—58—

NOTE: As much as I dislike writing by consensus, I’ve had second thoughts and have eliminated the novel’s opening chapter, the one that takes place in a Queens cemetery, which several of you thought was an awkward start. Thus, I’ve now made the opening chapter the previous Chapter Two, the one about the Captain Midnight’s atomic ring, so as to tell the story more or less chronologically, yet not completely linear. I’m cannibalizing bits and pieces from the former first chapter, so you might encounter a few paragraphs that were in it, such as in this submission, the paragraph using the N-word. To those who complained that the story is depressing, a lot of it is intended to be funny, plus it ends on a positive note with Charlie inducted posthumously into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, while Spencer, en route to Cleveland for the unveiling of Charlie’s plaque, finally finds his show “To Be Announced.”

Four

Charlie’s Tunes for Teens

Charlie Speed nearly died one withering wartime summer when the air was as liquid as varnish. I

was terrified I was going to lose him because I’d already lost my mother—and for all practical

purposes my father.

Death had visited the Spieglers before. Charlie’s younger brother Stanley caught the mumps

and died. Despite that family tragedy, Charlie, while in high school, may not have fully

perceived his own nascent brush with death, often an abstract concept to the young. He’d know

better in the future, of course, and for good reason: his emergency ear surgery, the auto crash into

the Delaware Canal, the stalker with the .22, the bloody wingding riot in Baltimore, the wrathful

spouse with a butcher knife.

Since childhood, I was his closest observer and best friend, and the specter of watching

someone you loved self-destruct, unable to stop it, was a horror beyond calculation. In time,

—59—

however, I came to accept the proposition that Charlie would go violently, his life being marked

by so many tempestuous events. Perhaps he thought so too. That he actually went of natural

causes, premature as his death was, came as a surprise to me, but, in many ways, was a

consolation.

Well before his demise, I harnessed myself to Charlie’s star, unable to halt the ride. I ran the

luminary’s errands, spit-shined his wingtips, knotted his famous bow ties, answered his mail, guarded

his door, shielded him from the teeny-boppers and celebrity fuckers. With women Charlie tended to take

the low road, which accounted for a lot of his screw-ups. But there were occasions when he was at his

best. During a time when cowardly white racists, under cover of dark, were lynching blacks and

bombing their churches, Charlie took risks and celebrated their music. Nigger-lover he was called, filthy

nigger-lover. When that happened he almost became my childhood hero again. Every racial epithet

thrown at him was a badge of honor.

When we were growing up in Sliberty, local ambitions were modest. We lived among those

with blue-collar dreams: regular paychecks from Allegheny Ludlum, Alcoa, and Heinz; Niagara

Falls honeymoons; occasional weekends at Geneva-on-the-Lake, Ohio; giveaway-night dishware

from the Loews Penn; the promise of DuMonts with twelve-inch screens; grandstand seats at

Forbes Field; a half-double with driveway in Shadyside. Charlie, though, might have been from a

different world, and a career as a torch cutter in a mill wasn’t going to slice it, so to speak. He

wanted to become famous, expected to become famous, intended to be famous.

He began that feat in junior high as a kid actor on a radio show called “The Boy Scout

Buckskin Scout-A-Roos,” the singular reason he joined the Scouts—and why I also took the

pledge, as pretentious an oath as it was banal. Nevertheless, the Boy Scout Law—which required

us to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, blah blah blah—wasn’t much different

from the one I took as a member of Don Winslow’s Squadron of Peace. The Scout Motto was

—60—

“Be Prepared,” just as Terry, Flip, Jack, Tom, Sky, Hop, and Captain Midnight were always

prepared. Charlie, despite his slightly bulbous nose, made an impressive looking Scout, standing

tall in his uniform, while I, much shorter, squatter, and awkward, felt foolish in mine.

Still, the day I first donned my new uniform I ran excitedly up the hill to show it off to

Charlie. But before I could reach his house my path was blocked by my oversized nemesis, Billy

Bob Gentry, stupid and combative, nose running, shifting on the balls of his feet. What was he

doing on our street anyway?

“Well, well, what do we got here? A little fairy wearing a khaki suit?”

He brushed his stringy hair from his forehead with dirt-caked fingernails.

I backed away. “Leave me alone, Billy Bob. My mom just bought me this uniform.”

