their time on a woman who showed up without her husband or father.
Doug vouched for me with the investment counselor when the man from Prudential wouldn’t take my check to start a mutual fund account, and insisted I bring in cash instead. His policy was never to take a check from a married woman in case she was investing without permission from her husband. The husband might put a stop payment on the check, and it wasn’t worth the hassle.
It took a while, but eventually I became accepted as a member of the sales staff and the guys talked to me all the time. I almost fancied myself the Shirley McClaine to their Rat Pack.
But I knew I was really accepted as a full member of the sales staff when the bar at the corner would cash my paycheck--a privilege afforded only the mayor of Wheeling, the on-air personalities, select sales staff of WWVA-Radio, and of course the real Box Car Willie.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Conclusion to 'Wheeling"
I headed to the yellow doublewide surrounded with artificial plants that Ron used for an office. The plants added a little glamour, but they also served a strategic purpose. They provided a place for the mobile home salesmen to hide and size up the customers in privacy. As I got closer to the steps of the doublewide I noticed the leaves rustling on one of the fichus, and a couple of sets of eyes peering out.
“It’s just me guys, the sales lady from the radio station.”
The rustling abruptly stopped.
I found Ron at the kitchen table of the doublewide trying to close a deal with a young couple who’d been at the remote since early morning. The husband was tall and thin and wore a navy blue windbreaker with white lettering on the back, Powhatten No.6. The wife looked very young, very tired, and wore a matching windbreaker. A baby about 6 months old sat in her arms grabbing at her long blonde perm. Lou’s live broadcast boomed in the background.
Ron was in high gear. “Now if the down payment is a problem, I bet that pretty wife of yours has a Christmas Club account at First Wheeling with enough to get things started. All we need…..”
The husband abruptly put his hand up to stop Ron in mid-pitch. When Ron didn’t even slow it down, he raised his voice, “I’ve got to hear this….it’s the mine closings.”
“SAGO MINE CLOSED, McELROY MINE CLOSED, POWHATAN NO. 6 CLOSED”
The young husband peered out from under his John Deere cap at his wife, and slowly shook his head while Ron ran his hand through his hair preparing to gear up again. He started to say something to save the sale, but stopped for a moment when he noticed me hovering a few feet away in the breakfast nook waiting for a break in the conversation. I hoped for both our sakes I hadn’t thrown him off his stride.
“The mines always go like that. Open, closed, you know. I know I can get you financed, no problem. Why make the landlord rich? Kiss him good-bye!’
As I listened to the deal fall sadly apart, I repositioned myself in front of the door. I had to get paid today. Cash would be best, but a check, even if it bounced, would buy me time. I shouted out the door and called for Lou to come in and join us. I hoped Lou’s presence would make Ron more willing to reach for the check book when I asked. Even the fake Boxcar might have given me extra leverage.
Lou popped his head in the door “What’s up?”
“Lou, I brought a few more albums with me. They’re in the first bedroom. You want to grab a few? And bring out something special for Ron’s customers.”
“That right Lou, get something special for Chuck and Donna here.” Ron added.
Lou returned with a couple of Staler Brother albums, and handed them to Donna.
“Now that’s nice.” said Ron. “Some good country to listen to when you’re soaking in that garden tub together” He rubbed his hands together.
Once again Chuck told Ron they had to think about it.
“But can’t you imagine you and your wife….”
“Hey Ron” I jumped in. “I need to talk to you about something…the check?” I lowered my voice.
Lou pretended not to hear this. He continued to examine the back of the album covers with Donna. Unfortunately, Ron pretended not to hear me either, and brushed past me, escorting Chuck and Donna out of the mobile home to continue their discussion without further interruptions.
After Rick, Donna, the baby, and the record albums drove off, Ron promptly disappeared behind two large artificial palms. I looked around the lot for him, and of course none of his salesmen had seen him. I closed my eyes and leaned against the remote truck. I could just see Harry and Jean and the rest of them coming at me like a pack of mad dogs, or sharks.
“Gee Lou, thanks for your help in there.” I pushed the sarcasm as far as I dare.
“No problem.” Lou answered calmly. “Glad to help. The albums were right there.”
I got in my car and headed right to the mall, which served as my third place before I’d even heard of such a thing. I paced for 15 minutes and decided I needed help.
“Doug? This is the new sales lady. Do you have a minute to talk to me? Better yet can you meet me at the mall?”
“I’m married and I have a wife and a dog.”
“Yes, of course I know that, and I respect it. Mary is your wife, right? Doug I need some help.”
I gave him a recap.
He put the phone down on his desk. I heard him shout. “The new saleslady’s been burned by Ron Small. He put her out of business, at the remote.” I could hear the laughter in the background. “What do you think?”
I waited a painful minute for Doug to return to the phone. “We’ve taken a vote. Meet us at the diner next to Ron Small’s in twenty minutes.”
