When I was but a child- an older child of 20 or so, I started my career in Radio.
It was a long time ago but recently I was thinking about the early years. I was wet behind the ears but excited at the opportunity to work my magic behind a "live" microphone. I had been second in my class at Broadcasting School only to be beaten by Chris Wilson.
He was good, had a real smooth voice and one of the best moustaches I had seen-ever.
I think I actually heard him on radio years ago down around St. Catharines or maybe it was Toronto.
I never thought I had the best voice ever for radio but I thought I was sincere on air and always remembered to image I was speaking to just one person when that mic switched on.
Usually in the first few years of my broadcasting career, I worked the six to midnight shift and a couple of times midnight to 530.
That's how a new radio person learned the ropes.
Back in the early 1970's it was usually all guys on air.
Maybe Betty Kennedy in Toronto on CFRB but in the stations where I worked there was never a female voice on air until early 1980 when Sharon Edwards started working at CHAY FM in Central Ontario.
A few times over the years a gal would do a commercial voice but other than that- nothing.
As a kid I do remember Auntie Marg on CFOR in Orillia. She also did a "Woman's Programme"- as it was known in those days.
You know- recipes and such.
Woman's stuff!
Basically though, it was just the men.
Working nights at a couple of stations I saw a lot.
I mean- A LOT!
A lot of men doing things that they shouldn't be doing and expecting me to me a "man-pal" and say nothing about what I saw.
Most radio stations seemed to have a couch in the Manager's Office.
"How cozy and comfortable"- I thought.
In those days I seem to remember that ladies were supposed to have a "couch" somewhere at work where they could lay down if their Aunt from Red Bay came visiting.
I soon found out that the couch in the "Manager's" Orifice...
Sorry, I mean office, performed other duties.
Smut for instance.
Oh my Gawd, Shirley Feeney would be shocked.
One night I remember walking from the studio- where I was on air, down a short hall towards the newsroom. As I reached the stairs that went down to the front door and the street, I saw our news director coming up the stairs with a lady who had a pair of the biggest bazooms I had ever seen.
Keep in mind I was not interested in big bazooms at the time and in fact I am still not interested today.
You can imagine just how large this twosome was to grab my attention!
The lady of which I speak was not the news director's wife.
I didn't care.
I much preferred the news director as far as eye-candy goes. Once I had seen him in a tiny-ish bathing suite at a local beach.
Oh my, oh my but he was pretty.
Some summer evenings he would walk into the studio shirtless with little drops of perspiration hanging from a few thick, wiry, blonde chest hairs.
Oh. My. Dear.
He'd ask how were things.
Shoot the breeze.
Did I want a cold drink or coffee from Tim Hortons or something.
All the while wearing nothing but very tight shorts and flip flops with one muscular arm reaching up to grab the top of the studio door practically handing off of it while he conversed with me.
That was the 70's.
My! Is it hot in here or is it just me.
At another station, one time I saw the morning man come into the station absolutely polluted with a young lady on his arm. That's back in a time when drinking and driving was encouraged!
"I jusht came in fer slumshing in the offish upshtairs"- he would say from a partially open studio door spraying rum-spit across the counter where my records sat piled up in order of their upcoming play.
"Yah. Okay."-I'd say. "Kinda busy here."
"Oh. Slorry. I'll jusht nip upshtairs then...Oh you never sleen me- right?"- At least it sounded something like that.
"Oh right."- I'd say holding my breath from the smell of booze and loose women.
The little lady stood outside the glass wall to my right smiling with lipstick smeared across her cheek and hair tussled and askew.
I believe those couches got quite the workout over the years.
I never personally sat on them- if I could help it, when in the Manager's office.
I also never had a workout on a manager's couch but I do remember one young, well-built radio fellah and one hot, sultry summer afternoon but I'll leave that for another time.
You know, to this very day, I blame what never happened on a manager's couch on a hot, sultry summer afternoon on a Michael Bolton song.
Michael was strictly a girl-thing and came on the radio that afternoon at a most inopportune time.
Now Tom Jones.
There was a man's man who got one's juices flowing!
There were various other bits of traffic that passed me by in the evenings or overnight hours. The stories I have just told you were a compilation of events that happened.
If I told all the stories or told them as they really happened, I'd have to place a "Smut" warning at the top of this RobBlog.
