"Get a Horse!"

Trucks have long held a place in my immediate and extended family.

Growing up in rural western Pennsylvania, either my dad or a close relative had a pickup truck of some sort, usually a Chevy.  

We looked at trucks as a necessity the way horses were looked at during the days of westward expansion in this country.  With western PA's rugged hills and unpredictable winter weather, a four-wheel-drive pickup was necessary if you were to depend upon it to get to where you needed to go.

This was also in the days that pre-dated all-wheel-drive cars and SUVs.  The first of the four-wheel-drive passenger cars, the AMC Eagle, was often looked upon as a hopelessly ugly piece of machinery that despite its inherent reliability, most people wouldn't want to be caught five-years-dead in.

Nonetheless, the humdrum marque gave birth to the mass-produced front-wheel-drive passenger car, at the start of the 80s and then the sport utility movement that rose later in the decade and continues to dominate the auto industry today.  

Then in the 90s, something unthinkable happened...women began buying pickup trucks.  To the point where Ford began a 'Splash' edition of its Ranger compact pickup line targeted to women, featuring colors like bright yellow and turquoise, with "Splash" accent striping on the sides of the bed.  Automakers took notice and began building trucks with comfort in mind, in addition to payload and other specifications that typical truck buyers were keenly aware of.  Option packages with power windows and door locks, cruise control, air conditioning and even leather seating areas became popular among the consumer pickup truck market.
My own pickup is special to me for a couple reasons.  I have owned pickup trucks in the past, but they were kept strictly as a secondary vehicle, most often used when I had to haul something, and more often than not, looking like something you'd see on camera during an episode of "Duck Dynasty".
A former colleague of mine at another radio station remarked how much of an eyesore it was when I drove it to the radio station while my main vehicle at the time, a Dodge Stratus, was in the shop with an engine problem.
After he said it a second time, I jokingly threatened to park it in front of his house, as he lived in a more affluent neighborhood and I knew exactly where he lived.  He never razzed me about it again.
My Dodge Dakota was also my first-ever 'brand new' vehicle, and today it's my 'daily driver'.  I take care of it, but it does get used for its intended purpose.
My dad kept his 1990 Chevy Cheyenne until the end of its life in 2006, when the frame finally bit the dust after years of hard use.  Though his 1995 Chevy Suburban gets him where he needs to go, he found himself missing his truck, though I've offered mine time and time again.  Then I received the call from Mom last Sunday morning, asking me about my daughter's clothing sizes for Christmas, and...if I would mind driving my dad to Valencia, where he bought another pickup...this one, a 2004 F150.
Valencia is about 20 minutes away from my house.  Not a problem.


NEXT WEEK:  Fifty Years Later

Keep Reaching for the Stars

For four hours every Saturday morning, he kept listeners around the world entertained with his weekly countdown of the "forty most popular songs in the land".

The gravel-voiced Detroit native of Lebanese descent didn't spend too much time in radio just north of Detroit in Flint, before being drafted into the Army, and then moving to the West Coast after his discharge, making a name for himself on Armed Forces Radio during his tour of duty in Korea.

He would bounce between coasts before landing at Los Angeles AM rock powerhouse KRLA in 1963, before the launch of nationally-syndicated "American Top 40" in 1970.   He would go on as the program's host until 1988, when he was replaced by Shadoe Stevens, and would return a decade later and host the show for another four years, when Ryan Seacrest assumed the role.  He would host several other nationally syndicated programs until retiring from the mic for good in 2009.

I haven't named this guy, because if you don't remember him on the radio, you would on Saturday morning television.  He was the original voice of  "Shaggy" on Scooby-Doo, and "Robin" on Superfriends.

Kemal Amin Kasem.  Better known as "Casey".

Casey stands alone in the history of Top 40 radio, as did Dick Clark in the early days of rock 'n roll.  His long distance dedications effectively connected him with his listeners, rather than the detachment his peers favored, often pushing off fan mail to answering services, or simply never read.

Casey valued his fans, and would have preferred to go on forever.  Unfortunately, the heavy hand of time shows no mercy on any of us, regardless of stature or wealth.

Casey is no exception to this, and it was made public in October, following a lawsuit by the esteemed disc jockey's caregiver that was ultimately dismissed.  His three children from his previous marriage are also petitioning the court for the right to visit him, as Jean Kasem, Casey's wife of 33 years, has reportedly blocked all such attempts.  Casey, now 81, signed over power-of-attorney rights to Jean in 2011.

This has all but ripped a family to shreds, as the radio icon battles advanced Parkinson's disease, and the loss of the voice that drew millions to their radios every week.  Reports have also surfaced that Kasem is battling Alzheimer's disease, but the family has yet to confirm this.  Other reports of elder abuse, thankfully, have been found to be baseless.

It's terrible to see the ramifications of aging on a family, divided over a loved one's best interests.  More so, think about how much it goes on every day in our society with families of the not-so rich and famous.

I hope that Casey and his estranged family members will find a common ground and come to a truce so that he can live his last days in peace before leaving this world.

Until then, I'll continue to keep my feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars.

You taught us that, Casey.  The importance of staying grounded no matter how far you go in this life.

You didn't just teach it, you lived it.

Thank you.

NEXT WEEK:  Keep on' truckin'

Fall of the Season

Now I know why it's called 'fall'.  It's the fall of summer...summer fun, vacations, and all the niceties of warm weather give way to the time of the year that's about as predictable as a Kardashian marriage.
At least that's the case here in western Pennsylvania.  It's one of those regions of the country where kids wait at the bus stop in mukluks, yet pack the flip-flops in their backpacks necessary for the drastic temperature change by 10am.
Never mind the time change that went into effect this morning, which resulted in our daughter racing into the bedroom at 6:30, because we forgot to set the clock in her room back an hour.
This time of year hit home for me on a recent Sunday, as I was watching the Steelers-Ravens game with my family, and a local weather report came on. The forecast called for snow later in the week.
That Thursday, I woke up to see frost on the ground.  My wife had elected to fire up the furnace on Tuesday.  I went to bed Wednesday night with the thermometer cowering at 33 degrees.
Now comes the time for decisions to be made.
What to get Margie for her birthday, as it and Christmas are pretty much back-to-back.  Making time for Savannah's annual Christmas program at preschool.  Knowing when to pull the mower deck off the tractor and replace it with the snowplow blade.  How much money to set aside for Christmas gifts.  Countless others.
Though I am very much a warm weather person who often laments over missing the warmth of late summer and early fall on the Carolina Coast, I can bask in not forgetting some important aspects of this time of year.
Snuggle weather. Margie and I enjoy cozying under a quilt on the couch as we catch up on our TV watching from earlier in the week.  Her making Christmas cookies with Savannah.  Me making Coq Au Vin on Christmas Eve.
Oh, yeah...deep fried turkey too.  I do make a mean deep-fried turkey.  Or so I've been told.
Then Thanksgiving, a little over three weeks away.
I have to say that 2013 has been a year of challenges for me personally and professionally, but I'm still thankful that it's another year that the Good Lord has allowed me to spend on this side of the soil.
I've been able to spend more time with my daughter, look challenges in the face and overcome them, rather than allow them to overcome me, I've spent more quality time with my dad thanks to a boat rebuild project that got underway in early spring, and still managed to find time to take the annual family vacation to South Carolina.
There's a lot of be thankful for.  Not just on Thursday, November 28th, either.


NEXT WEEK:  Feet on the Ground

Stick Shutdown

This is a follow-up to last week's tirade on the government shutdown, but on a more local level, so those of you who read this from afar, kindly humor me for this week.
Here in western Pennsylvania, we've seen the demise of many local AM radio stations.  Not changing formats or moving out of the community and setting up shop elsewhere.  I mean turning their licenses back in to the FCC, knocking down their towers, and selling the land for development or leasing it to natural gas processors.
WASP, WCVI, WKZV, WESA, WPLW and WSTV have rode off into the sunset, never to return. Others are in danger of the same fate.  Yet there are others who enjoyed huge success years ago, but are now being sold off and rebranded to the point where all traces of their past prestige and power are being removed and forgotten about completely.
This time we say goodbye to the legendary WIXZ, or "Wickzee 1360", the moniker under which it became best known for, in between WMCK and WPTT.  It left the air earlier this month under the call sign WMNY, which it adopted for a former business news format.
For all intents and purposes, we'll refer to it as WIXZ in this forum.
Though licensed to McKeesport, a Pittsburgh suburb, WIXZ was very much a Pittsburgh station, and thanks to the ingenuity of its past owner, Alan Serena, it reinvented itself in the late 80s as a local station serving the Monongahela Valley and Pittsburgh's South Hills.  Utilizing a country music format via satellite (it had been local earlier), it boasted a stable of popular programs augmenting the music.  It was also one of the very few places where you could hear auto racing on the radio, which would take years to gain acceptance by radio listeners.  "Rappin' on Racin'", a local auto racing talk show, also became a listener favorite.
There was also no shortage of talented on-air professionals going through the doors.  Both up-and-comers looking to break into the business and those displaced by larger stations that retained their recognizability afterwards found their place on WIXZ.
Alan had called and offered me an interview in 1993 for WIXZ after the "donated sale" of a station I had managed the year before, but I had accepted an offer from another station just one day before.  As fate would have it, Alan and I would work together almost a decade later after another station where I worked had been acquired by Renda Broadcasting Corporation, the same company that Alan sold WIXZ to and would serve as its Vice-President of Operations.
Oddly enough, the same organization that acquired my former station in 1992 is now the new owner of WIXZ.  While WIXZ's channel won't fade to black, it does mark the end of an era.
I applaud both Alan Serena and Tony Renda for their vision and wisdom in keeping this station on the air as long as they have.  As this industry continues its natural progression that has necessitated the sale or silence of many stations, we can fondly reflect on Pittsburgh's own "Golden Age of Radio" and the place these two esteemed gentlemen have in its history.
To both, I say thank you.


NEXT WEEK:  Hazy Shade of Autumn

Plant Shutdown

For a time in the mid-90s, I took a break from radio to work in the automotive industry.  More specifically, I found work at a Mazda/Ford subcontractor south of Detroit that processed freshly-assembled vehicles for storage or shipment to dealers and fleets.
Winter was our busiest time of year, with dealers replenishing their stock, often necessitating working in sub-zero temperatures seven days a week, 11 hours a day.  Summer, on the other hand, resulted in a decrease in work, with summer layoff options available to those with higher seniority who preferred to collect unemployment and not use any accrued vacation time...until the winter, of course.
July was especially fun.  The Flat Rock Assembly Plant shut down for two weeks to install new sheetmetal dies and other tooling for the coming model year.  Most of us who had stayed on were primarily kept busy with accessorizing or special projects.  Though the plant closed, the show still went on for us.
And we still got paid.
Imagine going 16 days without a paycheck, yet still being asked to report for work each day.  Sound crazy?
Yet the leadership in Washington asked just that of many of the workers who support the federal government in some capacity or another.  And they did it.
Not sure if I could do the same thing.
What was allowed to happen is nothing short of an absolute travesty.  Our founding fathers are spinning in their graves.  Other countries are laughing at us harder than ever...rolling on the floor this time.
Thankfully, it's finally over.  But the effects of it are still lingering and will for some time.
Our leaders on Capitol Hill have progressed to the level of their own incompetence, proving that the fiscal crisis of 2008 has taught them nothing.
I encourage those of you who do vote, to run your Congressional leaders out of town on a rail this year.  If you don't vote, then now's the time to register.  We need to prove now more than ever that the will of the people is strong, and our strength is in our numbers.  We have the first African-American President of the United States for this very reason.
Why vote them out?  Because I don't know of a single congressman or U.S. senator who offered to return his or her paycheck to the U.S. Treasury until the crisis was resolved, yet many federal departments were shut down and many seniors and disabled citizens worried sick over whether or not they would receive their Social Security checks.
I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, so I'll say this: Anyone who did give their check back, you can stay in office.  The rest of you, most of whom are already wealthy, can clean out your desks.
The answer is not a redistribution of wealth.  It's the realignment of priorities.  To put partisan bickering aside and be very cognizant of the fact that when the government shuts down, we are very vulnerable.  September 11th vulnerable.  Need I say more?
Or has Capitol Hill already forgotten that as well?
Not us.
And Tuesday, November 5th is the time to prove it.
See you at the polls.



NEXT WEEK:  Another kind of shutdown

Ask Questions Later

One way of celebrating my birthday is not paying attention to anything that's happening in the news.
It's my day.
Give me my day.
That said, on with the show.
In the early morning hours of Thursday, August 22nd, James Edwards, 52, of Shaler Township (about 15 minutes from downtown Pittsburgh) opened fire on his family less than a week after being suspended from his $52,000 a year job as an electrician at Pittsburgh International Airport.  He had only been there for two years.
He then turned the gun on himself.  His daughter and a pet beagle also died.  His son and wife were hospitalized.
It's always incidents like these that have everyone crying "why"?
Why, indeed.
Because you lost your job?
You lose your job, so you're going to further lose your family by destroying it with your own hand?  The one thing you CAN count on in this world above all else?
Having been in the radio business for more than two and a half decades, I've learned that it's a volatile, unsteady business where getting fired is a way of life.  In fact, I know of no job in the private sector these days that's safe.  Even the public sector is more shaky than ever, due to budget constraints.
Pensions are fragile to non-existent.  No thanks to the job crisis in this country, companies find themselves in the unique position of demanding and getting 'givebacks' from current employees and offering less to new prospects.
And not only that, it's not enough to give 40 hours of labor anymore.  Or even loyalty, for that matter. Companies have become more and more vigilant of owning every aspect of an employee.  Non-competes, unpaid after-hours work, and scrutinizing social media for any trace of your whereabouts.
They're getting it, too.
I've prided myself on the fact that while a company can own my labors for 40 hours a week, and maybe a little more every once in a while, there are some parts of me that are not for sale, nor should they be, and they never will be.
Ever.
Dignity.  Pride.  Integrity.
And many sacrifice those very things for the sheer sake of the almighty dollar.
It's not called "mean green" for nothin', ya know!
It's why we buy the things we can't afford, yet say we can't afford to be without.  The Rat Race.  It's not about the rat, but how many performance-enhancing substances it can ingest.
All a company can do is take away your paycheck.
The three qualities I just mentioned are yours and yours alone.  They're yours to keep, and they're the only things you're allowed to take with you when you leave this world.
So why sell them?  Or worse, give them away.
Eleanor Roosevelt once said "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."
When James Edwards learned of his impending job loss, he surrendered control of everything he had and everything he stood for to anyone willing to take it.  Not the airport authority, but society.  He was upset by society enough to strike out and hurt the people closest to him whom he has an obligation to protect.
From high school dropouts to people with advanced degrees, people get fired.  Auto mechanics to aerospace engineers.  It's a way of life.
Pick yourself up.  Dust yourself off.  Move on.
There is nothing and no one in this life that is worth killing yourself or someone else over.  Nothing.
Dignity.  Pride.  Integrity.
Commit a selfish crime like this, and you've given all of these qualities away.  Because that's exactly what it is, selfish.
If you think your life is that bad, what gives you the right to deprive others of theirs?  Are they that much better off than you to the point where you can't stand it?
And the beat goes on.


NEXT WEEK:  Stay Tuned

What We Do Here

My dad is now 68.  He's been through a myriad of occupations in his lifetime.

Township Supervisor.  Police officer.  U.S. Army drill sergeant.  Business owner.  

But he's been an electrician first and foremost.

Learning this trade in the Army, my dad always had an aptitude for science and mathematics, having excelled at both while in high school.  He received his first car at age 14, because it would take him two years to get it repaired and ready by the time he got his driver's license.  That tradition was passed to me in kind.

He also built the house he's been in for the past 33 years.  By that I mean not hiring a contractor to do the work for him.  I mean getting his hands dirty, using power tools, hammer and nails to put it up himself, buying materials little by little in cash to get everything done from the footing to the shingles on the roof.

His neighbors took notice.  My dad never had to go to the neighbors' for anything.  They usually came over, to see what he was doing and how he was doing it.  Then they would try the same thing themselves.

Sometimes it ended in disaster.

Thus, my dad quickly gained a reputation not only as an electrician, but the neighborhood handyman.  It was a reputation cultivated over two generations.

His father before him did the same thing.  Purchasing the family homestead where he lived from 1955 until his death in 2006 (Grandma still lives there today at 93), it was little more than a roach-infested filling station at the time that had gone out of business.  My dad was born in the house next door to it, as was his older sister and younger brother.

Though raising five children on a crane operator's salary, Grandpa fixed it up little by little, until it bore no resemblance at all to what it once was.  He also rescued discarded appliances and stripped them of their salvageable parts.  Who knows, he might need them one day.

"I NEVER throw anything away!" he exclaimed one day.

I guess you could say he was one of the first 'hoarders', but none of the parts he stockpiled found their way into the house any further than his workshop.  They usually took their place in the three 'shanties' he had on his property.  Car radios, electric fan motors, sweepers, gas caps, spark plug wires, you name it, he had it. Fred Sanford (or Albert Steptoe to my British friends) would have been envious.

As the years went by, Dad (and Grandpa before him) was usually called upon to help a neighbor out with a problem.  Whether it was a short circuit or legal problem, he never turned anyone away, nor did he ever ask for a dime or call in a favor.

And more often than not, he's taken for granted.

Many neighbors often drop by his garage to visit and chat.  One is a friend from his days as a township police officer.  The misanthropic are often misunderstood, and this fellow is no exception.  He can be brash and downright abrasive, but would give the shirt off his back if you needed it and without a second thought.

Dad and Tom had talked about the ingratitude of a 'grantee' one day, but neither of them really let it bother them all that much.

"You know Freddy," said Tom, "when we get to Heaven, I think that gate's gonna swing a little easier for us."

My dad just smiled and nodded.

I still call on my dad every once in a while when I'm having a problem that I don't think I can tackle myself.

He's always been willing to help, and while he can't do much electrical work anymore these days, he's willing to try.  I just have to remember to watch carefully to make sure I know how to do it in the future...for the day will come where I'll have to do it for myself or possibly someone else.

And he will always leave here with a thank you and a bottle of wine...minimum.

NEXT WEEK:  Shoot first