The plan was simple. My job was to stake out Ron’s office. Boom knew Ron’s pick up, so he was assigned to cover it. Joe covered the back exit out of the lot, and Doug parked his car across the front entrance.
As I approached the yellow double wide I saw sudden movement behind the fichus. It was Ron. I shouted, “Ron! It’s me! The lady from the radio station! I need a check!!!”
Ron glanced over his shoulder at me and started walking double time across the lot toward his pick-up.
Joe shouted, “He’s on the run! He’s headed for his vehicle!”
Boom, who was squatting in the bed of the pick-up with just the top of his head visible, popped up too soon, and gave Ron time to change course. Ron took a ninety degree turn toward the back entrance. When he saw Joe’s car parked across it, he made a 180 degree turn, heading toward the front entrance. When he saw Doug’s car, he back tracked into the rabbit warren of mobile homes. I tried to keep track of him, but I lost sight of him, and we had to break into search parties.
After 15 minutes of slamming doors and splashing through mud puddles, Doug shouted. “I have him!”
We all converged on a light blue single wide, left over from two seasons ago and specially priced at $9,999.00 , because of some moderate water damage.
Doug was talking calmly to Ron. “Listen Ron, we need paid. This new saleslady needs her money or she’s going to be out of work. I know you don’t want that.”
Ron murmured sympathetically.
“Now come on out from under the table.”
We all watched in silence as Ron crawled out from under the kitchen table and took a chair. “Business hasn’t been so good lately.”
“Hey we understand. Just give us a few hundred today, and the saleslady will be back next week, and the week after, and the week after that, till she has the rest. At least that way, the new saleslady can keep her job.”
I was very, very grateful to the rest staff and promised myself I would make it up to them at some point. That point came almost a year later.
“It’s just me guys, the sales lady from the radio station.”
The rustling abruptly stopped.
I found Ron at the kitchen table of the doublewide trying to close a deal with a young couple who’d been at the remote since early morning. The husband was tall and thin and wore a navy blue windbreaker with white lettering on the back, Powhatten No.6. The wife looked very young, very tired, and wore a matching windbreaker. A baby about 6 months old sat in her arms grabbing at her long blonde perm. Lou’s live broadcast boomed in the background.
Ron was in high gear. “Now if the down payment is a problem, I bet that pretty wife of yours has a Christmas Club account at First Wheeling with enough to get things started. All we need…..”
The husband abruptly put his hand up to stop Ron in mid-pitch. When Ron didn’t even slow it down, he raised his voice, “I’ve got to hear this….it’s the mine closings.”
“SAGO MINE CLOSED, McELROY MINE CLOSED, POWHATAN NO. 6 CLOSED”
The young husband peered out from under his John Deere cap at his wife, and slowly shook his head while Ron ran his hand through his hair preparing to gear up again. He started to say something to save the sale, but stopped for a moment when he noticed me hovering a few feet away in the breakfast nook waiting for a break in the conversation. I hoped for both our sakes I hadn’t thrown him off his stride.
“The mines always go like that. Open, closed, you know. I know I can get you financed, no problem. Why make the landlord rich? Kiss him good-bye!’
As I listened to the deal fall sadly apart, I repositioned myself in front of the door. I had to get paid today. Cash would be best, but a check, even if it bounced, would buy me time. I shouted out the door and called for Lou to come in and join us. I hoped Lou’s presence would make Ron more willing to reach for the check book when I asked. Even the fake Boxcar might have given me extra leverage.
Lou popped his head in the door “What’s up?”
“Lou, I brought a few more albums with me. They’re in the first bedroom. You want to grab a few? And bring out something special for Ron’s customers.”
“That right Lou, get something special for Chuck and Donna here.” Ron added.
Lou returned with a couple of Staler Brother albums, and handed them to Donna.
“Now that’s nice.” said Ron. “Some good country to listen to when you’re soaking in that garden tub together” He rubbed his hands together.
Once again Chuck told Ron they had to think about it.
“But can’t you imagine you and your wife….”
“Hey Ron” I jumped in. “I need to talk to you about something…the check?” I lowered my voice.
Lou pretended not to hear this. He continued to examine the back of the album covers with Donna. Unfortunately, Ron pretended not to hear me either, and brushed past me, escorting Chuck and Donna out of the mobile home to continue their discussion without further interruptions.
After Rick, Donna, the baby, and the record albums drove off, Ron promptly disappeared behind two large artificial palms. I looked around the lot for him, and of course none of his salesmen had seen him. I closed my eyes and leaned against the remote truck. I could just see Harry and Jean and the rest of them coming at me like a pack of mad dogs, or sharks.
“Gee Lou, thanks for your help in there.” I pushed the sarcasm as far as I dare.
“No problem.” Lou answered calmly. “Glad to help. The albums were right there.”
