Charlie Greer and The Overnight Bomb

Before you discover that Charlie and I lived through a bomb scare, I can't resist offering two quotes from an article in tomorrow's Wall Street Journal.* The first is from Danny Werfel, the IRS commissioner in the Biden administration, who resigned when the Trump administration was inaugurated. This is what he was quoted as saying:

"If the IRS is going to work effectively, the amount of uncertainty that we've seen, or the amount of turbulence needs to stabilize."** 

Doreen Greenwald, who, before this article comes out tomorrow, was the president of the National Treasury Employees Union which represents IRS workers, said

"When the IRS is underfunded and lacks the necessary resources, it sends the wrong message to people who don't pay their fair share of taxes—that they can get away with it."

It isn't clear if Greenwald is an IRS employee or has resigned to work for the union. If the former, her use of the term "fair share" is likely to get her in trouble, as the mission of the IRS is not to collect a "fair share," only to collect what is owed. I can see that phrase irritating people in higher places, not just myself.

But This is About Charlie Greer

And, to a lesser extent, about me. Charlie Greer was for years the weekday overnight disk jockey on WABC, the great New York City radio station. He plied his trade during the decade of the 1960s when that station was the most popular in the country. Charlie played music, read commercials, and, while the music was playing, talked to his engineer about his exploits during the war.

For several years, primarily between 1965 and 1969, I was one of his engineers.

Charlie was about 22 years older than I. A World War II veteran, he lived across the Hudson River in New Jersey, and managed to get to work on time almost every night despite the notorious traffic that plagued the area than much as it does now. When I worked the midnight shift with Charlie, I was never late since I lived walking distance from the station. On the occasions I would have to cover for him, I simply put a music cartridge in its player and pushed a button. His show was from midnight through 6AM, when the morning DJ—Herb Oscar Anderson at first, then Harry Harrison—would take over. WABC had a very limited playlist; selecting the next song to play (by the DJ) and playing it (by the engineer) wasn't much of a challenge. There was plenty of time to talk and play pranks on the overnight news guys.

Charlie and I didn't socialize beyond chatter from one side of the board to the other. Charlie, more loquacious after twice as much life as I had had until then and having experienced far more adventures, did most of the talking. Although I was his "engineer," it wasn't true engineering by any common definition. I did not drive a locomotive and I didn't design the weapons of an electric engineer or the targets of a civil engineer. Even "technician" would be overreach. The job, primarily, was to accept a tape cartridge he would hand me, place it in a machine, and and press a button. Sometimes there was even less to it than that. And sometimes more, if technical issues arose as they occasionally did. Our relationship was professional. He was the boss, and it was my job to make sure his show went smoothly and that nothing that I did or didn't do would embarrass him or the radio station.

I loved WABC and loved working at WABC, not exactly the same thing. Although I was a member of the NABET uniton by contractual requirement, my loyalty was to my emoloyer. So it happened that I was exhibiting that loyalty on the night that we had a bomb scare. We knew what time it was scheduled to explode, wiping out the studio, possibly the floor on which it was situated, and surely the engineer and the disk jockey. In the no-suspense policy of the RIKLblog, and as foreshadowed above, there was no bomb, no explosion, no splinters of the broadcast console propelled at high speed into my foolish heart. If there had been, I might have survived, and Charlie would definitely have survived. While I sat at the console filling his absence with music and recorded commercials for his main sponsor, Denison Mens Clothier, Charlie was looking up at the 8th-floor window of the WABC building from across the street below.

Someone issued an all-clear, presumably after checking the premises for explosives. Charlie came back upstairs, as did the overnight news guys and possibly others, and radio life continued without interruption. This blogitem is the first time I've given any real thought to one of the most bizarre yet inconsequential events of my life. If I sound censorious, I'd like to offer a partial apology to the late Charlie Greer for my thoughts. In WWII, I'm sure he had more experience with nearby explosions at his world-weary 40-something. I was about 24 and as immortal as most people that age believe themselves to be. More importantly, I didn't for an instant believe the bomb threat was any more substantial than it didn't turn out to have been and, (perhaps stupidly) disregarded it.

Working at WABC was my first experience in professional radio. I've written a few other blogitems about my days at WABC, and have developed an urge to write more. WABC Musicradio, predominately in the '60s, was a phenomenon unlikely to be replicated in these days of fractionated audiences and social media. I was quite young when I had the privilege of working there. Through luck and the virtue of eating some vegetables along with my chocolate, I remain extant and of sound memory if not necessarily mind. I think telling of a few stories will enhance the historical record. Here are a some; with luck there will be more.

Dan Ingram
Water Pitchers From the Past
The Beau Brummels Incident
A Lifetime of Logging
The Beatles at Shea Stadium
Howard Cosell and The Union

* As I write this, it really is tomorrow's Journal. They often pre-publish articles the day before the "print edition" in which they are due to appear. If I have had time to finish this blogitem today, it will actually appear here before the physical print edition of the Journal is delivered. Of course if you do read this, it will most likely have been after today, in which case it will no longer be tomorrow's edition to which I refer above.
** As they say, "emphasis supplied." Perhaps I'm reading this too carefully, but isn't 'stable turbulence' both undesirable as well as being an oxymoron? (Yes, and a zeugma.)