Newport Tales – Part XIII

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As I mentioned at the beginning of this series, Newport has an emotional tug for me. A lot of interesting things happened during my five years on the Oregon Coast. One area where I really struggled was the overnight shift, which was my permanent position once KSND was on the air in March of 1995.

While it’s really not the case anymore, back then a radio rookie usually started his full-time career in overnights. Mistakes could be made there without any serious repercussions while the broadcaster worked on his craft. It was all a part of paying one’s dues.

My solo shift was 9:00 pm to 5:00 am Monday through Saturday, eventually changing to Sunday through Friday once we hired weekend part-timers. In the early days there wasn’t much to do. I changed reel-to-reel tapes on the Schafer 903E automation, recorded the nightly weather forecast, altered the witticisms on the outdoor reader board, cleaned the tape machine heads, and programmed the sequential electronic memory on the automation. Exciting stuff.

Sunday nights I had a lot of time to do maintenance cleaning of the equipment while we ran a syndicated ambient electronica show called, Musical Starstreams, on digital audio tape. The music was a vast departure from what we normally played, and the host, Forest, always sounded as though he had been hitting the waterpipe all week. Weird stuff. The show ran from 10:00 pm to midnight.

I also spent some time writing commercials and handling minor production recording duties. While this eventually became a full-time job, in the early days there wasn’t a lot of that work to do. The only other major duty I had was restarting the music rotations at 3:00 am. This kept songs from playing at the same times each day and week.

Overnights did have its odd charms. While larger market stations got calls during the night, we received very few. A stranger one that I remember was a construction worker calling me around midnight and again at 2:00 am to see if I’d dedicate a song to his ex-girlfriend. She lived in Idaho, so I don’t know how this was supposed to help, but he was nice enough — really talkative for that late at night. I had nothing else pressing to do so we chatted. He liked his Journey songs, but Open Arms seemed a silly request since it was his former girlfriend we were talking about.

Some moments I didn’t appreciate as much. Our studio was in a former bank building. On occasion someone would use the drive-through window area as a turnaround, which would trip the alert bell. That always spooked me when it happened in the middle of the night. I’d open the studio door a crack — peeking out to make sure a car wasn’t just sitting there. The window glass was bulletproof, but still!

The melancholy kicked in while watching the laundromat across the street close at night. The owner would come by and clean the building. Once he left, that’s when I felt most alone. A few cars and big rigs would pass by on Highway 101, but it was fairly quiet in that part of town. That’s when I’d wonder if I’d ever get off the overnight shift.

More to come in Part XIV…

Newport Tales – Part XII

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Upon arriving in Newport in late 1994, I was excited to live on the Oregon Coast and thrilled to start a job at what looked to be a great start-up operation. Finding a girlfriend was the next item to cross off my list.

I had help immediately. My boss, Keith, and his girlfriend, Diane, wanted to set me up with a young lady Diane had known for years. The plan was to have the four of us meet for lunch. Unfortunately, that did not happen. The woman in question didn’t feel like meeting anyone. I was disappointed, but it was out of my control. Or was it?

Let me stop here and say that life experience has taught me this type of situation is almost always a dead end and a good place to stop, regardless of the urging from other parties involved. This wouldn’t be a story worth telling, however, if I hadn’t plowed forward. The stop signs along the way couldn’t have been any more red, but some guys learn the hard lessons in dating through humiliation.

The woman was a teller at the bank where our radio station had an account. She became known as “Bank Girl” around work. Diane thought Bank Girl would go out with me if we just had a chance to meet. She encouraged me to take deposits over, strike up a conversation, and see if she would have lunch. I took a trip or two over just so that Bank Girl would recognize me; no one wants to go to lunch with someone who just walked in off the street.

Soon came the big day of asking Bank Girl to lunch. The bank itself was five minutes from work, but the trip took the better part of half an hour. There was the long drive down every side street along the way, the dry mouth and profuse sweating while sitting in the parking lot, and then the fair amount of time spent pretending to fill out deposits slips that were completed before I got there. A bundle of nerves. What could possibly go wrong?

I handled the business part of our interaction and then popped the question regarding lunch. She said no. She just wasn’t interested in dating anyone. There was a little bit of salesman in me — the whole overcoming objections strategy. I told her it was just lunch and asked what it would take to change her mind. She said, “You would have to move mountains.” Hmmm. Let’s just say the drive back to work was a lot shorter than the drive to the bank.

While glad that I had put myself out there, I was feeling a bit dejected, especially since there had been a fair amount of energy expended. This also happened on the day I felt completely overwhelmed with all the audio processing material I was reading as part of my broadcasting training. While talking with Keith about my struggles, I also mentioned the Bank Girl incident. Keith prided himself on being good with women, so I followed his lead on an idea.

We headed over to Walmart that night, and I purchased a couple of Matchbox vehicles: a dump truck and a bulldozer. The next day I made little signs for each of the vehicles that read: “Clarke’s Mountain Moving Services. Call: 541-574-9889.” The number was my home phone, and the plan was to take these over the following week and impress her with my creative solution to her problem.

Informal focus groups suggested this was a fantastic idea. Most women I spoke with said they’d go out with a guy who did this, and if she wouldn’t — run, Clarke, run! During this time Keith suggested calling a friend of his who had dug out the ground at our transmitter site. This friend had a backhoe, and Keith was sure he would be willing to park it in the bank lot if I needed a real prop, rather than a toy, to make my point. That seemed a bit much, and I stuck with the Matchbox machinery.

A week later I returned to the bank, brimming with confidence. After making my deposit, I asked her about lunch again. She said I’d still have to move mountains. I pulled the toys from my pocket and told her I had something to help do the job. One of the other tellers smiled while observing this. Bank Girl watched me roll the dump truck back and forth across the desk. She looked down with a half smile and said…”maybe.” Elated, I smiled and told her she could keep the trucks and that I’d talk to her soon.