I got in my car and headed right to the mall, which served as my third place before I’d even heard of such a thing. I paced for 15 minutes and decided I needed help.
“Doug? This is the new sales lady. Do you have a minute to talk to me? Better yet can you meet me at the mall?”
“I’m married and I have a wife and a dog.”
“Yes, of course I know that, and I respect it. Mary is your wife, right? Doug I need some help.”
I gave him a recap.
He put the phone down on his desk. I heard him shout. “The new saleslady’s been burned by Ron Small. He put her out of business, at the remote.” I could hear the laughter in the background. “What do you think?”
I waited a painful minute for Doug to return to the phone. “We’ve taken a vote. Meet us at the diner next to Ron Small’s in twenty minutes.”
The plan was simple. My job was to stake out Ron’s office. Boom knew Ron’s pick up, so he was assigned to cover it. Joe covered the back exit out of the lot, and Doug parked his car across the front entrance.
As I approached the yellow double wide I saw sudden movement behind the fichus. It was Ron. I shouted, “Ron! It’s me! The lady from the radio station! I need a check!!!”
Ron glanced over his shoulder at me and started walking double time across the lot toward his pick-up.
Joe shouted, “He’s on the run! He’s headed for his vehicle!”
Boom, who was squatting in the bed of the pick-up with just the top of his head visible, popped up too soon, and gave Ron time to change course. Ron took a ninety degree turn toward the back entrance. When he saw Joe’s car parked across it, he made a 180 degree turn, heading toward the front entrance. When he saw Doug’s car, he back tracked into the rabbit warren of mobile homes. I tried to keep track of him, but I lost sight of him, and we had to break into search parties.
After 15 minutes of slamming doors and splashing through mud puddles, Doug shouted. “I have him!”
We all converged on a light blue single wide, left over from two seasons ago and specially priced at $9,999.00 , because of some moderate water damage.
Doug was talking calmly to Ron. “Listen Ron, we need paid. This new saleslady needs her money or she’s going to be out of work. I know you don’t want that.”
Ron murmured sympathetically.
“Now come on out from under the table.”
We all watched in silence as Ron crawled out from under the kitchen table and took a chair. “Business hasn’t been so good lately.”
“Hey we understand. Just give us a few hundred today, and the saleslady will be back next week, and the week after, and the week after that, till she has the rest. At least that way, the new saleslady can keep her job.”
I was very, very grateful to the rest staff and promised myself I would make it up to them at some point. That point came almost a year later.
"Wheeling" Chapters 4 and 5
During the same weeks I was taking strange elevator rides, I was also starting to work on my phone pitch, because first you have to sell the appointment. I’d researched most of the businesses Harry wanted me to call on: car dealers, furniture stores, and a few jewelry stores. Of all the businesses I’d researched, the mobile home dealers’ looked most interesting, so did the fireworks dealers, but they were very seasonal.
My desk was in the middle of the room, surrounded by the four other reps. Since there were no cubicle walls separating us, just identical grey steel desks placed about 3 feet apart, there was no privacy to practice and be hung up on in peace. But after a couple of weeks of stumbling around and explaining that even though I was a female, I was representing the station, I got a nibble from Ron Small’s Mobile Homes. I hung up the phone and exploded in victory in the bull pen.
“Ron Small wants us to do a remote broadcast from his mobile home dealership! Can we do that? Where’s Harry?” I spun in a circle a few times and headed for Harry’s office.
“Boom!” I heard from behind me. “I’ve called on Ron Small. Oh yeah! It was two months ago, I knew he had too much inventory. Now he wants a remote. You go try to get it! Boom!”
Charlie looked up from his fingernail clipping, smiled serenely and laughed. You couldn’t impress a man who’d played at the Opry easily. “I sold him advertising and put him out of business, oh, ten years ago. But sometimes they won’t stay out.” I came to realize gallows humor was the salesmen’s way of dealing with whatever bad feelings they had for being a part of what may have been a last gasp by an Ohio Valley business.
“I tell you what you need to do.” Joe said, waving his cigarette. “You need to get an act to draw’em in. I got a girl who’ll sing to break your heart. Met her at the Exit 47 Truck Stop. Just sitting there singin’ like a little bird.” He waved his cigarette dangerously close to his hair. “A mobile home remote is the kind of exposure she could use now. She’ll sing for lunch and couple of albums. ”
Doug got up from his desk and pulled a file out of one of the cabinets. He tossed it on my desk, and it slid it across my Day at a Glance blotter to the floor. “He’s bad pay. Period. Read that. Jean, our bookkeeper-the woman who figures our commissions-is going to want cash in advance.”
Immediately, all 4 salesmen marched to the front of the room, put their palms together over their heads and scooted in a conga line to the Jaws theme “DA da -DA da -DA da-DA Da” After a chorus, Doug announced, “If you don’t get cash in advance, Jean will be after blood.” Big belly laughs at that.
At this point Harry stuck his head out of his office. “Doug’s right. Go ahead and do the remote. But get the money up front!!” He looked me in the eye. “I mean it. I don’t want Jean in here. And I don’t want the station manager in here snooping around either. Now you’ve been warned.”
It was about eleven am on a Friday morning in early May. We were two hours
into a three hour remote broadcast. The weather had cleared after some morning showers, leaving a series of muddy puddles in front of, and in between, the dozen or so mobile homes sitting on the edge of route forty, at Ron Small’s Mobile Homes. A movable sign with black plastic letters sat in a two inch deep puddle telling all to “Kiss Your Landlord Good-Bye!” One of the banners hung up for the occasion had fallen across the front of the sign, so it read “Kiss your Lord Good bye!” I’d made a mental note earlier to move it, but with all the excitement and confusion brought on by the appearance of the fake Box Car Willie earlier that morning, it had slipped my mind.
Box Car Willie was a popular country singer in the 70’s, who had inspired a few imitators. There was one fake Box Car; we were told too late, that was especially good, affecting the appropriate suspenders, pork pie hat, red bandana, and full red beard perfectly. He even kept a train whistle in the back pocket of his overalls that he blew when things got dull, or attention was lacking. He hung out at remotes such as ours, shopping center openings, parades, and anywhere else there might be a generally adoring crowd and free food. The real Box Car Willie had gotten wind of these “Fake Box Cars” and sent out a list of secret questions and answers for city officials and radio station managers to ask if Box Car Willie showed up at an event. Lou, our radio station morning man and the host of this remote had tested our Box Car about an hour ago, and he had failed miserably. His removal had been a little rough and Lou was just now getting back in good form.
“Good Morning Ohio Valley, its eleven fifteen and we’ll be broadcasting here till noon at Ron Small’s Mobile Homes, and I’ve got albums to give away. The first person to show up here at Ron Small’s Mobile Homes with a full set of their own teeth gets a Statler Brothers album.”
I looked over at Lou, to see if he was kidding. And if so, if he thought any of the listening audience would get the joke with good humor.
“Look Lou, here come a couple of listeners now. I can see the gun rack hanging in the cab of the truck.”
Now Lou looked at me to see if I was kidding. I continued, “You go ahead and talk to them, they don’t want to see me. “ Lou gave me no argument on that. “I’ve got to track down Ron Small.” Ron Small had a distinct look, so he should have been easy to spot anywhere in the mobile home lot. He always wore pastel Sansabelt pants, cowboy boots and a striped engineer’s cap.
But I hadn’t seen Ron all morning, and I was getting very nervous. I needed fifteen hundred dollars that morning. He’d even given the fake Box Car a wide berth; probably because he thought he might be connected to the radio station and looking for money too.
My desk was in the middle of the room, surrounded by the four other reps. Since there were no cubicle walls separating us, just identical grey steel desks placed about 3 feet apart, there was no privacy to practice and be hung up on in peace. But after a couple of weeks of stumbling around and explaining that even though I was a female, I was representing the station, I got a nibble from Ron Small’s Mobile Homes. I hung up the phone and exploded in victory in the bull pen.
“Ron Small wants us to do a remote broadcast from his mobile home dealership! Can we do that? Where’s Harry?” I spun in a circle a few times and headed for Harry’s office.
“Boom!” I heard from behind me. “I’ve called on Ron Small. Oh yeah! It was two months ago, I knew he had too much inventory. Now he wants a remote. You go try to get it! Boom!”
Charlie looked up from his fingernail clipping, smiled serenely and laughed. You couldn’t impress a man who’d played at the Opry easily. “I sold him advertising and put him out of business, oh, ten years ago. But sometimes they won’t stay out.” I came to realize gallows humor was the salesmen’s way of dealing with whatever bad feelings they had for being a part of what may have been a last gasp by an Ohio Valley business.
“I tell you what you need to do.” Joe said, waving his cigarette. “You need to get an act to draw’em in. I got a girl who’ll sing to break your heart. Met her at the Exit 47 Truck Stop. Just sitting there singin’ like a little bird.” He waved his cigarette dangerously close to his hair. “A mobile home remote is the kind of exposure she could use now. She’ll sing for lunch and couple of albums. ”
Doug got up from his desk and pulled a file out of one of the cabinets. He tossed it on my desk, and it slid it across my Day at a Glance blotter to the floor. “He’s bad pay. Period. Read that. Jean, our bookkeeper-the woman who figures our commissions-is going to want cash in advance.”
Immediately, all 4 salesmen marched to the front of the room, put their palms together over their heads and scooted in a conga line to the Jaws theme “DA da -DA da -DA da-DA Da” After a chorus, Doug announced, “If you don’t get cash in advance, Jean will be after blood.” Big belly laughs at that.
At this point Harry stuck his head out of his office. “Doug’s right. Go ahead and do the remote. But get the money up front!!” He looked me in the eye. “I mean it. I don’t want Jean in here. And I don’t want the station manager in here snooping around either. Now you’ve been warned.”
It was about eleven am on a Friday morning in early May. We were two hours
into a three hour remote broadcast. The weather had cleared after some morning showers, leaving a series of muddy puddles in front of, and in between, the dozen or so mobile homes sitting on the edge of route forty, at Ron Small’s Mobile Homes. A movable sign with black plastic letters sat in a two inch deep puddle telling all to “Kiss Your Landlord Good-Bye!” One of the banners hung up for the occasion had fallen across the front of the sign, so it read “Kiss your Lord Good bye!” I’d made a mental note earlier to move it, but with all the excitement and confusion brought on by the appearance of the fake Box Car Willie earlier that morning, it had slipped my mind.
Box Car Willie was a popular country singer in the 70’s, who had inspired a few imitators. There was one fake Box Car; we were told too late, that was especially good, affecting the appropriate suspenders, pork pie hat, red bandana, and full red beard perfectly. He even kept a train whistle in the back pocket of his overalls that he blew when things got dull, or attention was lacking. He hung out at remotes such as ours, shopping center openings, parades, and anywhere else there might be a generally adoring crowd and free food. The real Box Car Willie had gotten wind of these “Fake Box Cars” and sent out a list of secret questions and answers for city officials and radio station managers to ask if Box Car Willie showed up at an event. Lou, our radio station morning man and the host of this remote had tested our Box Car about an hour ago, and he had failed miserably. His removal had been a little rough and Lou was just now getting back in good form.
“Good Morning Ohio Valley, its eleven fifteen and we’ll be broadcasting here till noon at Ron Small’s Mobile Homes, and I’ve got albums to give away. The first person to show up here at Ron Small’s Mobile Homes with a full set of their own teeth gets a Statler Brothers album.”
I looked over at Lou, to see if he was kidding. And if so, if he thought any of the listening audience would get the joke with good humor.
“Look Lou, here come a couple of listeners now. I can see the gun rack hanging in the cab of the truck.”
Now Lou looked at me to see if I was kidding. I continued, “You go ahead and talk to them, they don’t want to see me. “ Lou gave me no argument on that. “I’ve got to track down Ron Small.” Ron Small had a distinct look, so he should have been easy to spot anywhere in the mobile home lot. He always wore pastel Sansabelt pants, cowboy boots and a striped engineer’s cap.
But I hadn’t seen Ron all morning, and I was getting very nervous. I needed fifteen hundred dollars that morning. He’d even given the fake Box Car a wide berth; probably because he thought he might be connected to the radio station and looking for money too.
"Wheeling" Chapters 3 and 4
I had a good inkling no one at the radio station was following the ratification of the ERA too closely, or knew much about the new sexual harassment laws except maybe one woman, Cathy, who was the publicity person for the station. She was from a big city, had graduated from a local college, liked the area, and stayed on to work for the station. I waited till after 5 o'clock when I knew Harry and all the sales guys would be long gone, and hoped to catch her in her office. Luckily she was in.
I was very nervous because was older, maybe thirty five, and the college she graduated from, Wheeling College, was run by Jesuits, which I’d heard meant it was very tough. She was allowed to sit in on meetings with the male sales manager, male station manager, male program director and all the male announcers and that never seemed to make her anxious. That day she wore brown suede boots with fringe that went up over the tops of her knees.
I handed her the article I’d ripped out of the paper. I pointed out the phrase I’d underlined and found so startling, asking her what she thought it meant. Then I explained my situation with the elevator man and asked her if she thought this phrase “hostile work environment” covered my situation.
After she’d read the article she asked me, “Are you in support of the ERA?”
“I don’t know about the ERA, but this hostile work thing seems important.”
“Well, what you just told me about is part of what this amendment is all about. It’s not just about pay. It’s equal rights and respect under the law.”
“Then I’m for it.” I said.
As an afterthought, I told her about the sales guys who wouldn’t speak to me, and she told me there was nothing that could be done about that. She believed changing that sort of thing would take years and couldn’t be legislated. Cathy was really very smart.
I think it was a week or so later that a meeting was called. All the employees in the station were asked to meet at noon in the Capital Music Hall next door.
On the stage sat all the managers, including Harry. I didn’t know what this was all about, or what to think. Somewhere, a small voice told me this might have something to do with my conversation with Cathy, but I told that little voice to shut up, because I didn’t want to think about what the repercussions might if that were true, and things were tracked back to me. I did listen to the small voice long enough though to know I better get my game face on.
One by one the managers got up and tried to explain what a hostile work environment was as it pertained to woman. No one seemed to know just what it meant, but they all agreed it was a bad thing, and there was a new law about it. Harry seemed particularly flummoxed. He'd definitely never heard of this concept before and didn’t seem to want to delve into it too deeply.
