On my wall, the shadows play.
Shifting shapes with every sway.
Through the forest, deep and dark
The wolf’s howl pierces like a spark.
Across the moon, the dove flies high
A fleeting glimpse in night skies.
As I brush tears from my eyes.
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A wonderful world happens after Midnight.
Lonely and creative hearts come out to play
No longer hushed by the glare of an unforgiving day.
The graveyard shift,
Or so some call it.
A place where
The dead are laid to rest.
With other undesirables.
In radio
And other lonely places
Time passes slowly.
Midnight creeps to 1, then 2
Then to 6 a.m.
It’s where people drift
When there’s no place left to go.
For me, it was my voice, my opinions,
And my music that was my shovel.
Losing myself in thoughts
Alone in the middle of the night.
Ideas and music flowed like wine.
And I lost all track of time.
Then the phone would ring.
Oh no, not a ring!
You can’t have things ringing
In the On-Air studio.
A red flashing light,
Endlessly flashing, flashing, flashing.
Becoming a silent scream
Refusing to be ignored.
Answer me,
Answer me, answer me.
Phone call,
Phone call.
And many flashes later
I answer.
The voice said
“My name is Midnight.
Would you play a song for me?”
A wonderful world happens after Midnight.
Lonely and creative hearts come out to play
No longer hushed by the glare of an unforgiving day.
So do the strange
and the deranged.
A cross-section of life begins to drift
In and out
On the graveyard shift.
The musicians finishing up their gigs.
Dropping by
Because
Where do you go after 2 a.m.
When there is no place to go but home
And home is no place to go.
We had that in common,
The night people
And I,
As we tried to
Be glad to be alone
When all we wanted was to cry.
Sometimes it worked.
Midnight was neither a lonely heart
Nor a musician.
Just a night soul on a quest for tomorrow’s meaning
And yesterday’s reasons.
A late-night spirit who came to listen
Not just to the show
But to the lonely gravedigger.
And then Midnight would listen more
More from this lonely
Drifting vagabond
Wandering through town.
Both the ringmaster
And the clown.
Through so many passages
In my life, Midnight came to listen
Again, and then again.
Helping me through the
The dark dances of a searching soul
The journey of one growing old.
Dreading the dimming of the light.
Cursing the flickering flame
Fading in the middle of a winter’s night.
And many years later
Midnight came and cared again.
I guess I never really let Midnight know
How much they helped to make my life
A possible dream
Keeping me from going too far adrift
there on the graveyard shift.
It’s time I let you know
You gave my life a special glow
Pushing time along.
Your memory travels where I go.
Thank you for all that could have been.
And for what was.
Lost in the glow of life’s footlight.
Now dimming.
Goodnight, Midnight, goodnight.
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Boston is a city that I love, but I rarely venture into its busy streets. I remember the quiet days of the pandemic when the city seemed to pause and breathe. But I also find inspiration in the crowds of people hunched over their phones, oblivious to their surroundings. They sparked this short poem in me, reflecting the contrast between solitude and connection. I called it “Titanium Souls.”
Titanium souls
In a keyboard world
Lost between now,
And the space bar.
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A brief introduction to this poem. The Santa referred to here was a friend to me on Facebook, we never met but it is possible to feel a closeness to a person you have shared histories, sadness, and laughter with even if from a distance and for many years. A retired schoolteacher, every year he would look forward to becoming Santa for the children where he lived. It was his brother, also my friend, who posted the news of his passing, and I will deeply miss his daily back-and-forth post with me, he made my solitary life far more bearable than it would have been, and his leaving has made it lonelier.
Santa Died Today
It hurt me more than I knew it would.
When I heard his brother say
The big guy in the bright red suit
Santa died today.
Not the Santa of dreams and lore
But as real as the canes in the candy store
And each year he’d wear the silly suit.
But the beard and hair were from the roots.
Roots of a life well lived.
White as the snow on chimney tops
He never forgot the inner kid.
His love for life never stopped.
I lost one Santa as a youth.
Overhearing whispered truth
And again, it hurts to hear them say.
I’m sorry Santa died today.
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He wore an ascot. Even in the early 1960s, very few people wore ascots and none I had ever known. It takes a certain flair and a lot of chutzpah and mounds of dignity to wear an ascot, and wearing an ascot in New York City in the early 1960s could only be accomplished by the cream of class.
Mentors
He wore an ascot. Even in the early 1960s, very few people wore ascots and none I had ever known. It takes a certain flair and a lot of chutzpah and mounds of dignity to wear an ascot, and wearing an ascot in New York City in the early 1960s could only be accomplished by the cream of class.
Standing on a windy corner in Manhattan in the middle of January as I had done on many mornings, waiting for the man who had become my mentor, it seemed the wind did not bite as much and the cold did not cut as deep. I knew he would round the corner at any moment, sporting his brightly colored ascot and scarf and warm smile. He was never late, and I was there to learn my craft from someone who knew what it would take to make it.
Henry Bartel taught voice in New York City, and he was an on-air working professional at no less than a classical music station, a classical music station in the world’s largest city, New York! Henry taught me how to properly pronounce names like Igor Stravinsky (you must roll that name), although I aspired to be more like Wolfman Jack, Murray the K, Cousin Brucie Morrow, and Arnie “Woo Woo” Ginsburg, the Big Jocks who helped make Rock and Roll what it is. It’s easier to say Lennon than Stravinsky.
