Suzy’s Watervliet story started a cascade of memories.

I grew up in upstate New York.  Binghamton, to be exact.  Birthplace of Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company.  Never heard of it? It later changed its name to International Business Machines n/k/a IBM.  Actually, the claim of birthright is bogus.  The headquarters were in nearby Endicott.  But, then, things in Binghamton were always a bit. Different.*

I digress.  I abandoned the public schools to go prep school in ninth grade, Deerfield, in western Massachusetts.  To get there we had to travel Route 7 northeast through the Albany area (and Watervliet, Suzy) to get to Route 2 in Massachusetts.  Route 7 was a two-lane road that passed through a gazillion small towns and villages with unusual names.  Unadilla.  Quaker Street.  And Otego.  Ah, Otego.

Christmas break, 1963.  I was a freshman at Deerfield.  I was one of three local guys there.  One of my colleagues was from a wealthy family that had a full-time jack-of-all-trades whose duties included taking the scion, Jamie, back and forth to Deerfield.  The family generously allowed me to ride along.  At Thanksgiving, we left Deerfield at about 8am and sailed along, arriving in Binghamton by 1 pm.  But this December things  were not so smooth.

As we descended into the village of Otego, only about 55 miles from Binghamton, the driver shouted the terrifying alarm “I ain’t got no brakes.” Somehow, we made it down the incline in one piece and managed to coast into a service station, conveniently situated at the bottom of the hill.  It was probably not long after noon.  The station had a resident mechanic, who proceeded to put the station wagon we were in on a lift.  In time the problem was diagnosed.  The necessary part(s) had to be delivered from another location and then installed. Sooner or later.  Turned out to be later. Much later. We left after sunset, probably around 5pm or so.  Bored silly but none the worse for wear.  Not so our parents.  None of the three of us guys had thought to call home to alert the ‘rents that we were delayed.  So as the afternoon wore on things at home were far less than calm.  Only upon arriving home around six did we learn of the misery we had wrought. All was forgiven, but lesson learned.  Because the route to Deerfield was also the route to Harvard, I had seven more years of passing through Otego to and from school.  And I always remembered that first Christmas experience.**

_______

*  Binghamton is the current home of the New York Mets Class AA minor league team. They are the “Rumble Ponies”.  Not your ordinary name for a sports team.  But then, the Eastern League, in which they play, also is home to a Hartford team.  The Yard Goats. Perhaps Binghamton and Hartford had a bet as to which could come up with the weirder name.  (And because you’re no doubt dying to know, “Rumble Pony” is a shout out to another Binghamton institution, the carousel.  There are, or were, seven within the city, and some still operate.  With extended use the machinery aged and it was common for the carousel horses to vibrate, or rumble, when the carousel operated.)

**Nowadays one making the same trip would bypass Otego entirely. I-88 now connects Binghamton and Albany.  The nearly four-hour trip has been reduced to two.

The station had a resident mechanic, who proceeded to put the station wagon we were in on a lift. In time the problem was diagnosed. The necessary part(s) had to be delivered from another location and then installed. Sooner or later. Turned out to be later

Charles B. Steenburg

While he never said it so many words, Dad believed that the best wisdom is wisdom passed on to us by others.  As I grow older I appreciate more the inherent wisdom of that perspective.  Not that Dad was not himself a wise man.  But sometimes, it seems, one of the things that father knows best is that others know best.

"Do as you might have" . . . But the aunt in question rendered this simply as doozha mighta.

Some memorable instances were received family wisdom.  One or another aunt or great aunt.  No doubt he mentioned them by name but I do not remember:

“Do as you might have”.  The import: in many situations what you might do or not do is unlikely to make any difference at all, so do as you might have (done on your own.)  But the aunt in question rendered this simply as “Doozha mighta.”

“If you have to f*art and you’re sitting on an upholstered chair or cushion raise up so the smell doesn’t linger.”  If you think this actually works I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale.

“If you are hungry and you have a dime in your pocket do not stint your stomach.”

Homespun wisdom at its finest, methinks.

But Dad’s all time favorite wisdom was from the prose poem Desiderata.  He could and did recite it at length from time to time with a high degree of accuracy.  But two passages stand out:

“Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit.”   How true, especially these days.

“Be gentle with yourself.  You are a child of the universe.”  He oftentimes would omit the important predicate of the verse, “Beyond a wholesome discipline.” But harmless error.  The kernel of the wisdom is intact.

Dad died in 2004.  I miss him still.

