Category: Life with Pratts

Driven to Distraction

Another favorite memory that, after 50 years, still seems like a fantasy. It happened the summer between my junior and senior years of high school, after attending the 1972 New York Comic Art Convention, which was made possible by mih.

That was the first time I met Joe Sinnott. It was also the first time Joe met Jack Kirby. In the past it was widely stated that Joe and Jack met for the first time at the 1975 Marvel Convention, but that is incorrect.

That isn’t, however, the memory that seems like a fantasy. The story you are about to read is true. The two names in it have not been changed.

After returning home from the convention, I attended a driver’s ed class that was held at the high school, paying for it myself. The first part was classroom instruction, before taking the learner’s permit test. For those who passed, driving lessons would be scheduled.

There were 10-12 kids in the class, evenly split between boys and girls. At the end of the last classroom session, the instructor said he needed to speak with me.

“Mr. Pratt, we have a problem,” he said. I had absolutely no idea what that could possibly be.

“Every one of the girls in the class has requested to go practice driving with you.”

“Uh… what? All of them?” I would have been stunned if even one girl had made such an unlikely request!

“Yes, and to avoid disappointing the ladies I have assigned you a rather difficult schedule. I’m sure you don’t mind.”

I swear this really happened, and I’m not making it up! I was, to use the British expression, gobsmacked. It was as if I’d been suddenly made aware of an entirely different plane of reality, where high school sports stars and bad boys with motorcycles existed. But I was just a nerdy, glasses-wearing, comic book fanboy.

I actually did mind knowing why the instructor had given me a crazy schedule, because I was extra nervous every time I was in that AMC Hornet sedan, thinking about the girls in the car with me. I was either behind the wheel with two of them in the back seat, or I was in the back sitting next to one of them! I remember quite vividly that I was so distracted seeing Diane and her friend Cindy in the rearview mirror I almost drove through a stop sign. The instructor had to slam the secondary brake pedal installed on the passenger side.

There was no such distraction when I was ready to take the driving test. I recall the RMV guy told me to go the wrong way down a one-way street. Are trick questions supposed to be part of the test? Anyway, I passed, and that was — gulp! — fifty years ago.

C2H5OH

When I was eighteen, the drinking age was eighteen. Except for taking a couple sips of Miller beer — or maybe it was Schlitz — when I was seventeen, I waited until I was legal.

I’m lucky regarding alcohol, because I’ve seen, and lived with, its effects on others who weren’t so lucky. I enjoy good beer and wine very much, and fortunately there is never a feeling of “needing” a drink. For that I am grateful.

My problem with alcohol is that having a second glass of wine or more than a pint of beer can sometimes affect my sleep. It depends on how much I’d eaten and how late in the evening I had the drinks.

A 4-pack of pint cans from the local craft breweries has been my typical weekly beer consumption. The cost for a double IPA 4-pack is approaching $20, and it’s going to get worse, once the carbon dioxide shortage hits.

https://www.wgbh.org/news/local-news/2022/07/29/co2-shortage-hits-massachusetts-breweries

Lessee… $20/week… if I were to buy every week is… that’s over $1000/year for beer! So I do have an alcohol problem.

WABC, PTT, and Me

Twenty years ago, while stopped at a red light in my little ’89 Honda Civic, behind a couple of other cars, this happened. I was a little late for work that day.

An elderly Russian guy came flying down the Mass Pike exit ramp behind me. I saw him in the rearview mirror, heading towards me fast. I knew he was going to crash and braced for impact. The collision pushed the Civic into the car ahead of me with so much force that it, in turn, hit the car in front of it.

The old guy was taken to a hospital where, as I was told later, he accused me of causing the accident. The Massachusetts State Police didn’t agree. I escaped with a mild concussion, and a badly sprained right ankle.

So began my Posterior Tibial Tendon troubles. I had forced the brake pedal down with so much strength the brake lines blew out upon impact. But a couple of other things also blew out. A blood vessel in my calf split open, and I didn’t know until later that some of the fibers in my PTT had been torn. The damage progressed once I returned to my running schedule.