You might think that Henry, a man of accomplishment in an ego-infested industry, would have such a big ego he would not have time to teach a young upstart, but just the opposite was true, and it was not an easy task. Born in the south, I had a slight southern accent, not the kind of sound that would be accepted in the major markets of our country. Added to that, I was one of the most timid people on earth, and most professional teachers/broadcasters would probably have suggested I get a job in a library.
One morning I waited for his arrival, expecting to see that big smile and brightly colored ascot come around the corner, and Henry was late. Henry was never late and was the first to tell me there is no word for “late” in Broadcasting, and I have lived by that my entire life.
As time passed, another professor walked by and asked “Dan, why are you here today?” I began to answer, and he stopped me and said, “Henry had a heart attack in the back of his cab this morning. I’m sorry, Dan, he is dead.” During the rest of my time in New York, the wind was harsher, the cold relentless, and the days a darker gray. I never had a chance to tell Henry Bartel what he had meant to me and how much I had appreciated his help, but I went on to live my dream. The shy kid with the southern accent worked in some of the best and biggest cities, including New York.
I don’t think there have been many times just before throwing the mic switch to “ON” and “GO UP, LIVE! ON AIR!” that I do not remember the man who helped make it all possible. I will always remember Henry.
This song was recorded and released in 1975. I first heard it that same year as I walked into the first bar I ever visited in Boston, The Last Hurrah located in the Omni Parker House Hotel, that is where Billy Joel’s uptown girls visit. Imagine that, a lost hippie peacenik revolutionary pretty much non-drinker walking into The Last Hurrah in Boston at around 4 on a hot afternoon, this is uptown business and financial district so you can imagine I was not dressed like the rest but I do think I impressed and they served me. The Parker House and The Last Hurrah Bar were the unrivaled political hotel and restaurant of Boston, thanks to their location across the street from Boston’s City Hall, it was built-in 1865. People like James Michael Curley (mayor of Boston who is said to be the model for Edwin O’Connor’s protagonist in his 1956 book The Last Hurrah) often were seen at The Parker Houses’ main dining room. And by the way, I had no idea about any of this before a year or so later, hell I was just a long-haired hippie peacenik a rebel without a cause for the first time in my adult history and figured I’d try a beer. As I seated myself at this long wooden bar and looked around at the overall well-polished rustic look of the place the piano player was still holding my attention and he was playing and singing this song and I have been loved, and I have loved, and I have loved this song from then on and every once in a while I have met an old lover. https://youtu.be/Q5Eoax6I-O4
Last week I shared one of my favorite radio memories in “A Radio Christmas to Remember.” This week I’m returning to another time and place. Just like everyone else, this time of year is my time for remembering, regretting, and rejoicing. Beginning in January 2017, I’ll start writing new blogs and do what I like to do, which is to tell a good story. Until then, I hope you’ll like these blogs from months gone by of memories that seem like lifetimes ago.
Once there was a time. It was a perfect storm of music, issues, and people all coming together at just the right time in just the right way in just the right places. Once there was a time that I think will never be equaled, and sometimes when I feel old—and those times happen more and more to me every day now—I see something or hear some music from the 1960’s and very early 1970’s, and I remember and I smile. I smile knowing that yes, once there was a time, and I was there.
A very good friend told me the other day that I was his favorite hippie, and I told him it was likely that I am the only hippie he knows given our age difference and that we old hippie radio DJ’s are a dying breed.
I think many younger people today, and even some in my age group who might have somehow escaped the scars of the sixties, don’t realize that their idea of hippie is not what they might think. All hippies were not pot heads dancing naked at Woodstock or jamming to the Dead at the Fillmore. To me and to a lot of others, it was a belief, a lifestyle, and a commitment that while the world was not perfect, we could and would make it better.
I said “scars of the sixties” because of something I call “movement casualties.” We are the survivors who once believed so strongly in–and forgive me for using these terms—peace and love and making changes for the better, and then we watched as all our hopes crumbled. We watched as John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King fell to hatred stronger than our love. We watched as Brian Epstein, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, Phil Ochs, and many others left us behind. But we kept on believing, and maybe for many the final blow came when John Lennon was killed.
We old hippies learned that all the things we thought we could do were not strong enough to stop bullets of hate or the despair of a drug overdose or a raging social or political lunatic.
My friend replied to my statement about being a dying breed by telling me it was time to pass the torch and joked that he would start growing out what was left of his hair, growing it long. I said the tie dye was optional, but he would need either a peace earring or a pendant.
Just recently I realized that I was indeed tired. Maybe I had continued the struggle longer than most and got tired of trying. I posted this on Facebook last Wednesday: “I quit. I am tired of jokers and fools and arguments. I am tired of trying to convince anyone that certain things are just plain wrong, so I quit. I tried. Now go on and believe what you want, do what you want, and say what you want because it has become obvious that nothing I can say will make a difference in your way of thinking. So I quit. More on this on Sunday.” Well, here it is Sunday.
Maybe I should go put on some Grateful Dead or John Lennon music and remember and be glad that once there was a time. It was a perfect storm of music, issues, and people all coming together at just the right time in just the right way in just the right places. And I was there.
Rambling Harbor 
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