The Rant D’Jour is one of a series of misadventures where I attempt to fix something around the house. It’s a series of stories. Most of them pretty funny. This is from last year, around this time.
Did you ever have one of those perfect days? You get out of bed in a good mood. You shave yourself without opening a vein. The breakfast is made without setting the house on fire or dropping…more
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Blog Post for Friday 3/18/11 – 38 degrees and spring is here on Sunday.
I remember the day Jim Morrison died. No idea why I was thinking about this. But the day was July 3rd, 1971.
It was the year I graduated from high school.
I was set to attend college in Boston in the fall. I had no idea what that was going to be like and probably wasn’t thinking too much about it. My priorities that summer were working on the radio, getting drunk and getting girls. Pretty much in that order.
It was a Saturday. I was working at WSNO in Barre, Vt. WSNO was a Middle Of The Road music station. We probably played “Love Her Madly” at the time. It’s doubtful we played any other “Doors’ songs.
The news came in over the Associated Press teletype machine. Those were huge, noisy machines that were connected by phone line to AP Bureaus across the world. It constantly typed out news, weather and sports on cheap flimsy paper and had a bell that would go off when important news moved. In the control room, not quite soundproof, we could hear both the clacking of the machine (softly) and the bell (a bit better) when the room was quiet.
I was 17. Death had no sting for me. Jim Morrison was this mythical cat, not a real presence in my life. A cartoon character.
The format, and the station being what it was, I don’t recall making a big deal out of the death of Jim Morrison on the air. I am sure I read the story, possibly as a bulletin, most likely just as part of a newscast. National and International news was covered by CBS and I don’t recall them making a big deal out of it either.
I wish I could say I went up against the program director, locked myself in the control room and played Doors songs until they busted in and took me away in hand cuffs. That would be a great story.
But it’s not what happened.
I was playing “Knock Three Times” by Tony Orlando and Dawn, reading ads for farm tractors and wondering if I could get my hands down some young ladies pants later that night.
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