(CarolAnn has always said I should write a book about my radio career. I don’t think it’s a big deal and haven’t cared while I was still working. Now, recently retired, I’m going to try, one short essay at a time. — DW, December 20, 2023)
My senior yearbook picture, Highlands High School, North Highlands, CA, 1969
As near as I can figure, my first day working in radio was June 16, 1969. It was less than a week after I graduated high school with the great honor of addressing my fellow graduates with a speech I titled, “The Crystal Dream”.
I was only 17 but already writing too-flowery purple prose.
The speech concluded, “You can grab this world by the tail but you must be quick, lest you find yourself holding the shattered fragments of a crystal dream.”
(The word, “lest” is a red flag of purple prose.)
Some capped-and-gowned wiseass back near the 50-yard line fired off a bottle rocket. A guy in the front row lifted his gown and flashed me his privates. Parents and grandparents in the bleachers applauded appreciatively; maybe half of my 400 classmates clapped too, glad that I was finished.
Then we got our diplomas, tossed our caps in the air, and life started.
L-R: Ray Hunter, Pete Olson, Dave Williams, Jim Postak, Mike Worsham (bottom center)
When I was a senior at Highlands High School in 1968-69 I ran with a great group of guys, including my best buddy, Ray Hunter; our shared best buddy, Pete Olson; our other best buddy, Jim Postak; and the only kid I ever knew who was allowed to smoke cigarettes at home, best buddy Mike Worsham. We also had a couple of best buddies on call who had their own groups of best buddies.
Roy Johnson worked at the Der Weinerschnitzel hot dog drive-thru on Friday and Saturday nights. We’d pull up to the window and he’d give us an entire shopping bag filled to the top with french fries free of charge. We called Roy, The Lord of the Fries. We usually arrived close to midnight after a football game and pizza at Shakeys or an evening of mini golf and an hour or two imagining that four guys in Ray’s Ford Falcon might chase down some pretty chicks in a GTO. We actually did that once and cornered the girls in a cul de sac. We had to let them get away because there were four of us and just two of them, and none of us had the guts or the know-how to smooth-talk them.
Our other best buddy was our secret agent, Paul Jimison, who usually ran with the football crowd but was a good guy and always available when we needed him to put on his old man pants and head into the mom-and-pop grocery in nearby Rio Linda to buy beer for us.
The store was called Shop-and-Save. It was little more than a rundown liquor and convenience store in a sketchy part of what passed for a town in Rio Linda. We nicknamed it the Stop-and-Rob because it was accurate.
(You may remember Rio Linda as the Sacramento suburb made famous by my late friend, Rush Limbaugh. He spoke of every yard being adorned by a car on blocks and said he went there each Memorial Day to place a six-pack on the tomb of the unknown bowler. It was an apt description and the folks in Rio Linda loved the notoriety.)
Paul was our age but while the rest of us looked every pimply day of our 17 years Paul looked thirty-something in his little league uniform ten years earlier. When he let his beard grow out a bit, say four hours, he would put on his legendary “old man pants” (loose-fitting khakis, accessorized with muddy work boots and a too-tight flannel shirt) and could easily pass as one of our grandpas.
We were good boys, we really were. We loved our parents and respected our teachers. When we were lucky enough to go on dates we kept our hands and our dirty thoughts to ourselves; at the end of the evening, we were available for a polite good night kiss at the door but didn’t insist on it. We were all Richie Cunningham five years before the TV show Happy Days premiered.
None of that stopped us from occasionally being the bad version of good boys. That’s really part of the journey, isn’t it? Like our parents before us, we experimented with cigarettes and beer when we could get it, but that’s all. Even though this was during the late-60s hippy era we didn’t do drugs, not even marijuana. All we wanted for a rowdy night out was a shared six-pack of beer and a pack of Marlboros to make us choke and cough and feel manly.
That’s why we needed Paul and his old man pants.
In 1968 a six-pack of Coors cost right around $1.87. Cigarettes were 35 cents a pack. Seriously. The four of us ponied up less than a buck apiece and sent Paul inside. He was back shortly with the Coors, the Marlboros, and an assortment of Sugar Babies, Tootsie Rolls, and a pack of Sen-Sen. With 50 cents worth of regular in the gas tank. We were good to roll.
I have no specific memories of nights out with my buddies, just the lingering sense of camaraderie and joy I can still recall from the great times that Ray, Pete, Jim, Mike, Paul, and I shared our blossoming manhood as brothers.
Dear Jim Postak is gone now, the young victim of a hereditary bad ticker. He was a charming and talented singer, a friend everybody loved.
I haven’t seen or heard from Mike Worsham since we graduated. He’s one of those special friendships that seem to just wander through your life and disappear. I hope he’s well and happy.
The rest of us are still waddling along on creaky knees as old men are wont to do.
The Stop-and-Rob was eventually shut down after being busted for selling liquor to minors but it wasn’t Paul’s fault. Word of our success eventually spread to dumber teenage miscreants who assumed the store would sell beer to anyone tall enough to put their money on the counter.
The thing is, they didn’t know the secret of Paul’s old man pants.
(Today, June 20, 2023, is Paul Jimison’s 72nd birthday. Happy birthday, buddy. You finally look like a child.)
A couple of days ago marked the 50th anniversary of my graduation from Highlands High School outside of Sacramento. A few days later I began my radio career.
50 years. It’s a stunning number. And that was quite a week, as I recall.
June 10, 1969 was a Tuesday. School was out and for some three or four hundred of us assembled in the football stadium the entire world of opportunities was laid at our feet.
I gave one of the two student commencement speeches that day. I waxed eloquently and metaphorically about those opportunities and warned my classmates, “You must be quick to grab the world by the tail (dramatic pause)…or be left holding the shattered fragments of a Crystal Dream.”
Our parents and teachers applauded my youthful wisdom. My classmates drank from hidden flasks, fired off a couple of illegal bottle rockets and laughed like hell.
One guy in the front row flashed me his junk under his graduation robe.
I said goodbye to my childhood that day with a handful of close friends who are still close and the girl who would become my wife.
Then 50 years slipped away.
KLIF, Dallas, 2019
In our fascination with big, round numbers we look back on our lives and try to find meaning in the journey. We measure ourselves, comparing then and now.
I’ve been anticipating this big round number for quite awhile and now that it has arrived I’m surprised to learn that it’s not that big a deal except for two things:
