The Radio Sorcerer Of The Redwood Coast

Dean Elliott was entitled to the honorific of “doctor,” which he refused to honoriff to himself, and he didn’t want you to do honoriff him with it either.  “The Latin root of doctor means ‘to teach,” Dean said,. “Doctoral degrees require an original contribution to a given field, except one. Medicine. I don’t practice medicine and I don’ t teach.”

Oh, but he did teach.  Maybe not in a classroom, although he had done that in an earlier time, which I’ll get to in a moment.  Consider his creds:

* Bachelors and masters degrees in Latin and Greek from Hamilton College,  a small college in upstate New York founded in 1794 with Alexander Hamilton as a trustee.

*  Member, Phi Beta Kappa.

*  A doctorate in mathematics from Northwestern University.

*  Military service in WW2 as a lieutenant commander in the Navy assigned to the Office Of Strategic Services, the predecessor of the CIA, where he taught code to agents who would be parachuted into German occupied France.

*  An accomplished pianist who earned extra money while attending Northwestern by playing piano in Chicago clubs, including with touring bands that  needed a pickup pianist, Benny Goodman’s and the Dorseys’ among them.

*  A godfather named Rudyard Kipling.

How did Rudyard Kipling get into the mix?  Damned if I know, but I can guess.  Dean was in his sixties when I met him in 1966. He was born in Governeur, New York, a town named for Governeur Morris, one of the signers of the Declaration Of Independence.  Dean’s father was a man of means and an anglophile.  He sent Dean to England to attend Harrow, a prep school on the order of Eton where privileged boys lived on bad diets and cold baths.  Kipling visited America now and then, and became pals with Dean’s father, enough of a pal to attend Dean’s christening and be named as Dean’s spiritual and moral guide.  Maybe Kipling influenced Dean’s father to give the lad the benefit of a British schooling, lousy food and all.

Okay, so how did a high school dropout like me get to know such a man?  Well, we both worked for the same small radio station in Eureka on California’s north coast.  Dean was the chief engineer.  I was an announcer/DJ/guy who emptied waste baskets and part time newsman.  I was just starting my broadcasting career.  Dean was finishing his.

At the time he was converting rhe station’s ancient Collins transmitter into solid state, which is like making a Lambroghini out of a Ford Escort.  He replaced the huge glowing tubes with equally huge transistors he’d designed and fabricated from old telephone transformers.  Those are the big gray things that look like garbage cans atop telephone poles.  When he was done, it only took seconds to get the station on the air instead of the usual half an hour to allow the tubes to warm up.  He also taught voice, piano, overhauled the organ for his Episcopal church and learned to play the recorder, the medieval predecessor to the flute.  He was active in the March Of Dimes and a promoter of the Republican party at a time when being a Republican was not seen as a character flaw.

Dean also had an on-the-air shift on Sundays playing classical music.  He loved the music but hated the shift, showing up for work in his Beethoven sweatshirt with a shopping bag containing a quart of Rainier Ale, a science fiction magazine, a bag of Fritos corn chips and a grim look on his face. It was not wise to talk to Dean at such times. The ale was against federal rules and station policy, but Dean had all the modifications he’d made to the station in his head and not on paper, which gave him unlimited job security, but he still had a corn chip on his shoulder about having to pull a record shift.

About that time I was dawdling about returning to school.  Hell, I had a high school GED, why bother?

“Because tough times are coming, that’s why!” Dean exploded at me. “You can either get an education or go on welfare!”

So I enrolled in College Of The Redwoods that fall and graduated Humboldt State four years later. I was working at the station the night of my graduation.  Dean showed up with two quarts of Rainier Ale to celebrate. 

His approval was my Phi Beta Kappa key.

-o-

Any sound and fury?

Mike, just a minor point. The first "doctorate" was granted by the University of Bologna in Italy and was in law, not medicine or some academic field. [You can see Portia referred to as "doctor" in "The Merchant Of Venice"]. Good story. --  HadleighSJD

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Nice. And so glad to see the Times again. Wish I'd had a Dean in my life. Glad you found him, or, he found you. – Penny

Thnanks.  Right now I'm going round and round with the editing function of this jewel of a program trying to match up the fonts.  I wish Dean was here.  He's figure it out in a jiff.

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One comment, not on your words per se, but on those quoted from the subject, Dean Elliott, where he says only the physician is called "doctor" without having contributed something original to his profession.  I have a doctorate in law (Juris Doctor degree) and while I believe I have made original contributions to the profession, it wasn't via any formal, peer-reviewed means, that is, like the physician, I have a doctorate without having had to write a dissertation and have it accepted by an academic board.  – Trog.

Thanks.   Noted and posted.

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'Bout damn time! – Brat

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Thanks, Mike!  Been far too long between TManTimes fixes here. -- Sum
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Are these new pieces? Good for you getting them out for your adoring reading public.  -- Karen

Sorta.  This one has been simmering in my computer for years.

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It's really nice to get something from you after a long time. Thanks. – Zoey

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Love it!! – Juli

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Enjoyed your story.  Your conversational style is easy on the brain. – Gambatay

I have to really work at seeming relaxed.

