WLT by Garrison Keillor Read Free Book Online

Cuban, Questo de Floros , and the socks were silk, either yellow or pale green or white, patterned with seahorses. With Vesta along, it was all High Purpose: they made the rounds of bookstores and toured the sacred sites (Cooper Union, the Public Library, the Museum of Natural History). But with an O.W. he reclined in bed in gorgeous yellow pajamas and was waited on by the dear thing as he perused the newspapers and smoked and ate fruit and took shower baths.
    About a week after his lunch with Lottie, he entrained east with a lady from Anoka named Gertie Berg, and one evening at 11 p.m., well-rested, well-informed, freshly bathed, a pale glow of nectarines on his tongue, Ray was treating her to a sirloin steak at the Cafe Angell when he heard the word “radio” twice, and then again. He traced the voice to a young man at a nearby table and stuck out his hand. “Soderbjerg’s the name, radio’s the game, and Minnesota’s where I hang my shingle,” he said.
    The young man’s name was William S. Paley, and he peered at Ray’s business card: “Says restaurant here.” He sniffed. “I don’t believe I know you.” He smiled. He blinked.
    Ray said: “You’re a busy man and so am I. I won’t waste your time with false modesty. I and my brother, an authority on radiation, are the owners of station W.L.T. operating at seven-hundred-seventy kilocycles, a year old and already the preeminent station in the Upper Mississippi Valley and Great Lakes region. Thanks to the solid layer of Laurentian limestone that underlies Minneapolis, the signal is clearer than any in America and can be received easily from the Alleghenies all the way to the Great Salt Lake,. and from the Mississippi Delta to the beginning of the great Canadian tundra, a region of vast untapped economic potential. With the construction of a one-thousand-foot tower, which we will undertake in the spring, this will be the preeminent radio station in America. All of this information you can verify with one phone call to Secretary Hoover in Washington. This station is now being offered for sale to selected buyers, in which connection we would welcome your interest, but I have taken enough of your time. Good evening.”
    Paley gave Ray a cigar. He said he was forming a radio network, to be called either the Columbia or the Princeton Broadcasting System. “Columbia would be my recommendation,” said Ray. “Princeton sounds effeminate. You won’t regret it if you go with Columbia.” Paley thanked him and lit Ray’s cigar. Ray thought it tasted like damp cornstalk.

    Three weeks later, the Columbia Broadcasting System sent a man named Stanford McAfee out from New York. He wore two-toned shoes and a mustard-colored suit and plopped down and grabbed Ray’s elbow and after twenty minutes of idle chatter about Victor Herbert and the dirigible and other things Ray didn’t give a fig about, leaned across the table and told Ray that WLT ought to become a CBS affiliate.
    To become the owner of a CBS-affiliated station, McAfee suggested, was the greatest thing that could happen to a man. “CBS is the greatest broadcast entity in America, and CBS artists have earned top favor in every city in the land,” he said. “We are moving forward every day, signing people of the caliber of Smith Ballew, Lannie Ross, Louella Parsons, Marjorie O’Blennis, and Mary Margaret McBride.”
    â€œWe have excellent singers and comedians right here in the Midwest,” Ray said, disgusted. He wanted to sell, not join. “This is a mecca of talent here. No need to tie ourselves to some outfit in New York.”
    McAfee smiled as if correcting a child. “Hnnn. Local talent of local interest is all well and good, but the public demands the best, you know, and the best is not here, believe me, it’s in New York. The stars of Broadway and the great recording artists—that’s what