Larry's Sorta Fun Stories

Thanks for sharing with me, this year and I will have more fun stories next year.
Check out Larry's Sorta Fun Stories for more episodes.
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Robert Stuber came into the studio and shared a Christmas Story about harvesting a Christmas tree with a tradition that stared in 1982.  You might be a redneck if ... enjoy.

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Larry reminisces about getting his hair cut my his barber in his small town that he grew up in.  Chillicothe, Illinois.  

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Rose has another story to tell about her days singing in clubs around the Niagara Falls area in the early eighties. 
She is writing a book and with each chapter she includes a recipe.  This story has a recipe from DeCamillo's Bakery.
Rustic Pizza 
DiCamillo’s Bakery 
2 lb. Italian bread dough 
2 12 oz. jars roasted sweet peppers 
3 8oz. Packages frozen Spinach 
1 can pitted black olives drained 
1 jar green salad olives drained ¼ lb. thin sliced capicola ham 
¼ lb. Parmesan, grated
¼ lb. Romano, grated 
¼ lb. shredded fontinella cheese 
1 small chopped green onion 
1 clove garlic-chop 
2 T. olive oil (I use more) 
1 egg, beaten-mix with 1 T. water 
Sesame seeds 
Defrost spinach, drain well, mix with some olive oil. Puree in processor with garlic and onion, some salt, pepper. Drain peppers, place in small bowl with 1 T. olive oil. Roll out one pound of dough very thinly on lightly floured surface. Place dough in bottom of greased 8 in. spring form pan so that bottom and sides are covered with an overhanging lip of dough. Cover bottom of pan with a layer of capicola. Layer roasted peppers on top of ham. Sprinkle with Romano and parmesan. Spread part of spinach mixture on top of cheese. Make certain you are using about ½ of mix. Save rest for other layer. Put in a layer of fontanelle. Then green and black olives. Repeat layers. Roll other dough until thin. Top the pizza with this. Cut excess dough. Make a braid (I made a bow--cause I did not have enough dough) Use egg wash to top pizza. Sprinkle sesame seeds over top. Slit top for steam. 400 degrees. Until browned. Remove from spring form pan. You can stick back into oven with rest of egg wash if you like to brown sides. (If you do this, cover top with foil) 

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I have a friend on Facebook that I have known for forty-three years.  Another of the young talent that I recruited and gave a job in radio back in Lincoln, Nebraska when he was fresh out of college. He has been drafting great essays on Facebook about his ordeal with his wife who is stuck in Ukraine.  She is Ukrainian. It seems Jim and his wife have been trying to legally get her out of the country.  Only the United States is demanding a lot of paper work, but her paper work has been lost or destroyed because of the Russians are bombing the country 

You will also hear the chilling story of how he went from Disk Jockey to radio station management, foreign correspondent, to living in Russia and landed up living in Ukraine.

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I’m 14 years old and it’s Saturday just about noon time and my dad’s car needed washing. 

Of course, the reason I wanted to wash the car was because I could turn the car radio on and listen as I was washing the car. It wasn’t the music I wanted to hear.  It was Paul Harvey, News and Commentary at noon time. My mind was focusing on being behind the microphone and communicating the day’s events that happened in my life just like Paul Harvey.

Senior year in high school, Speech Class was my favorite class.  The assignment was to create a radio commercial and then perform it on a microphone in a closet that the speech teacher had created to emulate a radio broadcast booth.  My Paul Harvey influence was in full gear. I created a commercial for my father’s dry-cleaning business.  Of course, the copy started with “Page two.”  It was to be a 60 second commercial.  I nailed it.  Perfect timing. Paul Harvey would have been proud. Thank you, Paul Harvey. 

After high school and a couple tries at college, I still wanted to be in the broadcast business, I had become a TV director when I discovered that my reading skills were not what the program directors wanted. But after spending two years at the local tv station in Lincoln, Nebraska the radio bug was still in me. There was a chance I could create a radio station with a format that would stimulate the young and growing Christian music enthusiasts of the 1970s.  KBHL-FM 95.3 Lincoln, Nebraska went on the air io March 6th, 1975, fulfilling that vision.