When I got back to work Keith asked how things had gone. I told him she still thought I needed to move mountains, but a lunch date had been upgraded to maybe. He had another idea for me to get a more definitive answer the next time I made a deposit.

A week later I’m back at the bank. After another business transaction, I pulled a serving spoon out of my back pocket and set it on her stand. She asked me what it was for, and I told her it was for moving those mountains even if I had to do it one spoonful at a time. While it would have been nice to receive points for a creative response, she lost her temper instead. In a rather loud voice she said she didn’t know why I kept coming back; she told me the answer was no weeks ago! Meekly, I asked — again (yeah, really) — what it would take to change her mind. She said that time would have to stand still. Turning three different shades of red, I hightailed it out of the bank.

When I returned to the station, Keith asked again how my quest had gone. I told him. He mentioned the local junk store in Newport had old broken clocks for sale. I could go pick one up and take it in to Bank Girl to show her that time was standing still. NO! NO! NO! Being detained by security was becoming a possibility. It was time to move on. Her loss!

Keith and I talked about the Matchbox trucks many times after this debacle. I always thought they had probably been thrown into a drawer and that she’d remember me when she came across them some day. I figured it would be a great story she’d have to tell with pangs of regret. Maybe if this was The Notebook. Turns out, she wasn’t the sentimental type. Years later I learned that she had given the toys to a couple of neighborhood boys the day I gave them to her at the bank. So much for the excogitating that went into THAT plan!

Sadly, this was not my only dating train wreck in Newport, but it was one of the more memorable. Dating in a small town is a book that writes itself. As a colleague of mine put it, “I have to give you credit. You were always willing to abuse yourself in your chase for the ladies.” Guilty as charged. Funny how when I met the right person a decade later, the histrionics weren’t necessary.

More to come in Part XIII…

Newport Tales – Part XI

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I met Kei at Shady Pines sometime in 1995. She was an interesting Japanese woman, in her early 60s, who moved into the apartment across from mine. Kei was divorced and had relocated from Orange County, California. Before leaving, she sold a successful business and most of her possessions. She didn’t talk a lot about her family, but I was under the impression they were a little surprised by the move.

Kei took an interest in both KSND and me, thinking I was very “together” for my age, and we quickly became friends. While working overnights at the station, I had to stay in town Christmas weekend of 1995, and since she didn’t have any family around, she came over to my place to celebrate the holiday. I put up a tree, and we exchanged cards. It was fun.

Eventually, I moved from overnights and had a schedule more conducive to socializing. I had made a few friends closer to my age by then, but none of them got off work at 11:00 am and most had families, so I looked for other things to do. Kei was up for road trips, so we did a little traveling up and down the coast. I drove. She bought dinner. That was a good deal for a starving radio guy. She even introduced me to Japanese food at a little place called Yuzen Japanese Cuisine in the tiny coastal community of Seal Rock — not exactly a place one would expect to find such food!

My colleagues laughed themselves into a collective coma over jokes about this relationship. Kei became known as Mrs. Livingston — a reference to the old sitcom, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father. For the most part I ignored it, but the harassment was endless. That’s what happens when a 25-year-old somehow moves into a seniors-only housing community.

Despite the age difference, Kei was a good sounding board. She listened to my tales of dating disasters. There were many; it was a small town! She was encouraging but also realistic — sometimes a little too much. That was a bone of contention between us, but it was nice to have an adventurous neighbor who was young at heart and also wise.

What’s unfortunate is that this friendship eventually flew off the rails before I left the coast. Kei and I, like many friends, didn’t always get along. She had a temper! When something or someone bothered her, she got a scary look and lashed out. One day I ended up on the business end of her wrath.

I had recently gone through a difficult period in my life but felt like I had moved past it. By this time, I was doing a morning show at KSND. One day I came home after a show that went really well. Kei did not agree. She left a rather rude message on my answering machine, critiquing my performance and letting me know I was falling apart. She wasn’t home, so I left a message on her machine, making it clear I didn’t appreciate her unsolicited rant. If she had a problem with the show, she could talk to me face-to-face. There was a little irony there, and in retrospect, I wish I had ignored her message. I laid down to take nap. I heard her come home, though, and one minute later my phone rang. I let the machine get it, and she artistically belted a long, drawn out f-bomb  — encouraging me to do something uncharitable to myself. If Whitney Houston had sung in profanities, this is how it would have sounded.

I jumped out of bed and stomped across the hall. She answered the door with her eyes firing bullets. I apologized for being testy in my message, but she had none of it — slamming the door. Hmmm. I tried going back later, but she made it clear our friendship was over. Just like that. It disappointed me because friends have disagreements, but they should be able to work through problems. It got weirder though…

Months later I was talking with a Newport police officer who started dating a colleague of mine. We hadn’t met, but he knew of me. He was the officer on the call when Kei apparently contacted police to tell them I was listening to her thoughts through the electrical outlets. Their advice to her — neither helpful nor professional — was to cover the outlets with aluminum foil, which she did.

This incident, her anger, and the strange move she made to Newport made me realize there was a lot more going on with her. Compassion didn’t work though. She refused to have anything to do with me, regardless of gestures I made, so I stopped trying. Then one day, not too long before I left the coast, her family came from California to move her out of the apartment and presumably back home. The family smiled at me; she gave me one last look of death, and that was it. I never saw her again. We knew each other four years.

While this was a disappointing life experience, there were more to come in Newport. Quite a few life lessons were learned in the little coastal town. Some of them, though, were a lot more humorous. My dating disaster attempt with “Bank Girl” was one of those.

More to come in Part XII…