No, this isn’t me, but I do have a sister Barbara.

Ok, short and sweet this time.

Why? 'Cause I got to cross our street, and any other street, by myself.

Special birthday?  A clear winner: my fifth birthday.  Why?  ‘Cause I got to cross our street, and any other street, by myself. Looking back I can scarcely believe it. Our street was Grand Boulevard and it was indeed grand.  Double the width of most streets in our city residential neighborhood.  But on the other side? Why, just a block beyond, down Matthews Street, was Page’s, a corner grocery store. About the size of modern convenience stores, or even a bit smaller, it had a remarkable assortment of foodstuffs. Mom would send me there for her (usually calling ahead to Red, Mr. Page).  We had an account there so no cash changed hands.  And usually a trip there meant a treat for me.  Of my choosing.

So my fifth birthday opened my door to the wide world.

Let there be (properly refracted) light.  Please.

And then, I realized that a lens had fallen out.  Jeez.  While I was riding on the back of an open truck traveling at 65 miles an hour.

I was an early adopter of corrective lenses.  Age ten.  Couldn’t see the blackboard clearly.  Straightforward.  World’s ugliest glasses, worn only for school.  To my detriment.  This was Little League baseball age.  I was a terrific sandlot softball player, especially at the plate.  But playing hardball?  Fuhgeddaboutit.  In retrospect (ha ha) I think it was my somewhat impaired eyesight compounded by the usually well-worn, discolored baseballs used at that level.  No matter.

Age 15.  Contact lens time.  These were the state-of-the art at the time.  Rigid.  Not gas-permeable.  I had an ophthalmologist who was exceptionally good at fitting lenses and I was in heaven.  Perfect vision.  Vanity intact.  What could be better?  But then . . .

Episode the First:  A weekday evening at my prep school, walking back to my dorm.  Oops. Seems a lens just popped out and was.  Somewhere.  On the mica-laden walkway.  Those of us who have had the experience of losing a lens quickly learned that it’s useful to look for the glint of light hitting the fallen lens.  But on mica?  I looked and looked and looked.  Hands and knees.  To no use.  I stood up, defeated.  And looked down. Could that be it? No.  Not possible.  But it was.

Episode the Second.  Several years later.  Summer before college.  I worked my tent-crew job, which involved a fair amount of travel to and from fairgrounds.  Sometime late in the season I was on a crew for one of the larger jobs, and due to circumstances I cannot reconstruct we found ourselves with a crew of four and but one truck that sat three in the cab.  So one lucky crew member would get to ride on the back of the open truck for the better part of two hours.  It was nighttime, of course. Being the rookie on the crew I was volunteered.  Fortunately not too cold.

I made myself as comfortable as I could on top of several of the canvas bags of tents.  And then, I realized that a lens had fallen out.  Jeez.  While I was riding on the back of an open truck traveling at 65 miles an hour.  Bye bye lens.  But when we turned into the parking area at the company headquarters and into bright light, lo and behold there it was.  Perched in plain sight on top of one of the bags.  Don’t know how it held there.  But it did.

Episode the Third.  A number of years later.  Now in adult mode but with my original contacts.  On a flight from Hartford to Washington, D.C.  That familiar feeling.  Oh no.  This time, try as I might the lens was not to be found.  So I deplaned without it.  Makes me think that the lens became a kind of inanimate Charlie on the MTA, forever flying and never repatriating to its home.

Anyway, my trip was a short one, just one night.  And I adapted.  And looked forward to returning home to my standby eyeglasses (I had but one set of lenses).  Upon arrival I quickly retrieved my specs and relished my return to the land of sight.  Only to find . . .   Huh?  This can’t be right.  Things are blurry and out of focus. Blinking and blinking and blinking changed nothing.  I scheduled an emergency visit with my ophthalmologist who refracted me and, in response to my comment that the best he could do wasn’t much of an improvement, said “Perhaps you never saw that well to begin with.”  I refused to believe that.

A good friend referred me to his optometrist.  I explained what had happened and what my experience with the ophthalmologist had been.  He nodded and said “let me take a look”.  He did a quick examination and said “everything looks fine, we’ll schedule you for a return visit for refraction in a couple of weeks.”  My expression spoke volumes.  He explained that the reality of hard lens (at that time) was that they worked as a constraint on the shape of the eye, which was useful because it retarded changes in visual acuity, but in the event that the wearer abruptly stopped using them the eyeball, free of its constraint, would reshape itself somewhat.  Once it settled down he would be able to do a normal refraction.

