As The World Turns

(Parental Discretion Advised. -Ed)

Planet Earth

You don't have to have a college degree to know that man's fascination with women's bodies is Nature's way of insuring  the continuation of the human race on Planet Earth.

 It's what makes the “world go 'round.”

There are always younger men coming along who also have what we old geezers were born with. It's known as the “Wow, look at that!” gene, which is a good thing since older men eventually outgrow that instinct.

Usually by around the age of 95 or so.

What made me think of that is all the construction going on around the Capitol this spring. I'm not sure what all they're building, but this town is getting pretty crowded, so logic tells me that for everything they build, they have to tear something down.

1960 Magazine Ad

An example of this is the fact that there's no longer anything to even suggest that there ever was once a very popular hot spot for Washington's “upper crust” called the Gaslight Club. The club closed many years ago, and the building itself is long gone. But at one time, during prohibition,it was this town's most popular speakeasy. Later, during the early 50's, it was  transformed into a Playboy type Club, but with class!
The White House Correspondents Association held their dinner with the President there in 1963.


 That was also the night I was looking forward to an adventure that I fully intended to brag about for the rest of my life! And it was to begin at the Gaslight Club!

But first, let me set the scene:

Paul Niven, Pat Peyser (CBS radio producer) and Ed Myers

I've mentioned my friend, Paul Niven of CBS news before. He and I were among a small group of single men at the TV station back then and since both of our radio shifts ended around 11 in the evenings we palled around a lot enjoying what was left of the evening's social scene, which was pretty much limited to the late night watering holes in DC and in nearby Baltimore, where Paul's special friend, Blaze Starr performed nightly.

Niven at Kennedy-Nixon Debate

Niven, was the host of “Face the Nation” during that time and I was the announcer. He was one of the“Murrow Boys,”at CBS ; which meant that he was personally hired by the undisputed king of radio and TV news, Edward R. himself.  (There were two groups of "Murrow Boys;" those he hired during WW2 and the second group he hired after he became Director of News at CBS following the war.)

Paul had told me about the time in 1956, I believe it was, after NBC had beaten CBS in the ratings at the Democratic National Convention. This was the very first time it had ever happened, and many believe it was the moment the “Tiffany “network began to lose it's once dominant hold on America's broadcast news and entertainment

Murrow and Monroe
on set of "Person To Person"

Paul said he was with Murrow and a group of other corespondents the day they learned of those ratings.and had adjourned to a “Go Go” bar, as they were called back then, to drown their sorrows. The booze flowed freely and he recalled that Murrow was as “well oiled” as everyone else sitting at his table, but he was nevertheless still eloquent.

“This is a sad sight indeed." (I'm paraphrasing now, but this is close) "Here we are,” he intoned, “the once invincible, after having our heads handed to us by an upstart network (NBC)... with strippers dancing on our grave..”

Murrow in London

Frankly I was a little surprised that my childhood broadcast idol, whose voice from WW2 still rings in my ears...”THIS....IS LONDON!”...would ever spend time in a strip joint.,but according to Niven, Murrow and “his boys” often spent time after work at such places near the CBS offices in New York.

But obviously I was still carrying around my “little boy” image of the great man, long before I learned of nature's “Wow, look at that” gene, implanted in all men.

Paul knew how much I wanted to meet the  greatest of all my  broadcast heroes and mentioned that Murrow had once told him that he would like to meet Blaze.

(The stars were beginning to align...Dear Reader........continue on....)

Paul said he would be seeing Murrow at the Corespondent's dinner the following week and would invite him to go to Baltimore with us after the festivities.

CHS Radio Club 1954

I refused to allow myself to get too excited over something that would have been unimaginable to that young boy sitting in Mr. Ballance's radio class only a few years earlier. But, so far, my life in Washington had been one surprise after another!

Nevertheless, just before his first radio newscast the evening before the dinner, Paul mentioned to me  “By the way, Ed called and said he'd go with us tomorrow night.”

Now, it was time to get excited.

Murrow

According to the plan, the two of them would be waiting on the corner in front of the Gaslight Club on 16th Street (right across the street from the Russian Embassy at exactly 11:30 pm.

As I drove down 16th street I remember thinking how unbelievable this night is going to be!   I'll never be able to convince my old Central High School buddies that this really happened. In fact, I could hardly believe it myself.

Imagine, Edward R. Murrow, Paul Niven and me traveling up to nearby Baltimore in my 1950 Dodge (I was still without my stolen TR3) to attend a Blaze Starr hootchi-cootchi show!

You can't make this kind of stuff up.

However, I wish I could have made up a different ending to this story.

 When I got about a half a block from the gaslight club, I spotted Paul, standing on the corner...alone.

Ed Murrow as head of USIA

Murrow' s wife, Janet, had gotten wind of our plan and convinced her husband that Washington was different from New York, and as a high ranking member of the government (he was the Director of the USIA  at that time) being spotted at Blaze Starr's Two O"Clock Club could prove to be embarrassing.

"But," she added, " Do what you want."  

Which, when translated means,  "You'll pay for this later."

That was a perfect example of  the "Wow" gene colliding head on with the female "Wifespeak gene," which trumps the weaker of the species (the male) every time.

So, with my once in a lifetime, story for the ages, lying in tatters. Paul and I continued on to Baltimore to do our part to "save the planet!


You know, help "keep it turning,"    -Lee


"Computers can now keep a man's every transgression recorded in a permanent memory bank, duplicating with complex programming and intricate wiring a feat his wife handles quite well without fuss or fanfare."     - Edward R. Murrow)

WIFE SPEAK                                            TRANSLATION
You want.                                                      You want.
We need.                                                       I want
Do what you want                                         You'll pay for this later.

We need to talk.                                             I need to complain.
Sure...go ahead.                                              I don't want you to.
I'm not upset.                                                  Of course I'm upset, you moron.
You're...so manly.                                            You need a shave and you sweat a lot
I heard a noise.                                                I noticed you were almost asleep.
Do you love me?                                             I'm going to ask for something expensive.
I'll be ready in a minute.                                    Kick off your shoes and watch T.V.
You have to learn to communicate.                   Just agree with me.
Are you listening to me!?                                   [Too late, you're dead.]
No.                                                                  No.
Maybe.                                                            No.

.-Anon

Twilight Time Again

("Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."  -Albert Einstein)


Before you read any further, take another look at the picture on the left.

There's a fine line between reality and illusion, and coincidence and fate
.
Sometimes it's hard to determine which is which.

Consider, for example, those moments when we arrive at some new location and suddenly feel that we've been there before or those emotions that flash before us that are exact replicas of those felt 40 or 50 years ago.

Just last week, our power here in the house went out for about 5 minutes. When it came back on I had to re-set all the electrically powered clocks. Strangely, though, I had to roll them all back 10 minutes, to match the correct time! Had the power failure occurred 5 or10 minutes into the future?

All in a Name


In broadcasting, the era of the ANNOUNCER was coming to an end in the late 60's.  When I joined WTOP in Washington, we had a staff of 10 announcers. Now, even the largest stations have no more than one or two, who record the station breaks etc, instead of doing them live as in the old days.

There were 5 of us one evening sitting in the “announcer's lounge” talking about “names.” The station had given us all  “air names” that they felt would be easier for the listeners and viewers to relate to and remember..

Casper App was given the name “Jamie Bragg.” Donald Resnick was “Don Richards," John Wilkinson was 'John Douglas,"  Sam Donaldson was allowed to keep his real name as was Roger Mudd.


I asked Roger one time how he was able to keep his real name, when they changed my perfectly good name Ed Myers.

He said that shortly after he started work at the station a breaking news story required that he go on the air immediately before management had come up with a new name for him.and since he had already appeared under his real name it was decided that it was too late to change it.

In my case, of course, the fact that when I was hired there was already an “Ed Myer” on a competing station in town so changing my air name actually made sense.

Anyway Jamie Bragg happened to mention that the announcer with the most unusual name he had ever worked with was a fellow named “Grey Olive.” who was the chief announcer at the station in southern Virginia where Jamie had begun his radio career 15 years earlier. Jamie swore that Grey Olive was his real name and had no idea if he had ever changed it, or even if he was still in the business, since he hadn't seen him again in all those years.

Not two minutes later the phone in the lounge rang and it was for Jamie. He picked up the phone and literally turned a bright shade of white.

The caller was Grey Olive.

-Ed

(Rarely do events like this have so many witnesses....who still talk about it after all these years.  -Ed)

Say It Ain't So Joe

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And Now for My Next Number

Frank Sinatra

My taste in popular music atrophied after the late 50's and early 60's. Frank Sinatra is no longer played on the radio; except perhaps on some oldies station in New York or L.A. But if you ever get up to the Falls Church, Virginia area and are in need of a Sinatra fix, you're welcome to drop by my grand kids house and listen to their CD boom box. However, it's not Sinatra ALL the time. They'll mix in some Rose Mary Clooney, Mel Torme, Tony Bennet, and Steve Lawrence and Edie Gome tunes spiced with a little Count Basie, Dave Brubeck and things like that.