For my lunch break, I would go to the parking lot of Toco Bell in Lincoln, Nebraska.  I spend a lot of my noon times there.  I had learned to love Taco Bell’s tocos and the important thing was I was away from the office.  I could be alone in my car and listen to the Paul Harvey’s, News and Commentary on another local radio station. 

After finishing my meal of tacos and hearing Paul Harvey’s sign off  INSERT “Paul Harvey – good day!”  It was time to get back to the office on north 48th street in the old library building that was the broadcast studio for KBHL.  I had an appointment to meet with a young enthusiastic guy from the University of Nebraska.  He wanted to get into radio. His enthusiasm was so infectious that I hired him. The interview turned out to be very good for both of us. 

My influencer was Paul Harvey who had inspired millions of radio listeners.  He motivated me to look for and give opportunities to dedicated people.

The interview was with Tracy Johnson who loved radio like I did.  He went on to understand the radio audiences in Kansas City, Jacksonville, and San Diego and was named Best Programmer in American by Radio Ink magazine.

Today, Tracy Johnson has inspired hundreds of stations and thousands of personalities in all radio formats worldwide.  If it hadn’t been for this teenager being enamored by Paul Harvey, I would have never met a true leader of today’s broadcast industry. Tracy did a great job for KBHL and I’m glad that I was able to give him a step into his broadcast career. 

Each month I anticipate a webinar from Tracy Johnson, who continues to inspire radio personalities around the world.  I have been in and around this business of broadcasting for over 60 years and I am still learning.  Thanks Tracy.

And as Paul Harvey would end his signature afternoon broadcast, 

INSERT
 ‘And now you know, the rest of the story.

Collage Travel Radio streaming on the internet 24/7.  Music you can sing to ... 

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Chillicothe, Illinois.  2:16 AM – Tuesday Morning 1962   

I was sleeping in my bed in the back bedroom and heard the sound of wooden front door open. It was so quiet at that time at night. You knew when the door opened and when it closed. It had that certain memorable sound.  It was my father dragging in . . . sneaking in from his Monday night rehearsal with the Orpheus Club in Peoria.  The Orpheus Club was a group of all male singers, and the most notable member was United States Congressman Bob Michel of Peoria. Illinois.  

Of course, if you believe a rehearsal lasted so late in the morning you got to be kidding!  My mother didn’t believe it either.  She had put up with it too long as it was, and she had had enough. It was time to confront my father.  They had been sleeping in separate beds and she was ready to meet him head on.

“Where have you been?  I know practice certainly didn’t last this long!” my mother cried out in anger, “What’s her name?” Big silence!

I don’t remember all the words that were spoken or shouted, but I do remember finally my father was very combative.  They argued throughout the house and finally ended up in front of my bedroom door. From my bed I heard my father shout out, “I will kill you!”  That ended it.

My mother backed off and somehow, they stayed married for over fifty years.  Years later, I got married and moved away and to his day I remember hearing those awful words laying in my bed.

 Bed Number Two 

Wheaton, Illinois.  3:16 AM - 1988

My wife, Meg, and I were sleeping on the waterbed that she had hauled from Laramie, Wyoming to Lincoln, Nebraska. After we got married, we carted it to Melbourne, Florida and then up to Wheaton, Illinois.  The bed was cozy with the temperature set right.  Our marriage was cozy.  Both of us were divorced when we met.  But that didn’t stop us from getting married and looking forward to a peaceful life together. 

One of the reasons why I liked Meg was, she was unattached to her family. She had disowned her sister and three other siblings, her mother and father had divorced when she was very young, and they were not a part of her life.  Thus, no family conflicts to disturb our marriage, or so I thought.

After Meg’s mother divorced her father, Ruth and young Meg had moved to California.  Meg’s mother had a mental breakdown and was institutionalized and treated with electric shock treatments.  Meg was sent to an orphanage.  As she recalled, she was a captive of the State of California imprisoned with bars on the windows.  Meg’s escape came here her aunt and uncle in Michigan took her in thus … her cousins became her siblings and family.

