Let’s see, I was probably age 13-15. That makes it about 1960. Some years before, my parents had given me an AM radio. It was brown plastic, with a big circular, lighted tuning dial and one of those fiberboard backs that allowed the smell of the heated vacuum tubes to vent through its holes. Somehow, I’d gotten hold of a WWII surplus aircraft headset and rigged a Radio Shack ¼-inch jack to plug it into so I could lay in bed and listen undetected.
Late-night atmospheric conditions create something called “skip,” whereby distant AM signals bounce back and forth between some lower layer and the earth, and zig-zag over great distances. So, depending on what was going on in the sky, I might be able to pick up stations from as far away as Louisiana or Texas.
But on this particular evening my attention was glued to a local station, WLAN. It was one of two Lancaster offerings and the one that catered more to younger ears. Tony Montgomery, their top late-night jock, was initiating a brand new listener call-in show. You might well consider this the birth of reality programming.
Well, things went pretty smoothy for a bit, then Tony answered a call from a guy who presented him with a riddle. “OK,” Tony enthusiastically replied, “let’s have it.”
“What’s gray and comes in quarts?” the listener asked.
Tony was stumped and for about 30 seconds he kept repeating the question trying to come up with an answer. Finally, he gave up.
“An elephant,” said the listener.
This got right by poor Tony and, totally perplexed, he kept repeating the question and the answer trying to understand. Giving up, he went to the next caller. Truth be told, I’m not quite sure I got it at that moment. But my schoolmates enlightened me the next day.
But that wasn’t the end. A bit later another man called. Obviously drunk and slurring, he offered this: “I jes wanna’ say something abouth the Lancaster girls.”
Tony naively cautioned the caller that he was live on the air, but that didn’t deter him from his follow-up. Suffice it to say it contained a word that starts with “F” and really wasn’t then in parlance as common as it is today.
Suddenly there was just dead air. After what seemed like an eternity, some music began playing and then finally Tony returned. “I am shocked,” was his opening. I really don’t remember the rest. I was too busy thinking, “Geeze, what did you guys expect?”
Next night, a 15-second delay took reality on its first step away from being real.
©2023, David B Bucher
Note: This was submitted to the Lancaster newspaper for their “I Know A Story” nostalgia feature. For some reason, though they published a previous memory of mine, this never made it into print.
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