When I was a kid growing up in New Hampshire, there was this show on PBS called “Jean Shepherd’s America”, which was this guy’s “Travels with Charlie”-esque journey through contemporary 70’s America.
He was hilarious, a wonderful speaker and raconteur, and my Dad loved his show.
A few years later, he would narrate a movie based on stories of his life as recounted in his book “In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash” called “A Christmas Story”, about a kid in the 30s who, more than anything, wanted a BB gun for Christmas.
If you haven’t seen this movie, I’d like to know the address of the cave you live in…
… so I could send you the movie.
Anyway. He earned his fame through his writing, but also for an hour radio show he used to do weekly nightly(!!!) for WOR in New York back in the 60s and 70s. He never prepared for his shows; it’s just an hour of him talking and telling stories – like his story of the famous civil rights-era March on Washington. Or his stories about being in the Army.
I could, and do, listen for hours – and there’s no better way to fill an iPod. We look back to the 50s, 60s and 70s as through a glass, darkly. Here’s how it really was.
Max Schmid at WBAI has been putting some of these old shows on the air, exactly as they were first broadcast thirty to forty years ago. Listen to the one on the march on Washington first. It’s incredible.