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.