“Reckon you oughta be wearin’ a dress, you fat faggot.”

I wasn’t sure of the definition for faggot, although it was no doubt something even worse

than being fat.

Billy Bob grabbed my cap and spun it into the street. I started to dash after it, but he blocked

me—and just in time, although it was not a favor on his part. A coal truck rattled by just then and

crushed the hat under its wheels. I tried to go around him, but Billy Bob grabbed my arm and

began twisting it with one hand while he pulled at the neckerchief around my neck with the

other. The neckerchief slid from its loose knot and Billy Bob, still squeezing my arm, put the

fabric to his nose and blew snot into it, gobs of snot. Then he shoved me and I pitched backward

into a patch of milkweeds by the walk leading to Charlie’s house.

Charlie, doing his homework by the window of his room, observed the rumpus on the

sidewalk below, and got to us just as Billy Bob delivered a breathtaking kick into my gut.

Charlie said, “Hey, Li’l Abner, too chicken to pick on someone your own size? Like me?”

I saw Billy Bob’s eyes darting from side to side, looking for an escape hatch.

—61—

“Stay out of this, Spiegler. This don’t concern you.”

“Maybe you didn’t know, this kid’s a pal of mine.”

“Spiegler, you keep away from me. You’re two years older than me.”

“But you’re just as big as I am. And a whole lot uglier. In fact, everyone I’ve ever seen from

West Virginia is ugly. And you’re all morons.”

Charlie gave Billy Bob a poke in the jaw, then another in the snoot. From where I lay in the

milkweed, I watched a dizzying whirl of arms and fists. When Charlie was finished, Billy Bob

was bleeding from his nose and mouth, and the rim of his eye was already starting to turn black,

like the dumb dog in those old Our Gang comedies.

“If I hear you’ve been picking on him again, Li’l Abner, I’m coming after you, and it’ll be

even worse. I know where you and your entire rotten-teeth clan live. And stay off our street.”

Billy Bob Gentry ran off, blubbering, in the way of cowards.

“Bet that dopey hillbilly’s got lice,” Charlie said, “so I hope we don’t get ’em.”

He pulled me to my feet.

“Now, old son, let’s get you inside and cleaned up. But first get your cap out of the street.

Maybe my mom can iron it back into shape for you. Hey, nice uniform. Spiffy. We’ll have to put

it in the laundry, though.”

I took off my glasses and wiped the tears from my eyes with the back of my hand.

“Charlie, what’s faggot mean? Billy Bob called me a faggot.”

Charlie shook his head.

“Spencer, I can’t believe you know so little about life, since you’re such a smart kid, no

matter what Wanda Jean Petry says about you.”

“Yeah? Well, I feel the same about her.”

“And all those books you read whenever you’re not listening to the radio. Plus those little

—62—

poems you write…”

“So what’s faggot mean?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

So Charlie didn’t know either.

Occasionally, I wondered why Charlie was so protective of me. I tried to write it off merely

as my being a sort of proxy for the lost, lamented Stanley. But I wasn’t sure. Much later, I

learned a fresh word: sycophant, and I began to shame myself as being the bootlicker Charlie

required to fortify his own insecurities. Perhaps he needed my flatteries more than I required his.

It would take a B.F. Skinner or a Wilhelm Reich to explain it, but all I could afford were Marvel

comics.

Billy Bob found other, less protected kids to pick on, and left me alone. But some months

after his licking he and I became pals, sort of, although well into adulthood, even after he helped

me land an abortive job as a soda jerk at Isaly’s Dairy Bar, where he worked, I’d resent him. As

a peace offering, he gave me a rare Captain Marvel comic book from his own collection. In

exchange, I gave him a Plasticman from mine. It was a better than equal trade for me because

Captain Marvel was the best. The best—and he was never even on the radio, although there was

a kind of radio motif in the strip.

After our comic book swap, Billy Bob began calling me Shazam, although he was too dumb

to understand the complexity of the word.

Shazam was the title of an Egyptian wizard who awarded Billy Batson, boy reporter for

WHIZ radio, the power to turn himself into… Captain Marvel. Shazam was also an acronym for

the various gods—Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury—whose combined

strengths gave Captain Marvel his multiple abilities: wisdom, strength, stamina, power, courage,

speed, all the things I wanted to have but didn’t, and never would. And Captain Marvel would

—63—

never, ever be fat and wear glasses. He wore a red uniform, a yellow lightning bolt on his chest,

and a flowing white cape.