The ensuing two weeks passed without incident.  Mostly.  I discovered that I could see at least as well without my glasses as with them.  For a time.  The day finally came for my refraction; the results were excellent.  And I bought two pair of lenses.

Not going to bother about photos. Never intended to address this prompt. Until today, Saturday September 11, 2021.

Never intended to address this prompt. Until today, Saturday September 11, 2021.

I went about my business upon rising today. Aware of the date, of course, but there was coffee to brew and the digital NYT to read. Shaved, showered, dressed and went out to feed the koi. Looking up at the almost surrealistically clear blue sky I was frozen for an instant. It looked just like it did That Day. Tears flowed. Unabated. At length. Thinking of. Then.

I was the CEO of an investment management company in Chicago. Big wig. Corner office and all. During my longish train commute that morning. I had noted the heightened clarity of the skies. Now, with my coffee at hand at my desk on the 36th floor I was awestruck by the sight looking east over Lake Michigan. An aside: Our offices were in The Loop. The essential downtown center. Just west of Grant Park, immediately west of Michigan Avenue, part of the phalanx of high-rise office buildings guarding the city. My computer table faced east, overlooking the park and the lake. Behind me a small television, muted, was tuned to CNBC so I could follow the activity in the futures markets before the open. I turned from my computer screen periodically to see what’s what. And then. The image of the North Tower. Jagged cut. Billowing smoke. Anchorman intoning that it seems that a small plane had flown into the North Tower. The impact zone seemed way bigger to me. The screen cut to an aerial view, at a distance. I saw a plane banking into a turn, right to left, at an impossible angle. Disappearing behind the towers then suddenly reemerging. As it hit the South Tower. It didn’t register instantaneously but I quickly realized that I had just watched dozens? Scores? Hundreds? Thousands? of people die. And that this was no accident.

Televisions are everywhere in our environment so the entire office, 125+ people, saw it, too. Consternation. Confusion. We stood in place, transfixed.  My fixed income manager rushed in to report that he had just liquidated his positions. ‘Ok”, I said, numbly. He disappeared before I thought, “Wait a minute, you’ve just locked in losses on zero information.”

Time, at least our notions of time, seemed distorted. This was Chicago. Central time zone. The first plane hit at 7:46, our time. Just short of an hour later the third plane hit the Pentagon. Alone in my office, I stood. Transfixed. This was not an isolated event. What, God help us, is next? I wandered into the trading desk area. A crowd of 20-30 people stood, slack-jawed, staring at the monitors positioned overhead. And we watched the first reports of the south tower collapse. I didn’t hesitate. “Everybody out,” I yelled. ‘Now!” I went to our communications center and broadcast it to the entire office, even more emphatically. I was not going to stand there and watch a jumbo jet emerge over the lake headed toward our building.

The memory is still vivid. Way too vivid.

I can confidently say that I have been at many more county fairs than anyone reading this story.  A veritable smorgasbord of fairs. But “being at” differs from “attending”.  Each of the four summers preceding my college years I worked for a hometown company that erected the tents that county fairs all over New York rented for their events.  From the third week of July through the end of the summer we worked seven days a week, usually twelve hours a day.  Put ‘em up and take ‘em down. Dozens of fairs over the course of four summers.

The president of the fair was a local fixture, Bligh Dodds . . . and he was straight out of Sinclair Lewis.

Some of the fairs we handled were not terribly large.  Two- or three-day events with a scale of goings-on to match such that these were not big jobs for us.  But the bulk of our work was for fairs with six-day programs, with significant livestock exhibiting events necessitating tents to house temporary pens and create showing spaces. While our company offered tents of various dimensions the most common size requested for fair use was the series that was 42 feet wide.  These were manufactured in sections: a pair of “ends” that together measured 42×75 and any number of “centers” that were 42×36 or 42×18.  The pieces laced together to create the desired size.  Tents of 42×147 were probably the most useful for fairs.* The larger fairs would have between eight and twelve such tents.

We used no power equipment to erect the tents.  I don’t see how it would have been possible in the first instance.  It was tough work.  The tents were made of heavy-duty canvas.  Emphasis on the “heavy”.  And we worked in all weather.  The nightmare scenario was having to erect one of these 42-foot-wide tents in the rain, because rain-soaked tents are substantially heavier to work with.  An inside joke was our definition of hell: erecting a 42 by infinity tent in the rain.

