The Sunday Memory Drawer - Everybody's "Cousin"

Driving around Westchester last weekend with Sirius in my rental car, I dialed one more time into a legendary radio voice.  Indeed, when the weather is warm, hearing him invokes childhood summer memories galore.

Yep, New Yorkers will remember this chatterbox well. I grew up on his constantly cracking voice, spinning the hits on 77WABC. When they shitcanned the music on that radio station, Cousin Bruce Morrow went off to the oldies-laden WCBS-FM, where his Saturday night dance party thrived for decades. The problem always was that it's tough to dance when the DJ doesn't shut up and spin the platters.

I've rediscovered Cousin Brucie again on Sirius Radio.  His Saturday night soiree is on the Sixties Channel and it is weird to drive around LA and listen to this quintessential New Yorker. Still, whenever I tune in, I am taken back to days of my youth. 

And an infamous day in my young adulthood. When I got into an argument with Cousin Brucie.

It was early in my own radio career and back in New York. In those days, local radio stations actually had money to promote themselves. And, once a year, there was a big event where they each participated in a carnival at some hotel ballroom. They'd set up booths and you're join in on the spinning wheels, games of chance, dunk tanks, etc.. It was a lot of fun.

One year, Brucie was promoting this group of NY suburban stations that he owned. Naturally, it was ideal for him to set up a booth which he himself manned. With a simple enough game. On the wall was a big map of New York State with big red dots on those towns where Brucie owned a station. You had to take a dart and throw. If you landed on one of the red dots, Brucie would present you with a new Sony Walkman.  Remember those?

As I ambled by, Brucie beckoned me over like a gypsy in a rundown storefront.

"Come on, Cousin, let's see what you can do."

Given I'm not either Irish or English and given that I rarely frequent pubs in the countryside, I'm not a dart thrower. But, back then, a new Sony Walkman was a beautiful thing. I walked to the counter and grabbed a dart.

It landed not directly on the red dot, but the dart was certainly touching the little decal. Even the folks I was with acknowledged that I was a winner. Brucie, however, begged to differ.

"Sorry, Cousin, thanks for trying."

I suggested that I could do little to improve what I had achieved. A dart touching the red dot.

"Not close enough, Cousin. Maybe later."

I realized that Brucie had brought along ten Walkman devices for the day and was intending to go home with just as many. Cheap bastard. I asked him how much closer I needed to be to get that Walkman.

"Cousin, you've got to be better than that."

Huh? The dart was resting on the red dot in a better fit than that toupee had on his head. We went back and forth and it got a little louder. He kept calling me "Cousin." I had to wound him. 

"Brucie, I've got six cousins and you're not one of them."

The man looked destroyed. He could not respond. I walked away, Walkman-less. With a smile on my face. I had finally achieved the impossible.

Cousin Brucie was speechless.  Finally.

Dinner last night:  Orange beef and shrimp.