Jean Shepherd

In late 1974, I was working late one night in a traffic management company updating tariff books for the freight bill auditors who worked there. The nature of this job was flexible to the point that it could be done in the wee hours of the morning. The building then was mostly empty except for a handful of auditors who worked in some of the other offices. So I usually had the freedom to listen to the radio undisturbed while I worked. My station of choice was 1360-WKAT "The Talk of Miami". This station, based in Miami Beach, came in pretty weak at night in Hollywood where I lived, but the company I was working for was based in Miami Shores and WKAT's signal was strong there. Anyway, after the news that night, some classical music started playing and, after a couple of minutes of this a man began speaking over the music. I soon found out that he was Jean Shepherd, a renown satirist/author/radio star whose monologues on 710-WOR New York in the evening drew a sizable loyal following of listeners. WKAT would obtain these programs from WOR and rebroadcast them late at night. If you don't recognize him by his name, then you probably already know him as the creator and narrator of the largely autobiographical movie A Christmas Story (he spoke as the grown-up Ralph). I was immediately captivated by Jean's interesting monologues, which ranged broadly across topics like popular culture, funny and sometimes poignant stories from his childhood and early adulthood, understated satire, and general commentaries on society. I think the program that cracked me up the most was the one in mid-1975 when Jean related with great descriptiveness and hyperbole what happened one day in 1941 back in his childhood town of Hammond, Indiana when a certain species of bugs (I think they were cicadas), after being dormant for 17 years, suddenly came out in swarms enveloping and devastating (or at least seeming to devastate) everything in their path and terrifying everyone in the process. "Shep" was no shock jock: his speech was articulate, clean, and still managed to convey the feeling that he was just one of us, a fellow traveller through this struggle called life. But Jean showed that putting the edge of humor on the ordeals that we go through can add meaning, if not nostalgia, to their memories. And he was a sucker for nostalgia, as A Christmas Story demonstrates!

After I heard that first broadcast, I got into the habit of listening regularly enough to Jean Shepherd that I began to incorporate his worldview into mine. His talented way of expressing himself verbally was also something that I imitated, and to a significant degree this helped me conquer some difficulties I had with speaking. I didn't hear him on the radio after 1976, but I read that he retired completely from radio a little after that and lived somewhere in south Florida until his death in 1999. I never met Jean personally, but I still miss him. He was my friend!