Despite his immense strength, Captain Marvel looked human, more than Superman. My

mom would say Captain Marvel was the image of a Paramount Pictures star with a kind face

named Fred MacMurray, but I always thought Captain Marvel looked more like, yes, Charlie,

although Charlie’s nose was bigger.

Captain Marvel’s worst enemy was the evil scientist, Dr. Thaddeus Bodog Sivana—and until

Captain Marvel was killed off after a copyright infringement suit filed by the malevolent creators

of Superman, he fought, not only Sivana, but the seven deadly enemies of man: pride, envy,

greed, hatred, selfishness, laziness, and injustice.

That’s a hell of a lot of philosophy for a mere ten cents an issue.

I don’t know why they had to do away with Captain Marvel. There was certainly enough

room for more than one comic book hero, especially one with a friendly face who looked like

Fred MacMurray—or Charlie Speed. A second-rate actor with the phony name of Tom Tyler

played Captain Marvel in the Saturday morning movie serials—but compared to the comics, the

Captain Marvel in the movies looked cheesy.

Charlie was prone to ear infections, his first when he was nine after he splashed in the public

pool at Schenley Park. He woke from a nap with a temperature of a hundred-five and a throbbing

pain in his left ear. His mother dosed him with aspirin, nestled a hot-water bottle against his ear,

and helplessly cradled him while he suffered, just as she had done for little Stanley when he was

ill—although nothing could save her youngest son.

The doctor, a pompous ass, in Charlie’s words, wielded a plunger to wash out his ears. Not

unsurprisingly the water treatment failed to cure the infection, the medical marvel ordering

Charlie to stick to it and be brave, my fine young man, and just wait it out because it’ll go away

—64—

on its own.

When the infection resurfaced, as it inevitably did, Charlie’s tonsils were removed, then his

adenoids. Whacking lymphatic tissue was a childhood rite of passage in those days, cozy

operations for the surgeons, but of little value to the patients. The bacteria refused to die, damned

microbes that clung on no matter what. Then the curative creep punctured Charlie’s eardrum to

release the buildup of fluid, an agonizing procedure performed without anesthesia on a chair in

the doctor’s office, two nurses holding Charlie’s head still while the doctor directed the scalpel.

Penicillin would have cured him, but only wounded soldiers were prescribed antibiotics in

the early forties, a medical priority. After it was clear Charlie was suffering from chronic

mastoiditis, the doctor announced an antidote, a would-be benign procedure perfected by Johns

Hopkins Hospital, which involved inserting a thin metal rod tipped with capsules of Radium-226

into each of Charlie’s nostrils.

It was a clever scheme that, if the recent news reports I’ve read are correct, rewarded the

patients with cancers of the brain, salivary gland, and thyroid. The prospect of a radioactive

wand thrust into one’s nose was odious, but according to medical science at the time the rods

were far more effective than the previous modus operandi in which the patients swallowed

radium in distilled water. Charlie underwent six twelve-minute procedures, two weeks apart,

fifty milligrams of radium each time, to shrink the tissues at the approach to his eustachian tubes.

In a search for a cure Charlie was sentenced to an early death, in part caused by radioactivity.

Who knew it then?

Most often his ear infection would lay dormant, and Charlie attended his classes at Carnegie-

Frick appearing to be a charismatic high school kid, hamming it up as he delivered the public

address announcements and blowing the clarinet in his band, the Speed Demons. While he was

fully aware of his hearing loss, it wasn’t particularly noticeable to those around him because, in

—65—

truth, he faked it so it would appear he heard like most everyone else. After all, who didn’t say

“huh?” once in awhile? When he performed poorly in class, the principal, Mr. Moss, more

popularly known as Mr. Moose, wrote it off as a failure to pay attention or to a cocky attitude—

but which I know now was a self-defense mechanism to disguise his deficiency.

Descending upon the schools to test the hearing of the students was an audiologist, pinging

tuning forks of various calibers and scribbling the decibels on scorecards, which was how

Charlie’s deception was discovered. Statistical anomalies on paper were enough to brand a kid.