After the managers talked, the top counsel for the station got up and told everyone about two lawsuits the big mines had just settled about this very thing. He told us all to be careful, and stop doing whatever it is we were doing.
Finally the station manager took questions from the audience. They were real questions too, not sanitized questions like the ones normally asked by company retainers. I could tell they were real questions because the station manger didn’t have all the answers, or have handouts ready to pass out to “address that very question”.
After we’d all wandered back to the bull pen, Charlie said, “Well, this is no more than being told to make sure you behave like a decent human being. Watch how you conduct yourself around women. Remember they’re someone’s daughter or sister or such. “
Doug agreed and didn’t say much else. He seemed embarrassed to have been at the meeting. Joe had gotten so nervous during all the speeches he’d set his hair on fire and left the music hall in a hurry, which he apologized to Harry for later. Benny had been so affected by the meeting he set a record, saying boom ten times in three minutes.
As a result of the meeting, the elevator operator stopped spitting vile phrases at me. But he didn’t stop glaring and snorting in disgust whenever I got in his elevator. As Cathy said, some things you just can’t legislate.
I was very nervous because was older, maybe thirty five, and the college she graduated from, Wheeling College, was run by Jesuits, which I’d heard meant it was very tough. She was allowed to sit in on meetings with the male sales manager, male station manager, male program director and all the male announcers and that never seemed to make her anxious. That day she wore brown suede boots with fringe that went up over the tops of her knees.
I handed her the article I’d ripped out of the paper. I pointed out the phrase I’d underlined and found so startling, asking her what she thought it meant. Then I explained my situation with the elevator man and asked her if she thought this phrase “hostile work environment” covered my situation.
After she’d read the article she asked me, “Are you in support of the ERA?”
“I don’t know about the ERA, but this hostile work thing seems important.”
“Well, what you just told me about is part of what this amendment is all about. It’s not just about pay. It’s equal rights and respect under the law.”
“Then I’m for it.” I said.
As an afterthought, I told her about the sales guys who wouldn’t speak to me, and she told me there was nothing that could be done about that. She believed changing that sort of thing would take years and couldn’t be legislated. Cathy was really very smart.
I think it was a week or so later that a meeting was called. All the employees in the station were asked to meet at noon in the Capital Music Hall next door.
On the stage sat all the managers, including Harry. I didn’t know what this was all about, or what to think. Somewhere, a small voice told me this might have something to do with my conversation with Cathy, but I told that little voice to shut up, because I didn’t want to think about what the repercussions might if that were true, and things were tracked back to me. I did listen to the small voice long enough though to know I better get my game face on.
One by one the managers got up and tried to explain what a hostile work environment was as it pertained to woman. No one seemed to know just what it meant, but they all agreed it was a bad thing, and there was a new law about it. Harry seemed particularly flummoxed. He'd definitely never heard of this concept before and didn’t seem to want to delve into it too deeply.
After the managers talked, the top counsel for the station got up and told everyone about two lawsuits the big mines had just settled about this very thing. He told us all to be careful, and stop doing whatever it is we were doing.
Finally the station manager took questions from the audience. They were real questions too, not sanitized questions like the ones normally asked by company retainers. I could tell they were real questions because the station manger didn’t have all the answers, or have handouts ready to pass out to “address that very question”.
After we’d all wandered back to the bull pen, Charlie said, “Well, this is no more than being told to make sure you behave like a decent human being. Watch how you conduct yourself around women. Remember they’re someone’s daughter or sister or such. “
Doug agreed and didn’t say much else. He seemed embarrassed to have been at the meeting. Joe had gotten so nervous during all the speeches he’d set his hair on fire and left the music hall in a hurry, which he apologized to Harry for later. Benny had been so affected by the meeting he set a record, saying boom ten times in three minutes.
As a result of the meeting, the elevator operator stopped spitting vile phrases at me. But he didn’t stop glaring and snorting in disgust whenever I got in his elevator. As Cathy said, some things you just can’t legislate.
"Wheeling" Chapters 1 and 2
In the early 1980’s, when coal was king in the Ohio valley, steel mills had little competition from foreign imports, and union jobs were still plentiful listening to country music giant WWVA radio provided a common link and a source of pride for all those living in the northern panhandle of West Virginia and the rest of the Ohio Valley.
WWVA-Radio's 50,000 watt clear channel signal was the official voice of the mines, announcing closing and accidents. Its overnight broadcast was listened to by half the truckers on the eastern seaboard. WWVA-Radio also sponsored a live broadcast of country music, with big name talent, every Saturday night from the theatre next door to the radio station. In my twenties I had the privilege of living in the Ohio Valley and witnessing the end of an era, but while doing so, I was faced with the monumental task of finding work without a skill, college degree, or union card. I applied to WWVA- Radio for a sales job.