I'm proud to say that I'm responsible for their taste in popular music. Being brainwashed by your Grand daddy, who has a pretty good ear for  music, is a lot better than the kids growing up thinking that mindless, tuneless, dissonant banging and screaming is good music.

Steve Lawrence and Edie Gorme

At Easter dinner a few weeks ago, one of the boys asked me if I had ever met Frank Sinatra. “No, I never met him, but I saw him live in a concert one time.”

“How about Steve Lawrence. Did you ever meet him.”

“No, I'm afraid not. However," I added, "I once replaced him on a national radio music show.”

The rolling of the eyes began. As you know I love telling stories, true stories, but my grand kids don't believe them and they won't listen long enough to hear, as Paul Harvey used to say, “the rest of the story.”

This time neither boy even finished dessert before both announced in unison, “We love you Grandaddy, but we're outta here.”

Here's the rest of the story:

Around 1963 or 64 the US Air Force Band, based at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington decided to expand their very successful “Serenade in Blue” show which was played on over 2200 radio stations in the county at least once a week (The shows were on records that were handed out to the stations by the local Air Force recruiters.)  The radio stations got “brownie” points from the FCC for playing these “public service” programs. All the services had a show like this...with names like “Here's to Veterans” "Your Navy Show," etc.

The Air Force decided to expand their audience even more by producing a new show for FM stations, which were just coming into their own, with a show called “Serenade in Stereo.” They chose Steve Lawrence as the host of the show.. However, because of some sort of contract difficulty, he wasn't allowed to sing on the show, just announce.

After the first album was cut (13 shows) someone high up (no pun intended) in the Air Force said, “Wait a minute. It sounds very strange to have Steve Lawrence hosting the show....and NOT sing. Plus, he never was in the Air Force. He was in the Army!


So the search for his replacement was on, and I was fortunate enough to be chosen. The big brass liked the job that I did, so decided instead of two shows, one in stereo and one in mono (for AM stations), they would produce only one show that could either be aired in stereo or mono and go back to their well established title, SERENADE IN BLUE with me as host.



I did that show for 7 years. Being heard in almost every city and small town in America was an announcer's fondest dream. It was certainly the highlight of my radio career. Not only that, but for years people who had served overseas would tell me about hearing me in Germany, Bangkok, or Vietnam, anywhere Armed Forces Radio was heard.

Lee Shephard 1964

Each show featured at least one outstanding singer of the time such as Jon Hendricks, Carmen McRae, June Christy,  Matt Monroe, Joe Williams, Sarah Vaughn, Lou Rawls, and you name it. And there has never been a better Jazz band than that edition of the Airman of Note. Remember, this was the Vietnam era.  The Air Force picked the cream of the crop of young American musicians just as their predecessor, the Glenn Miller Army Air Force Band did in WW2.

What an honor it was to be associated with such rich musical history.

Am I bragging?  Yes.

  -Ed

The Charlotte Clippers etc...

A couple of years ago, I wrote about the time I went out for recess at Elizabeth School and, Shazam!, in that vacant lot right next to the school playground the Detroit Lions were playing football!

I thought perhaps it was another hallucination like the time I thought I saw a Nazi fighter plane land in my backyard.

But no. It was real.

Clippers vs Lions 1946 photo by W.H. Sumner

Frankly I was surprised that so many of you  actually remembered that Charlotte once had a professional football team many years before the Carolina Panthers were ever dreamed of. A fellow named Bob Gill wrote a history of  minor league football in the 30's and 40's, which were the "golden years" for those leagues. He says the "Dixie League," which the Charlotte Clippers were part of, was one of the most successful, but least remembered of them all.

Here are the facts according to Bob Gill's THE COFFIN CORNER: Vol 10 Annual (1988)

The Clippers joined in 1941, the league's most successful season:

 1941 Standings W L T Pct PF PA

 Norfolk Shamrocks 7-1-2 
 Charlotte Clippers 7-3-0
 Newport News Builders 6-3-1 
 Portsmouth Cubs 3-7-0 
 Roanoke Travelers 1-9-0 

 In 1942 the league suspended operations for the duration of World War II.

 But in early 1946, the Charlotte Clippers, led by backs Casey Jones and Butch Butler and end Rocci Spadaccini, battled the renamed Richmond Rebels neck-and-neck until Richmond lost its 
final two games to give Charlotte the title.