For the most part our involvement with these fairs was just erecting the tents and taking them down, so we would be on-site only just before or just after the event.  But for a handful of larger jobs one of our crew would be on site for the duration, checking on things, keeping ropes tight, patching where necessary and possibly erecting small tents for isolated events during the fair.  I was such an on-site person for one fair each of the first two years on the crew, the Gouverneur and St. Lawrence County Fair.

St. Lawrence County is the westernmost of the three counties bordering Canada in New York’s North Country.  St. Lawrence County is also the largest county in the state by area.  I don’t know if Gouverneur is the county seat but it has a tradition as the site of an agricultural fair dating from the mid-nineteenth century.  It is beautiful country, rolling terrain on the St. Lawrence River plain.  Wide open skies.  Relatively sparsely populated, it is rustic and quiet.

Being the on-site person there for the fair meant that I lived in town and was part of the community for fair week.  Which was an interesting experience.  The president of the fair was a local fixture, Bligh Dodds, who ran the local Ford agency.  Typical for that neck of the woods, his agency was not just cars and pick-up trucks but heavy-duty farm equipment as well.  I think he succeeded his father both as owner of the agency and president of the fair.  And he was straight out of Sinclair Lewis.  A light-colored suit with a straw boater at all times.  Fisherman sandals with socks, of course. We got along famously.

And being at the fair every day meant that I saw everything.  Livestock judging.  I probably learned more about “udder attachment” than I ever thought possible.  Sheep shearing.  And then there were the produce displays.  Perfect specimens of all manner of fruits and vegetables.  Baking competitions.  And one of my favorites, the horse-pulling contests, wherein teams of two draft horses labored from a dead start to move a heavily laden sled.  Horses abounded at the fair.  I don’t recall any rodeo-type events, nor “English” style equestrian competitions.  But a staple of county fairs is harness racing.  A big fan favorite.

An outside outfit provided typical carnival rides – carousels, whirlybird things and the like.  Even a small roller coaster.  I didn’t have much to do with the “carneys”, but they were decent people.  I’ll never forget the advice one gave: “you realize that these things are designed to be assembled and reassembled again and again; how safe do you think they are?” Years later I never let my sons ride any from these traveling shows.

And fair food.  Cotton candy.  Endless popcorn.  And fried dough.

In the evenings there were grandstand events.  The locals grumbled about this because a separate admission was charged, unlike the policy at some or perhaps most other county fairs.  A local talent night.  Country and western bands, some of them phenomenally good.  Stand up comedians.  Mostly lame.  And the grand finale on the last night of the fair, a demolition derby.  I took it all in.

Meanwhile I got to know many people.  The volunteer crews that administered the fair.  Some of the exhibitors.  And a number of the folks in town.  I frequented the same restaurants over and over.  A dairy bar with some really cute young waitresses.  Endless flirting.  Just pure fun.

In my last two summers I had become the crew leader and did no more on-site work.  But I always was there to put up and strike the Gouverneur fair.  I was greeted as a returning hero.  The reunions were fun.  As were the after-hours bar calls.  My money was no good there.  It’s a wonder my liver survives.

And now?  Of course, seeing this week’s prompt got me wondering whether the Gouverneur fair continues.  Sure does.  Same week in August.  This week, in fact. Still six days, but now Tuesday through Sunday rather than Monday through Saturday.  And so, so much the same as it always was: http://gouverneurfair.net

– – – – –

* While not typically used for fairs the company offered similarly constructed tents in sixty- and eighty-foot widths.  The largest we ever erected was 80×240.

Hey Venus

“Don’t shoot!”, she cried. “I’m unarmed.”

A picture is worth a thousand rounds.

Retroflashlite

Henry Jones.  Our family’s first (and only) dog as my sisters and I were growing up.. Named for the title “character” of the song that prompts my title, first recorded by Johnny Mercer and the King Cole Trio in 1947.*  “Save the bones for Henry Jones ‘cause Henry don’t eat no meat.” I had to be no more than a toddler because I don’t have any memory of him.  Sisters Suzie and Barbara, just one and two years older, have no real memories, either.  Henry Jones was a dachshund, a wiener dog.  What were my parents thinking?  Small dogs and small children do not belong together.  Neither of my parents had any experience with dogs; Mom never had pets and the only pet Dad talked about was a parrot they called Jack.  Until Jack laid an egg.  According to Mom, my sisters and I loved Henry Jones to death, almost literally.  We’d pick him up and give him well-meant squeezes.  Apparently, Henry Jones began to act out to the point that Mom and Dad took him to Live With the Farmer on the Farm.

