My Dad on Father's Day

I was sitting with my Dad who started unveiling the secret portion of his life known as the 'early years that pre-dated his life as a dad.' He was a young super good looking guy. We all know I may be biased on that, but take a look at his photo here:

Anyway, my dad told me he was quite oblivious to the charms of women other than my mom. Case in point, he was telling me about how he took a flight on an American plane when he was a young 20 year old in China. This was around the year 1947, a year when airplane travel was exclusive and unobtainable for the average citizen, not to mention in China for an impoverish young guy like my dad. How did he manage to get on what would be considered inconceivable in the day and age?

The source, of course, was a young girl. Apparently she was the daughter of a man who was the Postmaster General or other high ranking official in China. They were flying from Chongqing‎ to Shanghai and instead of my dad taking the boat, she managed to squeeze him on the flight her family was taking. It was only later my dad realized she probably did it because she liked him. He then went on to tell me, had he taken the boat, he would have encountered cramped and squalid conditions as he had heard it was a horrible boat ride.

It was tough in those days. He told me how he had set up a school with a friend to teach. Even though he was poor, his dad made sure he obtained a fairly good education in typical Chinese fashion. Not everyone was able to get an education tho, so my dad had a fair amount of students and he told me how they would take the money they were given (which apparently was not worth much) in a wheelbarrel and use it to buy cotton fabric. As a commodity, the prices of cotton were variable, with much of it heading upwards and whereupon, selling the cotton, he and his friend were able to purchase much of what they needed to run the school as well as other essentials.

Even though the idea of studying in the US was unthinkable in that day and age for a guy who didn't have any money, he still dreamed. He made friends with an American GI who wrote to MIT, waxing on how my dad was a brilliant guy. Indeed, he had won what was considered to be the Math Olympics in China, no mere feat. As a result of that letter, MIT accepted him. It took a while for my dad to get to the US, finally getting a ride on a large boat which spent the better part of three months to get from China to the US. But by that time, MIT's invitation had lapsed, so he didn't really have anywhere to study. Still, he prevailed and won a three year full scholarship to St. Norbert in St. Louis, MO. It was tough and prejudiced in those days. My dad told me he suffered taunts from fellow students with someone slashing the tires on the broken down jalopy he managed to obtain. Finally, the Dean of the College wrote a letter that was posted throughout the campus, reminding people he was one of them and to stop persecuting him for the shadow of WWII and what the Japanese did to the Americans.

I'm hoping he'll be able to reveal other details of that secret era. I'm eager to find out more, he's 88 now and has quite alot to tell.

On being a Boor and Nightstalking

Sometimes I think about this blog and then I find myself in a quandry. What to write about now? Every time I read about something in the news and/or hear an item on the radio, I want to blab about it. Maybe it's because deep down, I'm secretly one of those people who like to hear themselves talk. We all know someone like that. A Boor. Don't confuse Boors with Bores, Boors are people who don't stop talking to listen to what other people have to say. I think in my life I can be that way if I wanted to, but I know how people feel about Boors, so I stop and edit myself. However, Boors can be Bores too. So here I am blogging and I wonder, has my inner Boor decided to manifest itself? And if I am, could it possibly be, I am also a Bore?

In the case of Talk Radio, being a Boor is a good thing. This is for those times when you are by yourself in the studio with a four hour show and the phone is NOT RINGING. The one time I worked Talk Radio at a brand new experiment in San Francisco, "FM Talk Radio," which in the early nineties, was a station called KDBK, I found that I had to switch on my inner Boor. Which was tough for four hours. When you work at any new station, you have to accept you won't have much in terms of listeners. It would also mean that people would pass by the station idly and wonder "what the heck IS this?" But idly wondering "what the heck IS this" is not the same as picking up the phone to argue. Especially when the listeners didn't even know what the phone number of the station was.

In most Talk Radio stations, shows are limited to two hours. You also have commercials, news and sometimes, you get to run little 2 or 3 minutes features. But because we were new, I had a four hour show with mostly NO commercials, NO news and No little features. Indeed, a Talk Radio show host's nightmare. But I had to deal with it. I'm sure I was both a Boor and a Bore. But it's all water under the bridge, I refuse to sweat and/or make apologies for it.

These are the thoughts that plague my head every so often. Of course, because I am so peripatetic, I think about it for one nanosecond and then shrug it off. It would drive me batsht if I started to debate whether I was a Boring Boor or a Booring Bore.

Anyway, yesterday I woke up with the news that Richard Ramirez had died. Why should I concern myself about The Nightstalker? When you work at any radio station in San Francisco, there is a 'captive' audience that lives at the maximum security arena known as San Quentin. And if you are a woman DJ, you get letters from that audience.

One time I had a listener who was so captivated by my work, he would write me poems and fill a notebook with those poems. And then he would send me that notebook. You'd think, gee, how sweet. However, in his case, he was a rather prolific poet. He was so prolific that I was receiving the average of one notebook a day. Yup. People would get worried about the fanaticism, but I would remind them that usually the people who were sent to San Quentin were usually the worst offenders and usually, they were the ones who would stay locked up. Usually.

Somehow it was not comforting to my friends.

Anyway, the only reason why I take note of Richard Ramirez, the infamous serial killer known as The Nightstalker, is because he sent me a letter. Take a look:

What creeps me out was how he was so proud of himself. And of course, requesting songs with creepy names. Rot in Hell Ramirez.