 It was a great season

 1946 Standings W L T 

 Charlotte Clippers 9-1-0 
 Richmond Rebels 7-3-0 
 Norfolk Shamrocks 5-5-0 
 Portsmouth Pirates 4-6-0 
 Greensboro Patriots 4-6-0
 Newport News Builders 1-9-0

 For 1947 the league had a new president, Tom Hanes, and two new teams. The 
Greensboro franchise was shifted to Winston-Salem, and Roanoke was readmitted, 
replacing Newport News, the weak sister of 1946. But both new teams dropped out 
before the start of the season, leaving only four clubs in operation. Still, with the prospect 
of expansion in 1948 to Knoxville, Jacksonville, Atlanta and Birmingham, the league was 
determined to continue. 

 Charlotte and Richmond were expected to battle for the title again, and in the season 
opener Oct. 5 the Clippers got the best of the Rebels, 21-13, to take the league lead 
along with Norfolk, which edged Portsmouth 7-3. 

 Three days later there was no league at all.

 Here's how it happened: 

 First, Portsmouth owner Charles Aberson announced Oct. 7 that his health wouldn't 
allow him to operate his team. He transferred the franchise to a Charlottesville group for 
the rest of the season, with the stipulation that it would revert to Portsmouth in 1948.

 A day later Richmond stunned the league with the announcement that it had bought 
the failing Long Island franchise in the AFL (the re-formed American Association) and 
was jumping ship. 

 President Hanes protested to NFL commissioner Bert Bell, who agreed that he hadn't 
approved the shift, but added something to the effect that it wasn't really any of his 
business. It was clear that he wasn't going to be much help.

 That left the Dixie League with little choice but to close up shop -- and though there 
was talk of reorganizing for 1948, it never panned out. Players from the Norfolk and 
Portsmouth teams combined to play out the season as independents, and in fact did well, 
but it was no use. 

Charlotte kept going through 1949, fielding good teams each year and 
hoping for a berth in the AFL, but never getting one. 





Hats off to Bob Gill for a great job!

A sidenote: Gill noted that in 1937 Norfolk led by "Mush"Delotto, A.B. Conner and Charlie Gadd defeated Richmond for the championship. If Delotto had returned a year earlier when Maurice "Mush" Dubofsky was playing for the Baltimore Blue Birds, the league would have set a record by having the most players named "Mush."  -Ed

Margaret

I think I had one of the greatest jobs in the world. From 1966 til 1969 I hosted a local TV show in Washington, DC that allowed me to interview almost every celebrity who showed up in this town during that time.

It was a “dream job.”

But it still was a job. Not only did I have to try and ask reasonably intelligent questions of my guests and hope that their answers were good enough to keep the audience interested, but I was in charge of lining up and booking the guests as well.

Five days a week.

In an era in which everybody was obsessed with “getting on TV,” you would think that was the easiest part of the job.

Nope.

Ed with leaders of USAF Band

Next to getting enough interesting and entertaining guests to fill all those shows, weeding out the uninteresting and boring hoards who were constantly pestering me to get on the show, was the next hardest part of my job. Friends and even co-workers would lobby me on behalf of a friend or relative who would make a “fantastic interview..”

It was very hard for me to say “no” to these people. I tried to avoid some of the more persistent ones, but that wasn't always possible.. One of those, for example, was Margaret Runyon. She was the switchboard operator who sat only a few feet from the entrance to the lobby of the station directly in the path of everyone who entered the building.

Ed with Mission Impossible star Gregg Morris

Margaret wanted me to interview her ex husband, with whom she was still friendly and who she said was a very good writer; even though some people thought his poems were a little strange.

I'll bet.

So hardly a day went by when Margaret didn't bring up Carlos, that was his name, and how his writing career was going.

Margaret Runyon

She was good hearted and sincere and I hated to keep saying “no,” but I knew that I had to keep the level of guests up to the highest standard possible. I needed people who were nationally known and who would give my audience a reason to tune it.

But there was no way of avoiding Margaret (unless I entered the station through the window) so I had to keep telling her that the show wasn't going to survive very long if I started featuring unknown writers of strange poetry and so forth.

I guess the message finally got through because she stopped mentioning her ex to me.

Then, one morning about a month later I arrived at the station and greeted Margaret and the other switchboard operator and as I passed by the reception area she removed her headphones, turned to me and announced that someone had written an article about Carlos.

“How nice, who did it?”

“Time Magazine,” she replied.

Yep, there it was:

The Mysterious Carlos

On the cover.




“The most mysterious man in America:


Carlos Castaneda.”

That picture of Carlos with his hand over his face could well have been taken of me at that moment.  Only, I wasn't trying to be mysterious.

Just embarrassed.    -Lee





(NOTE: Now the punchline of this story may fall flat on those who either were not around or who did their best to ignore the popular culture of the 1960's. I would have been a cheerleader for the latter except that I was in the Television business, which was a major player in those theatrics.)