My younger son was in nursery school at the time and his best buddy, Dugan, thought her name was “Fleabee”, to the amusement of us all.

Naming pets. This could have been a “pet peeve” story.

Starting with my parents.  A first and last name?  After a song?  What were they thinking (WWTT)? I hate that kind of cutesie stuff.  Like the story, probably apocryphal, told by first wife, of a friend who named her cats “Hey You!” and “Who, Me?”.  Seriously?  As if she was going to be calling them in for supper, or something like that?  C’mon.  They’re cats.

I am a dog person. Exclusively. Over the years I have had many dogs, most of which were transients during my dog rescue years.  But some of my own, too, both before and after. Sometimes dogs already have names when they come into our lives.  Like Stitch, my first. Stitch was a yellow Lab who we got as a seven-month-old. He was one of a litter of fifteen.  While the litter was still nursing one day his mom was disturbed by something and stood, accidentally stepping on one of the brood.  The wound required sutures.  I don’t know whether the breeder named any of the others, but they decided they would foster this one for a bit to see if he was all right so they named him.  “Stitch” was an obvious choice.  When we got him we never even considered changing his name.  Not a great “call” name, but it fit him.

Upon his demise, about ten years later, I was reluctant to have another.  But I was persuaded otherwise, subject to my stipulation that I had naming rights.  Our new pup, at ten weeks, was a black Lab from the same breeder as Stitch.  My choice?  “Phoebe”.**  Perfect call name: two syllables, two long vowels.  And she just seemed like a Phoebe.  Whatever that means. My younger son was in nursery school at the time and his best buddy, Dugan, thought her name was “Fleabee”, to the amusement of us all.

And on to the Maremma era.  “Tino”, another great call name.  And “Lena”.  After my third wife’s maternal grandmother.  Her sisters were aghast. Tough.

Then rescue.  Sometimes it seemed that there was a connection between WWTT names and the likelihood of winding up in rescue.  “Donovan”.  For a dog?  Donovan already was at least tentatively placed when we picked him up but I couldn’t let him go.  Pulling at the leash he revealed a rather geeky neck that reminded me of a cherished stuffed animal from my youth.  He became Little Bear.

Bady.  Rhymes with “lady”.  Another foster situation that turned permanent.  Bady came from a family on Staten Island, emigres from Albania.  The patriarch of the family, terminally ill, wanted a dog for his wife and children who would serve as a protector and companion.  But Staten Island is no place for a dog that needs open spaces.  “Bady” was a good call name.  I understand it is Arabian in origin and means “wonderful man”.  A good fit.  Besides, he didn’t speak English so “Bady” it stayed.

Molly.  I love the name.  Another rescue/intended foster that turned permanent.  She came as “Isis”, which I thought was a perfectly stupid name.  Not quite of the WWTT category, but still.  But turns out Lord Grantham of Downtown Abbey’s original dog was also an Isis.  But ours wasn’t.  She was headstrong and impulsive.  And “Molly” fit, because when her antics prompted shoulder shrugging and a whaddya gonna do reaction it was a perfect word for mutterings of exasperation.

The puppies.  After the travails of rescue, we thought we had earned a fresh start.  The breeders were of a gentlemen farmer ilk and this was their first attempt.  A litter of three.  The sire and dam, their dogs, were Fettucine and Biscotti. Really.  WWTT? We fairly quickly decided to obtain two of the pups, the male and one of the two females.  The breeders hung on to the one they considered the pick of the litter.  Who they named Sabine.  As the Martians would say, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.  But what to do with ours?

The female was the easier task.  She was on the headstrong side, but way short of Molly.  Lola!  Of course.  As in Damn Yankees.  Whatever Lola wants . . .

But the male.  Hmmm.  Then inspiration.  I wondered what the Italian word for male puppy was.  Ah.  Cucciolo.  Ciolo for short.  Perfect for my puppy boy.

——–

* Yes, the “King Cole Trio” featured Nat King Cole.  This is a cover: https://youtu.be/IAuzMXoZI0g

** Her full registered name was Blackmor’s Phoebe Snow.  After the Erie Lackawanna train of my youth, not the singer. But that’s another story.

Recycling? Hah!

Many of us, perhaps, began recycling even before we knew what it was.

Visit the brand new transfer station, spanking clean. Return home and excitedly relate the news. "You're raving about a dump?" Never mind.