I remember Harry, my new sales manager’s first words exactly.
“I’ll be honest with you. We don’t want to hire you. But we have to hire you. The FCC is making us hire a woman-- an 'equal opportunity thing'. We don’t want a woman in our department, there’s never been a woman salesperson at WWVA-Radio in its seventy five year history, but if we have to hire one, you’re the most qualified of the ones who’ve walked in here. So you’re hired.”
“Thank you, Harry, I’ll do my best.”
After a bit it of paperwork, Harry walked me down the hall to the sales bullpen to meet the salesmen, who would normally be sitting at their desks calling on advertisers, but were instead frantically trying to extinguish the fire in one of their colleague's hair with wet paper towels. They all retreated to their desks when Harry walked in. Harry went around the bull pen and pointed to each of the salesman and stated their name. The man with the smoldering hair was Joe, a part-time talent agent who also sold time for the radio station when he wasn’t booking talent into one of the dozens of small bars in the northern panhandle of West Virginia. He regularly set his long dark wavy hair on fire with his cigarette while in the middle of an important sales pitch.
Benny or “Boom”, sat in the middle of the bull pen. He used to be a newsman at a competing radio station, but wanted to try his hand at sales. Boom punctuated all his sentences with a loud and forthright “Boom!”, a verbal tic that proved not so helpful as a news man, and also proved not so helpful in radio sales. Boom also smoked grass and took the occasional experimental recreational drug. When he called in sick he invariably blamed it on a bad cup of coffee.
In the corner of the room by the window, sat the senior sales veteran, Charlie, an ex-Grand Old Opry banjo player. Charlie lived just outside of Wheeling and had enough property along the highway to sell advertising on temporary billboards when he needed extra money. This presented a small conflict of interest with the station, but everyone looked the other way because it was Charlie and he used to play at the Grand Old Opry, knew Minnie Pearl, and wrote songs in his spare time. On quiet afternoons, he’d preview new songs for the sales staff, always to great applause. He kept the banjo in the corner behind his desk out of the traffic flow.
And finally, next to the filing cabinets sat Doug, a big handsome kid, about twenty-five, Ohio Valley born and bred, the most recent hire next to me, and married to his first and only girlfriend. He had a beagle named Sam and kept his picture on his desk. He idolized the station and the rest of the sales staff and was as happy and proud as can be to be a part of it. His only vice was that he was in love with the country singer Crystal Gale. Her picture hung in a place of honor over his desk next to his Steelers poster.
Before I started working on my phone pitch I wanted to get a little background on the accounts, so every morning for the first couple of weeks, I took the elevator in the lobby of the station to the third floor where all the advertising copy was stored. The elevator operator was an older man who always dressed in dark brown, so he almost blended in with the interior of the elevator. For the first day or two he didn’t speak. Then he started to mutter and growl at me out of the corner of his mouth. His first mutter was “bitch” and his comments got more colorful and explicit every day. It got so I was afraid to get in the elevator. It wasn’t that I thought he would do something to me physically; it was more that his outbursts shook me up and made me think about what I might be doing to provoke them. This was a major distraction from the task at hand, which was survival.
One morning around that same time, I read an update in the Intelligencer on the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, an issue I was somewhat interested in and was following, but only on the down low. If the amendment wasn’t ratified by enough states by June of that year it would be a dead issue forever. I always believed in equal pay for equal work. But I’d focused on the equal work side of the equation. If I wanted to make a decent living I had to get a man’s job. Because if a job were what we now call gender neutral, I knew the man would be paid more and it was obvious to me that traditionally female jobs didn’t pay well.
Since I had been in what was traditionally a man’s job, business to business sales since 1976, I didn’t concern myself too much with the passage of this amendment.
I know this was a selfish attitude, but I believe a lot of women felt the same way. They couldn’t see how the passage of the ERA would affect them personally for one reason or another, so they really couldn’t get behind it. In addition, to say you were a supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment was the same as saying you were a feminist, still a very brave stance to take anywhere in the country, much less in coal country.
There was a related article in the paper that morning about a new sexual harassment law recently put in place. I barely glanced at the article, because once again, I didn’t think it really applied to me. I was never one to be chased around a desk. But that morning, something in the article caught my attention. It was the first time I read the words “hostile work environment” in relation to women. It was as if I were struck in the forehead with a twenty pound mallet. I ripped the article out of the paper very carefully, folded it very carefully, and put it in the back of my notebook. I took the article out and read it multiple times all that day. I was afraid the words would disappear if I didn’t keep reading them and I had to keep those words, and this concept alive.
To be Continued in Chapter 3
WWVA-Radio's 50,000 watt clear channel signal was the official voice of the mines, announcing closing and accidents. Its overnight broadcast was listened to by half the truckers on the eastern seaboard. WWVA-Radio also sponsored a live broadcast of country music, with big name talent, every Saturday night from the theatre next door to the radio station. In my twenties I had the privilege of living in the Ohio Valley and witnessing the end of an era, but while doing so, I was faced with the monumental task of finding work without a skill, college degree, or union card. I applied to WWVA- Radio for a sales job.
