(NOTE ABOUT TIME REFERENCES: Since there are many different copies of shows out there from different sources, all time references are from the beginning of one single recorded copy, since various copies, depending on when the recordee started recording, had news at the beginning or shortened themes. The times would vary from copy to copy.)
First Spoken Line After Theme Ends
Got a note here, Dear Shepherd. . .
Show Description
[ Courtesy: GROK Summary - - ]
Shepherd opens on the heat of a transistor radio and "electronic love," then reads a letter from a soldier in Georgia who enlisted partly to appreciate Shepherd's stories and now can't wait to tell his own. That leads into the "dynamic fan": people whose fandom matters more than the thing they're fans of. He cites Mets Banner Day (signs costing thousands of dollars, a man with a case of hundreds of situation-specific signs) and argues such people aren't baseball fans—they're performing for the crowd. He mentions the International Butter Queen as the leading rock groupie, then surveys groupies in baseball, football, tennis, chess, and radio/TV. Groupies, he says, are about "groupiness," not the art. Humans are herd animals; true hermits are rare.
He extends that to electronic belonging: TV Guide found readers got nervous when weekly ratings were dropped, because people want proof they’re in a crowd. A Nielsen caller who said only you listen to Shepherd would make you change the dial. Tourists flock to where everyone else goes.
Commercial breaks follow: TAP Air Portugal youth fare ($210 round trip, car rental); his Mercury LP "The Declassified Jean Shepherd" (mostly live at Princeton; mail order $5 from Staggerwing Productions, P.O. Box 271, Village Station, New York, NY 10114); Kaufman Abroad’s "A Country Place" adult community near Lakewood, N.J.; Le Champ restaurant; Newsday's Sunday edition; Mandarin House's summer garden.
The hobby section is the core. Hobbies, he argues, reveal character and differ by country. Examples: fighting grasshoppers in Thailand; butterflies flown on fine thread; freight-car number collectors (a carpool companion spotting Union Pacific cars); English airplane spotters and the book "World Airliner Registrations" (N = U.S., G = Britain, C = Canada, D = Germany). He walks through sample entries (a Pan Am 747 "Star of the Union'; an F-27 later written off) and the WEFT spotting system (wings, engines, fuselage, tail) from his own training. Most people, he says, don't notice what they’re looking at - illustrated by a friend who drove his wife's car for a year and didn't know the make.
He closes with a listener’s Fort Stewart, Georgia, cockroach story (a huge roach survives being stomped in GI boots and reappears limping), then odder hobbies: a lifelong meal diary in colored inks, and memorized death dates of pre-1900 major leaguers. The Mets sign-maker and the cockroach both fit the same "groupie" scene - where people go, the roach goes.
WOR ID
Time
Station ID (All times approximate)
14:11
. . .even if it's dull and dismal you want to be there, which reminds me this is WOR New York. . .
This Show