Deemed hearing impaired, and therefore less educable, he was placed—despite his appeals to

Mr. Moose—into a special class for students suffering from hearing loss and speech

impediments far more extreme than his own: stutterers, lisperers, kids with cleft palates, even

those with no apparent deficiency other than retardation. The class met three times a week.

“Jeez, Spencer, you ought to see some of these kids. I didn’t even know they were in our

school. I can’t tell if they’re really sick or just from Wheeling, and I can’t understand a word half

of them say. How are they ever going to make it?”

He grabbed my arm.

“I gotta get out of that class. I don’t belong there. It’s a zoo. My mother wants to send me to

lip-reading school, but I’ll be damned if I go. I have my pride.”

It was the first time I’d seen Charlie scared—although not the last, as the years were to

prove. When the infection faded into remission, Mr. Moose concluded there was nothing

appreciably wrong with Charlie, decided his low hearing score was an aberration—but primarily

a bad attitude—and discharged him from the class.

Then the worst happened.

In the summer between his junior and senior years, Charlie’s infection flared up again.

“Feel this, Spencer.”

—66—

It was an egg-sized lump, soft and pliable, that rose on the side of his head behind his left

ear.

“Charlie, it doesn’t feel right, like there might be pus in it or something. You better tell your

mom.”

Charlie entered Allegheny General Hospital for emergency surgery the next morning.

I sneaked in to visit him late in the afternoon following his operation, a radical

mastoidectomy. He was in a bed on the twelfth floor, a whopping bandage covering the side of

his head, and a drainage tube leading from his ear into a wad of cotton. He was too knocked out

to know I was there, and I smelled the vinegary ether fumes he exhaled into the room from his

unconsciousness.

His mother’s eyes were rimmed in red, his father’s face ashen; they’d already lost one child,

and now Charlie had nearly died. Mastoiditis was often fatal—unless the infection was removed,

which the surgeons accomplished by carving it away, along with much of the hearing in that ear.

They relined his inner ear by grafting a patch of skin removed from his thigh.

Charlie, a huge bandage over his ear, spent the rest of the summer practicing his clarinet in

the style of Shaw and Herman and listening to his radio heroes, weak and lightheaded whenever

he tried to stand, but pugnaciously vowing to keep up with the rest of his class, mastoidectomy

or not.

“One good thing may come out of this, Spencer,” he told me as we lounged in the screened-

in porch connected to the rear of his noisy house, the radio tuned to Mutual, his mother giving a

piano lesson in the living room, father practicing the violin upstairs. There was always music and

sound at Charlie’s. As I sat across from him I could smell a sickly odor emanating from his

wound.

“When the draft board calls me up for my physical they’re sure to make me Four-F, so I’ll

—67—

never have to be a GI.”

“What was it Captain Midnight said about doing our part?”

“Forget the kid’s stuff, Spencer. I’m way beyond Captain Midnight. When the time comes

I’ll do my duty on the home front. The country will be better off having me right here as a radio

star and speaking out for democracy than dodging Jap snipers on some sweaty island in the

Philippines.”

Shortly after he graduated from Carnegie-Frick, Charlie was ordered to the armory for his

physical, and as he predicted he failed it. When my turn came two years later I also flunked—to

my astonishment as I’d always thought I’d be drafted and become the barrack joke. They cited

my poor vision and the fact I was overweight, something to do with my metabolism. But I

believe it was because they thought I was terminally stupid. When the doctors instructed us to

bend over and spread our cheeks, I grunted and strained futilely until the medic yelled, “With

your hands, asshole.”

On the way back home, sitting in back of the trolley, I overheard some guys who were also at

the armory taking physicals talking about me, one snickering, “Did you see the moron who

didn’t know how to spread his cheeks?”

I was mortified, and plunged my parka’s hood over my face so I wouldn’t be recognized as

the moron who didn’t know enough to open his butthole.

Like Charlie, I never again heard from the draft board; however, long after Hiroshima and as

the Cold War intensified, I obediently carried my Selective Service card, which by law was to be

produced forthwith upon the demand of anyone in authority—and to this day I, as a proper senior

citizen, carry it, laminated, in my wallet, although no one has ever demanded it of me. But it

might happen—just like “To Be Announced” might happen. Will happen.