I was almost home from a 25-mile training run for the Lowell Marathon when suddenly, mid-stride, my right foot literally just stopped working! I could feel something sticking out that shouldn’t have been. My PTT had slipped out of position. After popping it back into place I was able to hobble home the last half-mile.

That white area in the MRI seen along the PTT is tendinosis. There’s a bulge there to this day. With a lot careful attention to that area, along with motion control running shoes and orthotics, the tendon has held all these years. I dread the day if and (probably) when it finally breaks. The PTT in my left ankle is perfectly fine.

What does any of this have to do with WABC? As I have said many times, I was very fortunate to have grown up listening to WABC during its Musicradio ascendency. Its influence on me was so great that it led to my relatively brief but memorable stint working in AM radio. (Technology paid much better, believe me.) The man who transformed 77 WABC into the Musicradio powerhouse was program director Rick Sklar.

Rick Sklar with a Musicradio 77 WABC listener

https://musicradio77.com/Sklar.html

Rick was a marathon runner in his spare time and in June of 1992 he entered the hospital for minor foot surgery to repair a torn tendon in his left ankle. He never returned home. An unfortunate anesthesia complication took his life on June 22, 1992. He was 62 years old.

Whether the torn tendon was Sklar’s PTT, or his Achilles, that was a terribly lousy thing to happen to him. I continue to be careful with my PTT, in the hope that I can keep running without needing foot surgery.

He Goes “Ahhhhh….”

The temperature fell closer to 80 than to 90, I went running, then cooled off with a quick shower and poured a cold IPA from the craft brewery in town. Such a nice evening to relax and listen to music. Ahhh….

Prue once called Lia my “little girlfriend in Spain,” causing me to sputter and cough up my drink. Prue now lives in Spain herself. Both friendships came about from having this website.

Lia Pamina

Lia Pamina

Time-Tested Tables and Tonearms

Micro-Trak Corporation, Holyoke, MA

Telling the tale from my radio days about the transmitter fuse made me nostalgic and got me searching for information about the turntables I loved using. Especially for slip-cueing* singles!

The two tables we had in the DJ studio at the station were 3-speed Russco Cue-Masters. They were manufactured in California and available as late as 1981 — with 78 rpm! — only a couple of years before Compact Disc appeared in the U.S.

Russco Cue-Master broadcast turntable

As you can see, no assumption was made regarding the choice of tonearm. I was working just west of Simpsons City, aka Springfield. Micro-Trak, a company located just north of Springfield, manufactured tonearms. The legendary model 303 had a wooden wand. Yes, wood!

Micro-Trak 303 and 306 tonearms

Micro-Trak sourced its turntables from Russco, and offered them as complete packages with their tonearms factory installed. We had the 720 model — a Russco Cue-Master “Drilled for Micro-Trak Model 303.”

Micro-Trak 720 and 740 turntable packages

The Stanton 500 was a broadcast standard phono cartridge. The 500-E with elliptical stylus was well-suited for stereo records played on FM stations. The 500-E was one of the first cartridges I ever owned, while in high school. At the AM station, the 500-AL with conical stylus was installed in the 303 tonearms, and wired for mono use.**

Stanton 500 Series phono cartridge

This setup was an absolute sure-footed — or armed — delight to use! I have indelible memories of exactly how it felt and sounded handling those turntables and cueing up records. The clutch for changing speeds took some effort to move! That little notch seen in the picture above between the 33 and 45 speeds was where you could park the lever to disengage the drive so the platter would spin freely for swapping records.*** For all the love club DJ’s have for the direct-drive Technics SL-1200, they would be amazed by the tank-like build quality and mechanical strength of those old, idler/rim-drive professional turntables.

The radio biz is nothing like it was, of course. I am very glad that I was able to experience radio broadcasting as it was, when I did. Especially considering the opportunity came from an unsolicited offer that was dropped in my lap.

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