Soaking Pit & Friday Night Drinking
Airdate:
Friday - March 5, 1965
WOR Show Original Airing
First Spoken Line After Theme Ends
That's the trouble with all of us, we're just jealous. . .
Show Description
"Where's the crowd?" Shep is in search of recognition.
A listener calls in - "Yeah Shep - the Village" Shep hangs up and calls him a klutz. He quotes either Marcel Proust or Dorothy Kilgallen, he's not sure which, who says: "I shall be un done by naives and fools"
He tells everyone in the booth to stop taking calls, there's a show to do.
Friday night is a drinking night. He tells about steel workers drinking on Friday nights.
"Hammond hangs to the underbelly of Chicago like a rotton barnacle hanhing on the bottom of a rusty scow"
"Jean Shepherd - Live at the Limelight" came out on Wednesday. Many people don't thing that the Limelight shows are live.
The old man was not a regular drinker. Big drinking night was Old Man, Uncle Carl, Uncle Fred, and Uncle Al sitting around the kitchen table on a Friday night having a shot and telling dirty stories. A "Peripheral Activity"
Working at the steel mill at 16 as a member of a "Bull Gang" (Roving Laborers). He tells about being called to clean the 40 inch soaking pits, being lowered down wearing wooden shoes and scraping scale for 2 minutes before being hauled up out of the intense heat.
After work on Fridays everyone would head across to the Eagle for shots and a beer. Shep describes his first experience doing this and becoming one of the guys.