One day, Charlie and I, having emerged into near adulthood, compared our draft cards.

—68—

“Look at this, old son. It says here we’ve got to notify our local draft board in writing every

time we do something, like relocate or change jobs or get married or unmarried or have kids. If

they think I’m gonna waste a three-cent stamp writin’ to some flunkies in the Fulton Building

whenever I have a life event, well, screw ’em.”

“There’s such as thing as the law, Charlie.”

“If Harry S Truman wants me he can find me on the radio. I don’t intend to hide. I’ll be right

out in the open, ’cause I’ll be famous.”

He was right about that. In time, Charlie made it big in broadcasting and I didn’t, accepting

my fate as one who was to exist under his shadow and thumb. Still, I got a taste of the glory, no

matter how vicarious, which counted for something in a world where, in practical terms, most

people from blue-collar backgrounds like mine lived and died in obscurity.

But I’ve gotten a little ahead of my story.

As Boy Scouts, Charlie and I thought little about the draft, although the war was such a fact

of daily life we could barely remember living without it, much less a future without foreign

enemies. Charlie and I were assigned to the Covered Wagon Patrol and wore patches on our

uniforms to prove it. There was a ridiculous degree of regimentation in the Scouts, and in the

gymnasium of Carnegie-Frick High School, where the Scouts held their meetings, we stood at

attention, marched in formation, saluted the flag, pledged allegiance, recited the oath, pretended

to say prayers to a supreme being, and contemplated good deeds, rarely carried out.

We performed push-ups, sit-ups, climbed ropes, wrestled, ran relays, and some of us were

awarded badges and ribbons. We sang patriotic songs, our hands joined in fellowship, male

bonding as a kind of pre-military orientation. Charlie accepted it all casually, seemed to be

amused by it, and was a good Scout who excelled—but things always came easily for him. I

despised every sweat stained, vile moment, but I wished I didn’t because I not only wanted to be

—69—

like him, I craved his approval. After all, he saved me from Billy Bob Gentry—and my father.

“Spencer, put up with the gymnastics. They’re not going to kill you, and might even help you

to take some flab off. Don’t be a quitter.”

“If you say so,” I grumbled.

“Speak up, Spencer. You know I don’t hear so good.”

I ran a foot race with four other boys around the perimeter of the gym, and half way, lagging

behind the other runners, I faltered and stopped, even though the scoutmaster kept screaming at

me to run, run, run, keep goin’. I was humiliated by my defeat, not so much at losing but by

faltering, and in the view of everyone in the gym, especially the girls.

Charlie tried to make me feel better.

“Listen, I just got a great part on the Scouts’ radio show and I’ll get you on it too if you stick

with the athletics. The show’s about boys and Indians and the woods. The writer used to be a

Scout and all the actors are Scouts. And it’s got a professional director who’s staged real plays in

real theaters and stuff, and he’s also a scoutmaster. So just do what the Scouts expect you to do

—if you want to get on the radio.”

“It’s climbing those ropes, Charlie. I keep falling. And running. I’m too fat.”

“Who cares if you don’t climb the ropes that good? And so what if you fall? You’ll never

need to climb rope again. In real life, who does? It’s just a stupid exercise.”

I did try. Really. And I actually got on Charlie’s radio show.

But only once.

It was on WJAS, the stodgy CBS affiliate at 1320 on the dial, a fifteen-minute public service

program heard early every Saturday morning from the same studio where Uncle Max had

broadcast his show, and it followed a live program of dreadful music sponsored by the Muncher

Family Funeral Home on Forbes Avenue.

—70—

The sprightly theme song of “The Muncher Music Hall” was something about a little pink

and white lady with frills that are shady, and the musicians included patriarch Harlan Muncher

playing guitar, his oldest daughter, Sarah, at the organ, and his youngest daughter, Mina, on

viola. They were so awful I was drawn to their show through a kind of hypnotic revulsion.

With his insincere voice, Harlan Muncher himself delivered the commercials, saying,

“There’s a difference between a good funeral and a bad one, and the Muncher Funeral Home

provides a good one. When your loved one crosses to the other side, cross over to us. Remember,

Muncher makes the difference. And we’re cheap.”