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Could you play "Misty" for me ?  -- Gerard

Can’t read music.  But then, neither could “Misty” composer Errol Garner.  Anyway, “Play Misty For Me” was a stinker of a movie.  Any disc jockey who could afford a Jaguar XK-120 and a redwood house in a radio market the size of Monterey, as Clint Eastwood’s character did, is selling nose candy for the Medellin cartel.  He also has a lousy radio voice.  However, he  is an accomplished jazz pianist.
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Nice article, as always, and good to hear from you again – SOY

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We all need a Dean in our life. Our world would be in much better shape. I always have a hard time holding onto my grumpyness after reading your articles ...always make me smile  -- Tammy

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It's really nice to get something from you after a long time. Thanks. – Z

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Love it!! – Juli

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Enjoyed your story.  Your conversational style is easy on the brain. – Gambatay

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An absolutely fantastic character sketch of a person, so real, I feel acquainted! --Ig Bear

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Love it!  -- Shannon

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Good read thanx for sharing !!  Much love  -- Renaldo

Age Is Not Your Friend

Hang around the coffeehouses of midtown Sacramento long enough and you risk becoming a character, an aging guy who wears Birkenstock sandals, a ratty denim shirt, and  has what remains of his hair pulled back in a ponytail.  If you're female, facial hardware and purple streaked hair is just around the corner of your life.

Such people keep the Peace And Freedom Party on the ballot and lead the fight to legalize pot for medicinal purposes. And here they are, sipping Guatemalan Ganja Roast at little round tables while perusing the personals ads in the alternative weekly. Thing is, I fit right in as far as the age cohort goes. Only I don’t have enough hair for a ponytail, I wear cheap sneakers instead of Jesus shoes, and I think the Peace And Freedom Party is comprised of useless ninnies whose brains were permanently fried during the Summer Of Love. 

 Not all the patrons are that depressing. As Saul Bellow wrote in Henderson The Rain King, “Every 20 years the earth replenishes itself with young women.”  A lot of them spend time in coffeehouses. But these young women are not the ingénues Bellow imagined when he wrote those words in 1959. With their purple hair and hardware piercings, they are hardly the type to be draped in the creations of Oleg Cassini, as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was before she broke America’s heart by marrying That Greek. 

 No indeed, these latter day waifs appear dressed and accessorized in poverty chic by a couturier with a rapper name like Hott D. Dawgg. Not one Vogue model among them, but nor are they like the bubble-brained Gidgets of the Jackie O era. They appear to be determined students as they tap away on laptop computers or have their pierced noses buried in serious books. Who knows? One of them may cure cancer or herpes some day. Besides, I am no Halston model myself. I was clad in an old flight jacket and a grubby beret I affect to cover my shiny bald head. A pair of khaki pants completed my warrior ensemble. Some warrior. I spent four years in the military during the Vietnam war making damn sure I never got within 500 miles of the shooting. That’s how you become an old warrior. 

 Anyway, I was waiting to meet an on-line pal I'll call Bill, an aspiring writer I met in an on-line chat room where all the chatters are nominally writers, or claim to be, even though they may only write overdue checks. Some of them even read books. 

In fairness, I have met some actual published authors in that chat, a few of them quite well known, although most of those were run off by the viciously envious or by desperate appeals to read unreadable works in progress. Besides, the successful ones are too busy actually writing to spend much time in a computerized rehab for the chronically lonely.      

Bill wrote that he was composing a memoir.  I’m doing the same thing myself. As Bill is about my age, I thought we could have fun by sharing our views on what we had done during our three score and change on this mortal coil. So we agreed to meet at a coffeehouse on neutral turf, halfway between his place and mine, in a kind of cerebral blind date between two old heteros who could at least compare Medicare coverage if their literary nattering fizzled to silence. 

 Turns out Bill was another coffeehouse character, like me, and yes, I do tend to judge by appearances. Anyone who doesn’t is someone who reads with his fingers and carries a white cane. Bill’s appearance betokened a womanless existence in subsidized housing: hospital scrubs, thrift shop pants, a Greek fisherman’s cap and fingernails that apparently had not been clipped since June. He was also pushing a wheelchair. “I have emphysema,” he said, adding that he had broken both kneecaps in a fall years ago. “I push the wheelchair for exercise, and so I can sit down when I run out of breath.” 

 In short, except for the wheelchair and fingernails I was seeing myself. As we talked about our efforts to write memoirs, it occurred to me that we were actually writing our epitaphs. That was not a good thing. I do not need help being depressed, although, depression, like self-pity, is always sincere. 

 I made my excuses to leave after an hour’s stroll down a littered and weed choked memory lane, coming away with a resolve to only visit that coffeehouse to drink coffee and sneak looks at the girls. That way my character can remain in character without a lot of bad news.

 I wrote the above last summer, or maybe spring, or maybe a year ago. I don't know. But I do know that since writing it, the Divine Yawp or whatever diety is running the Holy Bureau Of Retribution has bestowed a case of emphysema upon me. I imagine a 50-year cigarette habit, since ceased, also contributed to my wheeze-along existence. I am not yet pushing a wheelchair as a rolling rest stop, but I am backpacking a portable oxygen bottle when venturing out. At home I'm tubed to a squat little machine I call R2D2.  Like its Star Wars namesake,  it makes noises and blinks lights, but with the added benefit of helping me breathe normally instead of gasping like a landed carp.

I tellya this aging stuff is whole lot of not fun. 

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