From Wikipedia:

“Carlos Castaneda was an author and anthropologist born in Cajamarca, Peru in 1925. He burst onto the scene with a popular book about entheogens (drugs used in spiritual ceremonies) and the magical world-view as reality in the middle of a time of academic and cultural upheaval.

His stories of a wizened old sorcerer, a man who came from a long line of peyote and mushroom-using wise men with extraordinary powers, captured the imaginations of students, hippies, and scholars. His original book is presented as a "UCLA PhD Anthropology Thesis", but it was a highly radical, postmodern piece of anthropological 'field work'. Castaneda's work was a watershed for critique and thought by cultural anthropologists and brought many new, excited minds into the field.

There is a cult of personality that is associated with Castaneda; he is sometimes called the godfather of the New Age movement. -Wikipedia”

(PS-During his early days of "fame" Carlos cultivated the "mystery" about who he really was. Heeding Margaret's advice, he avoided being photographed  lest, she argued, that people discovered that the  "purveyor of the new mysticism was a guy who looked like a Cuban bellhop."   -Ed)

Ungawa

Is geography taught anymore in the public schools?  I seem to remember hearing that they were considering doing away with the subject because with all the upheaval in the world, geography was changing too fast for the textbooks to keep up.

Piedmont Jr. High

Maybe I dreamed that.

I enjoyed the geography course that I had at Piedmont. It was all about the Tigris and Euphrates and stuff. It was not only interesting, but I felt that I learned a lot. For example, the women washed the family's clothes in those rivers, getting the real grimey dirt out by banging them on the rocks.  I don't know why that fascinated me so, but it did.

Unfortunately, I tried that one time at camp...and ripped the Hell out of my best shirt.

But I wasn't the only kid at Piedmont who was captivated by geography.  In fact, it was the most popular subject at that school.

The reason I know that is because the library would overflow with us male scholars whenever the new National Geographic Magazine would come in.

Washing their clothes in those rivers must have ripped up a lot of their clothes too, because they didn't seem to have many.

However, there was an inverse relationship in my enthusiasm for geography and the number of facial piercings of those anatomically interesting  ladies.


And never in a million
years could I have imagined that I would live to see American women doing their damdest to look like them!       -Ed

Here comes the bride

I think I know this woman

Hi Mom!

And then I invented...

I haven't been to a bar in years. I used to go a lot, not necessarily to drink but that's where a lot of business was conducted in the 70's and 80's. I don't know, but maybe it still is.

It was also where BS reigned supreme.  Get a little alcohol in some people, and you can almost see them ripping off their Clark Kent disguise and becoming Superman or Albert Einstein, Bill Gates,  or...you name it before your very eyes. I was always too embarrassed  (for them) to confront their wild imaginative ramblings head on, so I usually just took that turn in the conversation as my Que to head for home.

And, of course, there's always the chance that one of those wild tales is true!  A  CBS TV engineer friend of mine who had retired and  moved to Florida, was telling me about being in a bar when the news came on the TV and the reporter was reminiscing about the Kennedy years and up came the JFK film of his inauguration speech..."...so ask not what your country can do for you, but ........."

And my friend remarked to the stranger next to him that...."Hey, I shot that film." (Which he had; he was operating the network's number two pool camera that day in 1960.)

Word spread at the bar that the bozo wearing the green jacket claims that he took that film....etc...and he literally got laughed out of the place.

But bars are not the only places where wild stories abound. You can run up on them almost anywhere, even walking down the street.

For years, there were stories of a bizarre looking old lady who would stop strangers on the streets of Hollywood and say, "Would you believe I was once a famous star?"

She finally got arrested a couple of times, not for being a public nuisance, but for shop lifting.

As far as I know, all of those people she accosted basically just ignored her hoping she'd go away.

That's too bad because she could have told them that she was also an inventor
 who, in 1942  secured a patent and gave it to the United States government for a "secret communications System expressly constructed to help in the defeat of Hitler. The patent was for "spread spectrum" devices, which serves as as basis for the technology we use today in cell phones, pagers, wireless Internet, defense satellites and other spread-spectrum devices. She never received a penny for her invention which expired in 1959 and was never used until modern times.

Once known as the most beautiful woman in the world, as she aged she turned to plastic surgery hoping to preserve her beauty but it backfired terribly. 


According to Helen Gent, her biographer, by the age of 50 she was living on benefits, her face so distorted from plastic surgery that her son said she looked like "Frankenstein's monster."

Half her life was a glittering dream,but the second half was a tragic waste.

Rest in Peace Hedy Lamarr.

"The Most Beautiful Woman in the World"

-Ed