Closing Some Tabs...

Let's get some prior business out of the way first: YES, that's Mom in her Shirley Temple outfit posted above. (I obviously didn't get my mother's looks!)

She was probably about three or four here, which would have been a few years after Shirley had taken the movie world by storm. But every studio in Hollywoodland was searching for the next little star and Grandma thought Esther would be perfect, until her family talked her out it.

Hence, I'm here in Jersey banging out my weekly blog instead of writing low-budget screenplays in a cold water flat somewhere above Sunset Boulevard.

Aren't you guys lucky!

Next up, apologies for sending multiple copies of the short blog two weeks ago ("My First Mistake".) To keep it brief, I'm still trying to figure out all the nuances of this blog site and every week it seems I have to search the whole website to re-discover how to send out a finished story. This time I thought the method I was using didn't work, so (again being a pitiful victim of ADHD,) I couldn't actually wait a few minutes to find out if it went out successfully; instead, I sent it out again 'just to be sure'...and then again....and then one more time...before I discovered that it had worked the first time...and the second....

Yeah, technology and Baby Boomers--not always a good match.

So, apologies again.

Sausage redux: John from Connecticut, in his own inimitable way, reminded me that I had still another cruddy job in Buffalo before I got into radio, probably even before my position at the meat-packing barn. It was at a sub shop ('sub', i.e. Western New York lingo for 'hero',) a mile or so from Buffalo State College called Shirley's Place, run by a middle-aged Jewish couple named Marvin, and of course, Shirley. I guess they were looking for kitchen help, so I applied and got a job making subs and chicken wings. He was the one who trained me; she was hardly there, but only gave me dirty looks when she was.

It was kind of fascinating making the wings. They had been almost mistakenly created at another Buffalo establishment called The Anchor Bar about 12 years or so before and at this point, Buffalo was no doubt still the only town in the world serving this delicacy. I also learned how to make cole slaw and found out why some slaw tastes better than others--they add sugar!

My sandwich making prowess left a lot to be desired, though. I remember one day a guy came in for a tuna sub. We were supposed to put like two scoops of tuna on the bread, but I had forgotten that. I basically made the sandwich as if I were making it for myself: I absolutely loaded it down with tuna! I'll never forget watching through the front window while the poor guy sat in his car, balls of tuna dropping out of his sub and into his lap.

Shirley and Marvin were not amused with my food portions and let me go soon after. It was another job that I didn't really mind leaving....

You know, the more I think about that period, the more stories I seem to remember. I think next week we'll do "Sausage Part 2--more tales from Western New York".

I already passed along the story of how I got hired at the radio station. The story of how I left might be even more entertaining; it includes a newspaper write-up of how Q-FM ceased to be, which I'll post within the blog.

And then there was the time I got a fan letter from--wait for it-- Son of Sam! No... really....

Talk Thursday!

IG