It was the Muncher Family Funeral Home that later buried my mother, and as my father and I

were led by Mr. Muncher himself into an ebony Lincoln sedan for the ride to Homewood

Cemetery, I pictured his hypocritical smile as he amateurishly strummed his guitar on the radio

and delivered his fatuous commercials. No one ever rushed out to buy a funeral after hearing

“The Muncher Music Hall,” of course. Mr. Muncher counted on his name being remembered in

the way of a brand; like, say, Iron City Beer, Pittsburgh’s hops of choice. Or Heinz 57. Even

shitty Ovaltine.

Charlie was so adept on the air he quickly became a regular member of the ensemble cast on

“The Boy Scout Buckskin Scout-a-Roos,” while I, with my nervousness and high-pitched voice

wasn’t cast for any role I tried out for. The director, a self-important, prematurely balding young

man, with a matchstick habitually fused to the corner of his mouth, finally took pity on me.

“Kid, you really tried hard at today’s audition, so I’m gonna write a line for you into the

script. It’ll only be two sentences, but they’re important because they set the direction for

everything that happens later in the story. Understand?”

“I think so.”

Charlie came over and playfully nudged my shoulder.

—71—

“He understands, Mr. Clarehaut. And, besides, I’ll coach him.”

The script, mimeographed in purple ink, was about a peaceful Indian family whose tribe was

threatened by marauding Indians from across the valley. I was supposed to read the line of a kid

barely older than a papoose who first spies the invaders, and who runs to his mother’s teepee

warning:

“Mother, Mother, Chippewa come with many braves. Maybe we tell Father?”

Damn if I didn’t practice.

“Spencer, old son, you’ve got to put more urgency into it. Don’t you understand? The

Chippewa are about to surprise the peaceful tribe, and the little boy becomes a hero because he’s

the first to sound the alarm.”

I read my lines again.

“Jeez, try to sound excited, Spencer. Read your lines like you mean ’em. And don’t be so

damned nasal.”

“Trying, Charlie, trying.”

So I rehearsed. Two sentences, but Jesus Christ maybe I don’t really believe in you but if you

let me do this right I will from now on and even go to church and say my prayers and whatever

else it takes, amen.

Right up until the big moment, over and over, my lips silently formed the words of my two

meager lines:

“Mother, Mother, Chippewa come with many braves. Maybe we tell Father?”

On Saturday morning, right after the Munchers finished their funerary show in another

studio, the organ lady hit the Scouts’ theme, “We’re on the Upward Trail,” and Phillipe Vaughn

—not quite ready to put a bullet into his head—introduced our trifling drama. It got off to a

promising start. Charlie and the other actors arrived deftly on cue, the sound effects of the

—72—

crackling campfire and the chirping birds and the moccasins trampling the forest grass were

impeccable, tension building to the beating of tom toms. I’d gone over my line dozens, nay,

hundreds of times. Finally, it was my moment. The director gave me my cue, pointing directly at

me with a finger that could have fired a bullet.

“Mother, Mother, Father come with many braves. Maybe we tell Chippewa?”

A second of silence. Then everyone knew. I knew. I’d blown it. Got it backward. Fucking

backward.

Mr. Clarehaut stood in the control room and shook his fist at me, the matchstick twitching at

the corner of his mouth, close to erupting in flame. Charlie and the other actors picked up their

lines as if there had been no mistake. I’d blown it. Christ, how I’d blown it. I stepped back from

the mic, shaken, my ears purple with humiliation. Two lousy little lines. I couldn’t even read two

stupid lines that had actually been written into the script for me. When Mr. Clarehaut fired his

finger at me why hadn’t the bullet entered my brain and killed me? In fact, I was dead as far as

he was concerned. Mr. Clarehaut not only refused to consider me for any other parts after my

disgrace, he’d never speak to me again. He took his job seriously. A true professional.

On our way back to Sliberty from downtown on the streetcar I thought Charlie was going to

chew me out, make me eat dirt. Instead, he put his arm around my shoulders.

“Hey, old son, don’t take it so hard. Anyone can make a mistake.”

“But I made my mistake on the radio. In front of everybody. Everybody heard it.”

My eyes filled with self-pitying tears.

“Who’ll remember, Spencer? There’s always another show.”

“I’ll remember. I let you down, Charlie. It was you who got me on the show in the first

place.”

