What a strange Easter

This morning, I’m “sheltering in place” quietly, remembering some very different Easters from the past. One of the earliest was getting up to serve the 6 AM Mass at St. Matthews. My brother Gene and I riding our old school Schwinn fat tire bicycles down Birkenhead, right on Bayview, merging onto Blanding and parking them in the bike rack behind the church. Now this was the old church. The one that was a chapel moved from Camp Blanding to the church property. By the time the new church was built, we had advanced to the “prime time” 8 AM Mass and could sleep in.

During my college years, I always came home for Easter with my family. Easter was also “spring break” for us but this was before everyone flocked to the beaches. Now, it seems that flocking to the beaches is not such a good idea even with spring break being separate from Easter weekend. Our big Easter gathering was usually at our house or at an aunt’s home. They were huge thirty or more cousins, aunts and uncles devouring ham and “pot luck” fixin’s and swapping stories of each of our adventures.

In the fall of 1965 I began my commercial radio career as a weekend announcer at WCOS and that would have meant that I would be working the Easter of 1966 but I got lucky; that winter I was promoted to the Allnight Satellite show working overnights Sunday night through Friday night. So I was able to drive home on Holy Saturday afternoon and then back to Columbia after the gathering on Easter Sunday. I arrived in Columbia and went directly to the station around 9 PM and took a short nap on the couch in the closed reception area of the station. I somehow managed to get through the show that night but I can’t vouch for the quality of the show. I completely missed the Easter gatherings during the time I was doing the 8PM - 1AM Nightbeat show from Doug Broome’s

The same was mostly true for the time I was at WIS-TV as I worked the prime time evening shift and had Sunday’s off. There was no time to get to Jacksonville after signing the station off at 1 AM. It wasn’t until when I moved out to WIS Radio that we could make it back home for the Easter Weekend. By then the gathering was in its largest phase with nieces and nephews being added to the noisy mix.

So, I’m sitting here trying to remember if I ever had to work on Easter Sunday morning. This has to be an anomaly for someone who worked so long in broadcasting but I don’t think I ever worked on the air on Easter Sunday morning. Thanksgiving, yes – Christmas, yes, Fourth of July, yes but not Easter. Wow! How did I escape that?

Wait a minute, you say; aren’t you on the air on KLYC this Easter? Actually I am but then I’m not. Through the magic of a thing called voice tracking, I recorded my Sunday morning KLYC show last Thursday afternoon.

OMG, did I really say something nice about voice tracking. I did, I really did. This way I get to enjoy playing some oldies without being in the studio.

That brings me to this “shelter in place” time that we are living through. Being older and “at risk” to the COVID-19 virus has taken away my live show on WUSC-FM for the duration. But being truly fortunate to have a fully capable internet connected home studio I can continue to do shows. So my WUSC-FM show is temporarily airing live on my online station WOGR-DB on Mondays. This is at a time when many radio presenters have been laid off or furloughed until the crisis is over.

Home studio capability has also given me a chance to help out a friend and fellow broadcaster, Steve Varholy at WXRY-FM. For the next few weeks I am doing the 4:40 and 5:40 PM newscasts weekdays from the “Main Street Newsdesk.” Reading the news on the radio is something that I have not done since 1979 at WIS Radio. I’m glad to report that it is like learning to ride a bicycle. You never forget how.

My “lockdown experience” is pretty different than for most folks. Each day is unique, which is a pretty good thing. Most senior residence facilities have huge calendars on the walls and service providers always tell the residents what the day and date are. Now that I’m retired and don’t go anywhere during this quarantine period, I would probably need something like that to keep me oriented to the day of the week. But my on air and recording schedule is doing a pretty good job of keeping me pointed in the right direction.

To my broadcast brothers and sisters I say; these are strange times that have followed a strange time when our business consolidated and contracted. Computers and automation have replaced many of you on the air and the future looks even more uncertain. But like the other unexpected side effects of COVID-19; less traffic, clearer skies and porpoises in the canals of Venice, the need for that local live voice on the radio is being pointed out. The world may be different after the crisis is done. It may look different, like doing radio from home, but it could bring back some of the good old days. Happy Easter Everyone! Oh MY!