Lunch at the Labs

Jean Shepherd.

As a teenager I listened to this guy Jean Shepherd on WOR-AM radio in New York City for 45 minutes each weekday night throughout the 1960's. Now there is a very nice web site (not mine) devoted to him and his radio program at Flick Lives. It has old Jean Shepherd radios shows available for downloading in Realaudio format. These shows are also being rebroadcast (with the original commercials) on WBAI 99.5 FM New York City at 5:15am Tuesday mornings and on WFMU 91.1 Jersey City NJ at 5:15pm Wednesday evenings.

Some time in the mid-70's I saw a blurb in the back of the Village Voice by someone who was writing a book entitled "The Woodstock Census". It was to be about those who were part of the 60's generation and they wanted people of a certain age range to fill out a questionnaire. Upon receiving it, I discovered that most of the questions did not apply to me. For although I was a child of the sixties, I was an undergraduate and graduate student in physics at the time. My friends and I were aware of the events going on, but we were busy studying and doing such things as learning how to juggle and playing Go.

How does this relate to Jean Shepherd? One of the questions listed all the important people of that era and asked how much you admired and were influenced by them. There were about 100 names, ranging from Joan Baez and Elridge Cleaver to Ayn Rand and Barry Goldwater. Then at the bottom they asked if you did not admire or were not influenced by any of the above, write in the name of someone who did fill that role. I wrote in Jean Shepherd and to this day I think he had more to do with the way I look at the world than anyone else.

Posted by mjm at July 18, 2002 07:39 PM