I remember Harry, my new sales manager’s first words exactly.
“I’ll be honest with you. We don’t want to hire you. But we have to hire you. The FCC is making us hire a woman-- an 'equal opportunity thing'. We don’t want a woman in our department, there’s never been a woman salesperson at WWVA-Radio in its seventy five year history, but if we have to hire one, you’re the most qualified of the ones who’ve walked in here. So you’re hired.”
“Thank you, Harry, I’ll do my best.”
After a bit it of paperwork, Harry walked me down the hall to the sales bullpen to meet the salesmen, who would normally be sitting at their desks calling on advertisers, but were instead frantically trying to extinguish the fire in one of their colleague's hair with wet paper towels. They all retreated to their desks when Harry walked in. Harry went around the bull pen and pointed to each of the salesman and stated their name. The man with the smoldering hair was Joe, a part-time talent agent who also sold time for the radio station when he wasn’t booking talent into one of the dozens of small bars in the northern panhandle of West Virginia. He regularly set his long dark wavy hair on fire with his cigarette while in the middle of an important sales pitch.
Benny or “Boom”, sat in the middle of the bull pen. He used to be a newsman at a competing radio station, but wanted to try his hand at sales. Boom punctuated all his sentences with a loud and forthright “Boom!”, a verbal tic that proved not so helpful as a news man, and also proved not so helpful in radio sales. Boom also smoked grass and took the occasional experimental recreational drug. When he called in sick he invariably blamed it on a bad cup of coffee.
In the corner of the room by the window, sat the senior sales veteran, Charlie, an ex-Grand Old Opry banjo player. Charlie lived just outside of Wheeling and had enough property along the highway to sell advertising on temporary billboards when he needed extra money. This presented a small conflict of interest with the station, but everyone looked the other way because it was Charlie and he used to play at the Grand Old Opry, knew Minnie Pearl, and wrote songs in his spare time. On quiet afternoons, he’d preview new songs for the sales staff, always to great applause. He kept the banjo in the corner behind his desk out of the traffic flow.
And finally, next to the filing cabinets sat Doug, a big handsome kid, about twenty-five, Ohio Valley born and bred, the most recent hire next to me, and married to his first and only girlfriend. He had a beagle named Sam and kept his picture on his desk. He idolized the station and the rest of the sales staff and was as happy and proud as can be to be a part of it. His only vice was that he was in love with the country singer Crystal Gale. Her picture hung in a place of honor over his desk next to his Steelers poster.
Before I started working on my phone pitch I wanted to get a little background on the accounts, so every morning for the first couple of weeks, I took the elevator in the lobby of the station to the third floor where all the advertising copy was stored. The elevator operator was an older man who always dressed in dark brown, so he almost blended in with the interior of the elevator. For the first day or two he didn’t speak. Then he started to mutter and growl at me out of the corner of his mouth. His first mutter was “bitch” and his comments got more colorful and explicit every day. It got so I was afraid to get in the elevator. It wasn’t that I thought he would do something to me physically; it was more that his outbursts shook me up and made me think about what I might be doing to provoke them. This was a major distraction from the task at hand, which was survival.
One morning around that same time, I read an update in the Intelligencer on the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, an issue I was somewhat interested in and was following, but only on the down low. If the amendment wasn’t ratified by enough states by June of that year it would be a dead issue forever. I always believed in equal pay for equal work. But I’d focused on the equal work side of the equation. If I wanted to make a decent living I had to get a man’s job. Because if a job were what we now call gender neutral, I knew the man would be paid more and it was obvious to me that traditionally female jobs didn’t pay well.
Since I had been in what was traditionally a man’s job, business to business sales since 1976, I didn’t concern myself too much with the passage of this amendment.
I know this was a selfish attitude, but I believe a lot of women felt the same way. They couldn’t see how the passage of the ERA would affect them personally for one reason or another, so they really couldn’t get behind it. In addition, to say you were a supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment was the same as saying you were a feminist, still a very brave stance to take anywhere in the country, much less in coal country.
There was a related article in the paper that morning about a new sexual harassment law recently put in place. I barely glanced at the article, because once again, I didn’t think it really applied to me. I was never one to be chased around a desk. But that morning, something in the article caught my attention. It was the first time I read the words “hostile work environment” in relation to women. It was as if I were struck in the forehead with a twenty pound mallet. I ripped the article out of the paper very carefully, folded it very carefully, and put it in the back of my notebook. I took the article out and read it multiple times all that day. I was afraid the words would disappear if I didn’t keep reading them and I had to keep those words, and this concept alive.
To be Continued in Chapter 3
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