“Look at me. You didn’t let me down. You just goofed. I’ll betcha I’ll make lots and lots of

—73—

mistakes before I’m through.”

Charlie’s pronouncement was more prescient than he or I could have imagined. Have I told

you that his role and mine would later reverse, that it would be I who would one day put my arm

around his sagging shoulders? Don’t touch that dial.

I hadn’t been aware the radio station had made a transcription of the “Scout-a-Roos”

broadcast on which I humiliated myself. In the days before tape, shows were often recorded on

shellac discs, but rarely retained for long because of lack of space, quality, and interest. Why this

one was kept I can’t say, but I wish it hadn’t. A few months later, while dial-switching, I heard a

summer rebroadcast of that fateful Scout show, and this time I listened to my ignominy from the

opposite side of the speaker, the way everyone else had.

And Charlie said who’d remember? Another lie.

I dropped out of the Scouts, never having earned a single merit badge, never having appeared

on another Scout-a-Roos show. Not an uncommon behavioral pattern on my part. In the future

I’d drop out of Pitt, drop out of one job or another, drop out of my marriage. In fact, there was

little I’d ever complete successfully on my own, and it would develop that, even as an adult, my

world would come to depend solely on Charlie.

Unlike the cowardly me, who never advanced beyond the rank of Tenderfoot, Charlie

became an Eagle, acquitted himself with distinction—and went on to perform in another live

Saturday morning show called “Outdoor Adventures with Uncle Ray,” in which a local

naturalist, who was also a teacher at Taylor-Allderdice, supposedly took two boys into the woods

every weekend to demonstrate the haunting mysteries of nature. He was not a pervert as far as I

knew, but I was suspicious.

Uncle Ray had an uncanny ability to imitate bird calls, and he used the voice of a cardinal to

open the show. When the cardinal calls, it’s time for… Charlie played the juvenile lead, and he

—74—

was so good, the station gave him his own program, a sustaining weekly thirty-minute record

show called “Charlie’s Tunes for Teens.” He wasn’t paid, but accepting money for the privilege

of spinning platters on the air never entered his mind at the time—laughable now, the irony of it.

I was unreasonably envious and yet proud of my pal’s success. Standing in the lobby of the

radio station, I looked through the double-glass into the small studio where Charlie perched in

front of a microphone, oversized earphones on his head, introduced the pop tunes of the day,

asinine novelty songs: “Mairzy Doats,” “Bell-Bottom Trousers,” “The Hut-Sut Song,” “Der

Fuehrer’s Face, ” “Johnny Zero,” “Bei Mir Bist du Schon,” “There’s No Yellow in The Red

White and Blue.”

Cheerful dreck, indeed, nothing like the brazen, horny stuff he’d be spinning on the air

several years later, the sort of music that would get him labeled simultaneously as a fearless

innovator, exponent of music from the soul, corruptor of young morals, and Communistic

menace to American values. Hate him or love him, Charlie was going to change everything for

everybody.

So we believed—he and I.

“I know the songs are the pits, Spencer, but that’s all they’ll let me play. I thought I was

going to get away with ‘Rum and Coca-Cola,’ but at the last minute they pulled the record. They

told me high school kids didn’t need to know anything about rum or working for the Yankee

dollar, like the girls sing in the song. What’s so wrong about working for the Yankee dollar?

Jeez.”

“Maybe some kind of work you shouldn’t be paid for?”

“No such thing, Spencer. Also, Coke’s my favorite pop.”

Radio’s changed drastically since Charlie spun those dumb recordings on a little-heard music

show for teens. Today, over-the-air broadcasts aren’t quite dead—yet—but stations are bought

—75—

and sold like herds of cattle, and are about as valuable. The AM and FM outlets that remain are

challenged by HD radio, satellite, Internet, podcasts, iPods, iPhones, iPads. What’s this live

streaming stuff? Charlie would have been bewildered by the options, as am I.

Once, there were just twenty-five 50,000-watt clear-channel stations in the entire nation,

Smoky City’s KDKA being one. The less-elite stations were mostly low-power outlets, often

barely heard beyond the city limits, and where Charlie got his lowly start as a professional, hired

and fired within a matter of weeks.

God bless American radio, and exalt our country ’tis of thee, whatever the hell that means.