Did your family get its milk from home delivery?  Ours did.  In bottles, during my younger years.  The “milkman” (milk person doesn’t cut it, does it?) came three days a week, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.  No one locked doors, so the milkman would tap gently at the back door and let himself in.  He’d go to the refrigerator, check our “inventory” and add, as necessary, to reach the agreed-upon total. I don’t remember what we did with the emptied bottles; probably had a container by the back door, where the milkman retrieved them for return and reuse by the dairy.  I remember the bottles had an ingenious paper cap, improbably secure.

1972: Working in the University library.A colleague suggested that we offer our unused Library of Congress catalog cards for re-use; ideal for recipes.  No takers, even in the progressive city where we were.

1976: Our new home; new town, new system.No town trash pick-up.  Money tight.  Town dump conveniently located, so we haul our own trash.  Just a landfill; no separation of anything. By 1980, shortly before we left, the town closed the dump and built a transfer station.  I remember going there for the first time; brand spanking new; clean, and receptacles for trash, cans, and paper.  A start.  Return home and excitedly relate the news to my wife.  Who is not impressed.  “You’re raving about a dump?”  Never mind.

Over the years, many different residences; different states, different systems.  Lake Placid 2004.  The town maintained a transfer station; it had extensive categories of recyclables; residents had to sort their own.  The station was policed by a rotating crew of not-very-friendly guys who seemed to be eternally suspicious that folks would sneak the green glass in with the brown.  The station was the only destination along its access road.  Dump Lane.  Later renamed “Recycle Center Lane”.  I liked the old one better.

To modern day.  Private trash hauling.  Single stream recycling, so no more sorting. The company supplies barrels, a green one for trash and a blue one for recyclables.  Monday is collection day on our road.  Every week the driver meticulously dumps the green barrel into the truck’s single compactor. Just before he empties the blue barrel.  Into the same one.  Oh well.

Bob Steele

The terrific stories this week have me thinking more about my radio past. When walking this morning I found myself trying to recall what date it was. Seems these days that the calendar has less and less relevance, so I am often unaware of the specific date. But I remembered that today is the 19th of May. Which means that tomorrow is the 20th of May. Which made me think of Bob Steele.

Some dates are more memorable than others.

Bob Steele was a long-term radio personality for WTIC in Hartford, Connecticut. As I recall he started his career there in 1936. In my early years working in Hartford he was by far the ratings leader for morning drive time. I didn’t listen to him when  I commuted, but my clock radio was set to WTIC for wake-up, and Bob was on the air. I’d keep it on while I got ready, so I heard a bit of his show on a regular basis.

Bob had guests from time to time, I think, but not at all frequently. The show was his personal conversation with his audience. He was quirky. He regularly reminded listeners to sit up straight. He had a groan-worthy sense of humor that he displayed often. Example: “There was an outdoor outfitter, The Tates Company, that flourished several years ago but went belly up.  Seems their demise was a hiking compass that proved to be notoriously unreliable.  As people routinely said, ‘He who has a Tates is lost.'” Rim shot.  He also referenced some of his relatives, including Uncle Stainless.

Regular features included weather reports, provided by the Travelers Weather Service.*  Charlie Bagley, their lead meteorologist, was a Steele favorite.  They had similar senses of humor.  Every year in late summer and early fall Charley would regularly forecast what he called “Indian Weather”: a patchy fog. Rim shot.

As mentioned, Steele’s show was so popular that it was an advertising gold mine.  They even sold sponsorships for the daily morning “Antenna Switch”: WTIC was a Clear Channel broadcaster (I discussed the concept in a comment to Jeff Gerken’s story) but it shared a Clear Channel frequency with a Dallas station. Each evening WTIC had to switch from an omnidirectional antenna to a directional antenna to protect the Dallas station. And each morning it switched back to the omnidirectional antenna.

Another regular Steele feature was eclectic songs.  Which gives rise to this, which I offer in his memory:

Bob continued to broadcast for many years.  I see that he died in December, 2002.  The next day, another long-time WTIC personality hosted a tribute to Bob in his old time slot.  In memory of him, they created a special moment of silence: for a short period they dropped their signal from 50,000 watts to 500, the original power allocated to the station.

* The Weather Service was an affiliate of the radio station.  The “Travelers” was indeed the Travelers Insurance Company, headquartered in Hartford.  In fact the radio call sign, WTIC, stood for Travelers Indemnity Company. The Weather Service was created to assist the company in forecasting and dealing with property claims.