Back to Wheaton, Illinois at 3:16 AM and the phone on the bedside table is ringing. I raised up from the comfort of the waterbed.

Groggy, I answered it. “This is Larry.”

I certainly didn’t recognize the voice on the other end of the phone.  I was the manager of the TV Production Department at WCFC-TV 38 in Chicago, and I had no idea why someone would have a problem at this hour of the day. 

The voice on the phone said: “Hello, I am so and so, with the CBSA the Canadian Border Services Agency and do you know a Ruth McCourtney?”

By this time, Meg was slowly rising to ask who it was.

I covered the mouthpiece of the phone and said someone from Canada was calling about Ruth her mother 

.He went on to say that Ruth had boarded an airplane in California an

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It all started last Christmas when my sister came to visit for the holiday.

My sister is an avid reader.  Every time she comes to visit, she will bring several books with her to read.  Last Christmas she brought a couple of John Grisham’s books.  And I got hooked when she introduced me to Ford County. It was his first book of short stories.  

In the 1990s, I had read most of his earlier books, but I had not read much of his work since that time but reading Ford County spurred me on to read more.

The book contained short stories reveling around a mythical county in the Mississippi Ford County.  This county was where his first book story   A Time To Kill took place.  The short story that caught my attention was Fetching Raymond.   A story about a poor aging mother and her two sons who had to borrow a pickup truck to drive to Parchman prison for a final meeting with her third son. Raymond was on death row. Grisham’s description of the journey to the prison was so full of color and feeling, I thought I was riding with them. And the narrative of the Raymond’s final hour to live before his execution in the electric chair was riveting. 

Grisham was a small-town lawyer, and it took him three years to write his first book A Time To Kill in 1991.  It was also rejected by twenty-eight publishers.  This book did not immediately gain success.  His second book, The Firm exploded to popular acclaim, and he discovered that if he could write a book a year, he would become a popular author. Today, it is reported that his books have sold over sixty million copies making him one of the most successful authors of my time.  At this time ten of his works have been adapted for the silver screen.

He attributes his success to two things.  One his pacing can be slow or breakneck and second his theme revolve around the little guy takes on the big corporate conspiracy.

What comes to my attention as I read his books, he addresses social issues: wrongful execution regarding the death penalty, racism, the homeless, health care, insurance companies, sleazy advertising, pharmaceutical companies, and big coal.

In the 2016 The Whistler and a follow-up book written in 2021 The Judge’s List, he deals with corrupted judges. Utilizing the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct as his starting point with a female leading character. 

But what got me was his insight to the homeless on the streets of Washington DC in his 1998 book The Street Lawyer. He writes of main charter holding a small child in his arms at a makeshift shelter on a cold night and the next day learns that the child along with his mother and other children were found frozen to death because they were homeless and had to sleep in a car and the car’s exhaust asphyxiated them.

In Gray Mountain written in 2014 he addresses the plight of coal miners in the mountains in Virginia. Miners who are stricken with Black Lung Disease and have little or no recourse fighting the massive coal companies for better health care. 

The Racketeer written in 2012 starts with a prisoner who is a lawyer that has been railroaded into prison but has evidence of a murder if he would be released. 

While reading his books I am remember reading books I read in high school. Books by Sinclair Lewis who was called a muckraker. He had a social conscience about the plight of the less fortunate and struggle of immigrants at the turn of the century in the early 1900s.

In The Jungle 1906 Lewis wrote about the horrific living and working conditions of immigrants in the hog butchering plant in Chicago.  

In Babbitt Lewis traced a satirical novel in 1922 about the emptiness of middle-class life and the soci

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Larry received a letter well over 16 years ago and he read it to music.  He didn't even remember recording it.  A friend of a friend sent to him the other day and thought you would enjoy hearing it as well.  It's about the small town in Illinois that Larry grew up in. 
Chillicothe, Illinois.

Just a little note, this podcast is sponsored by Collage Travel Radio dot com.  Travel insights and tips are share beside hit music of the 60s, 70s right up today.  Collage Travel Radio 24/7 streaming on the internet at Collage Travel Radio dot com  and Zee Michaelson Travel.  

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