In the early 1960's my folks packed up the ole Oldsmobile and we moved from New York City to Basking Ridge, NJ. My parents, wanting more for their kids than a torn postage stamp size backyard, looked west and like many others trekked over the Goethals Bridge to the Garden State. The great exodus of the middle class from the city to the vast undeveloped wilderness was on.
We spent many a weekend looking for the right house and the right location. It was as if Goldilocks was our tour guide. This house is too small, too old, not bright enough, too exposed, too close to the neighbors, too far away from the neighbors. Finally they found nirvana. It was years before the Monkees would parody the existence of the newly minted suburbanite with the song "Pleasant Valley Sunday", but it was true. The local rock group trying hard to learn their songs, charcoal burning everywhere, and the weekend squire coming out to mow his lawn. In our case it was to throw the rocks around the neighborhood with the lawnmower as no grass could grow on the premium top soil my dad bought for the yard.
So once I had settled into my new room, much bigger than the over sized closet I had in New York, I still had my little world, except it was much bigger. As long as I could remember I had an old Philco radio. This thing would pull in the moon, the stars and the planets as well as the New York Radio Stations. New York seemed a world away now.
Night time was really special. My parents would send me off to bed around ten. I would close my door so as to feel comfy in my warren. I had a pair of earphones from a crystal radio kit I tried to make in boy scouts, but could never get it to work. There I would be with this big old philco in its brownish Bakelite case looking to explore the world like Lowell Thomas, all from the comfort of my bedroom. I would turn it on shortly after I was in my room. I kept the volume to a inaudible level as the radio tubes warmed up. The transistor was something new and I wasn't far enough up the food chain to have one. So not wanting to let my parents know what I was doing, once the radio warmed up, I plugged in the head phones to insure they didn't hear me. Then I would adjust the volume. Little did I know my folks could tell in an instant when I turned on the radio because of the high pitched whistle one of the tubes would make and the interference it caused on the television set.
The little dial light seemed to light up my whole room like times square. I could read my comics or Hardy Boys books by the light. My cell phone today lights up a lot better.
There I would sit, at my desk, bathed in the warm glow of the radio dial. Feeling comfortable and secure as the outside world cascaded into my room each night. Twisting the various combination of knobs to listen to music, news or anything I found interesting would have me spell bound. Then I hit upon a radio station that would be forever linked in my mind and lots of my fellow school mates, WOR radio, 710AM.
Now WOR was the station my father listened to each morning. He'd walk between his bedroom and the bathroom with his six transistor Panasonic focused on every word from "John Grambling". I was a kid. How could I have ever hooked onto the same radio station my dad liked? But this was different! This was cool. This was the Shep!
From the very first notes of the bugles to the rousing ending I was hooked on the theme music. Those thunderous tones brought a level of anticipation of what would be experienced in the next 45 minutes. Johan Strauss and his "Bahn Frei Polka" would awaken anyone who was drifting off to sleep just as the show came on at 11:15 each night.
Now how does this all relate to watching a movie with my Emily you may ask? Well the Shep, as he was fondly referred to, was none other than Jean Shepard, the Humorist who's collection of short stories about his childhood were the basis for the "Christmas Story Movie." Many a night I would sit transfixed listening to the stories about life in the Jersey suburbs, the antics of Flick, Schwartz, Miss Shields, his father and the life growing up in Hommand, Indiana.
These stories, told on the radio with background mood music or Shep playing the Jews Harp, expanded our intellect as well as our imagination. We weren't given some movie directors vision of the subject matter. Something cut and edited to fit the format and the time allowed. We were free to see the stories in our own way in our minds. It was a mind growing experience.
As I moved on in life I had the opportunity to drag my wife to several of Shep's live performances. There he would take us into that netherworld of his reflections on his experiences in life and guide us through them like a tour guide through a museum. We shared in his triumphs and tragedy. The pathos of life. It was pure entertainment without any of the gimmicks.
But life has a way of taking some things you cherish and placing them on the shelf of the closet and soon they're forgotten. Every now and again you might remember some little tidbit and have a moment and that fondness of the past tugs at you heart and mind, taking you to another place and time you so cherished and loved.
I bought the books that Shep wrote over the years and even passed them on to my daughters. But as well as a good book does in telling a story there's something to be said about the author telling it in the first person. Shep does this so well as the narrator of "The Christmas Story" that if you closed your eyes you would think is 11:15 pm all over again. It's too bad that he is no longer with us today. He is missed by his legion of fans. As the cult of hardcore fans from the 60's would say, "Flick Lives!"
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