WLT by Garrison Keillor Read Free Book Online Page A

the public seeks in radio! the allure of bright lights! the glamor and elegance and sophistication of the metropolis—that’s what folks out here in the small towns want.”
    â€œMinneapolis? A small town? You must be joking. I know what people around here want, Mr. Manatee, and it’s not a lot of lazy, overpaid, overaged New York prima donnas, no thank you. All those two-hundred-pound chanteusies and those matinee idols with the dyed hair—no sir, we don’t need ’em. We’ve got something better here, we’ve got spunk and talent and the old get up and go. No, sir. You picked the wrong man for your particular sell, mister. I don’t go for that brand of ballyhoo. I’m what you might call a small-town kind of guy.” And Ray reached over and snapped on the radio.
    He was hoping to get Miss Patrice, First Lady of the Keyboard, and a rippling rendition of “Liebestraum,” but he was ten minutes too late. It was the Jubilee and none other than the Norsk Nightingale singing, “Ven vas da last time yew saw Inga?”
    The New York man smiled. “Sounds like my butcher,” he said.
    â€œFor your information, it’s an old Dutchman who was wounded in the World War,” said Ray. “Mustard gas. He was terribly disfigured while crossing no-man’s-land to rescue a chaplain of another faith and so he sings with a mask. I suppose he’s not a great singer but we’re a loyal people here in the Midwest, Manitowoc. We don’t knock a doughboy just because he’s no Caruso.”
    â€œHnnn. Well, here’s the card. Contact me by tomorrow evening if you change your mind.”
    â€œHere’s your hat and what’s your hurry,” said Ray.
    It was the “Hnnn” that burned Ray’s bacon. Waiting for the man to arrive, Ray had hoped, wildly, that CBS was going to offer him a price, he would propose twice that, and they’d settle somewhere around $60,000, money he would have been thrilled to accept and invest in a fish hatchery in Aitkin. Soderberg’s would drop hamburgers from the menu and feature walleye and lake trout, “Choose Your Own from Our Tank.” But the “Hnnn” was so supercilious, so smug , so indubitably East Coast , Ray had no choice.
    He was going to have to stay in radio for sure. By George, he was going to show the arrogant little bastard how hay is made. “You wanted to get my back up, okay, it’s up,” thought Ray. The man was a lowdown, lamebrain, sharp-eyed, three-piece, high-hat, hot-shit, numero-uno New Yorker. You leave the country in the hands of these people and it won’t be worth living in. That was what William Jennings Bryan said and he was right , boys . The same afternoon, Ray borrowed $20,000 to boost WLT’s power from five-hundred to fifty-thousand watts, and he told Roy Jr. that WLT needed some new shows and to pay people to do them, and then he did what he had told Roy they would never ever do—he said to Roy Jr., “Let’s go ahead and sell commercials. For six weeks. On a trial basis.”
    Though there were frequent mentions of Soderberg’s Court on the air, Ray and Roy had felt that out-and-out selling on the radio would offend people. Radio was sacred, mysterious, and people talked about it in hushed tones
    (“Got WJZ in Newark and KDKA in Pittsburgh last night, clear as anything, and last week I got WSM in Nashville,” you’d hear men murmur on the streetcar), and ministers preached on its enormous potential for good, its power to bridge great distances and reach great multitudes and promote mutual understanding and world peace. Newspapers printed editorials about “The Responsibility of Radio” and urged the new industry to follow a path of sober adherence to solemn duty. To use such a gift and a godsend to peddle soap—would people stand for it?
    Vesta would not, not for a minute—she said,