January, 1973: I’ve finished my college coursework, with one exception… Months, even a couple years earlier, I’d estimated the odds of finding work as an actual communicator (writer of fiction or journalism, editor, filmmaker, advertising copywriter, etc.) at close to 0%. (I didn’t doubt that I could do those things. But I had no clear options in terms of finding a corresponding paying position.) So by now I’ve changed course, subtly, to a major course of study called Communications Education: preparing me for a career as a teacher of communications-y subjects. The catch: finding a school with such an opening. And guess what? There are, well, no such (public) schools in 1973, at least in New Jersey, and for all I know there are none now 50 years later… Instead, back then, I’d have to find a school which offered, say, a course or two in journalism and/or creative writing — and an opening for such a teacher. In the meantime, that one course requirement remained: my so-called “practicum,” i.e., a semester at a school where I could practice teaching such things, under the guidance of a mentoring teacher of the paid staff.
In the event, I lucked out: the middle school in the town where I was then living had actually initiated a creative-writing course. My “cooperating teacher” there taught only a couple of classes specifically in that subject, the rest being good old English classes. But I was okay with that constraint…
In retrospect — even within a year or two later — I was not a very good “student teacher.” But I sailed on into the future, concerned mostly with personal matters… especially, getting married within a couple weeks after graduation from college.
And you know what? I wasn’t a very good husband, either — at least, not as a first husband. More — and similarly superficial — details to follow, eventually. (Well, maybe.)
For now, just know that my wife quickly found work as a working newspaper reporter. I found no work at all; in desperation, I took a job driving a cab in the area of suburban New Jersey where we lived. Off and on, I continued doing that for several years (eventually, just in the summer). And of course this continued my indoctrination as a consumer of AM-radio music!
About the playlist…
Jeez, I spent a lot of time just sitting in and driving around in a car, obviously, when I worked at that cab company. But the cabs were nearly all old(ish) junkers — five-six-seven years of hard driving in stop-and-go traffic, very few long trips — and keeping their AM radios running was never a priority for the owner. If you were idle (which you often were, during your seven-days-a-week/twelve-hours-a-day shift), of course you had to keep the two-way radio to the base station turned on, in case the dispatcher needed to contact you. But AM radio came pretty much standard in all US cars by this time, even cabs, and the technology was pretty reliable, so I ended up listening to more AM-based music than I had since the end of the ’60s.
For a month or so, before I got the cab-driving job, I was able to watch the Watergate hearings live, on TV. I don’t remember listening to them on the radio later (although I remained riveted by the nightly television replays), so I’m guessing that’s how a lot of the music from the second half of ’73 stamped itself on my mind. For the first half, though, note that my tastes were nudged in one direction or another by the tastes of my middle-school students…
Just a couple specific notes:
- It wasn’t until years later that I learned “Oh Babe, What Would You Say” was not sung by Carol Channing — or, indeed, by any woman performer at all. Duh.
- “Superstition”: one of my looser-limbed college roommates impressed this song on my memory by demonstrating the robot dance as it played.
- For years, I harbored a minor fantasy about writing a humor piece for The New Yorker. It would have something to do with art, and with museums, and that was about all I had — except for the title: “Your MOMA Don’t Dance, and Your Dada Don’t Rock’n’Roll.”
- In general, boy howdy, this year’s music continues to ring fresh in my mind. John Denver! Carly Simon! Paul Simon! Roberta Flack, and Loggins & Messina, and… and… and…! Even the second-tier artists: just reading their names makes their music swell in my memory. (I know, I know: BOOMERS.)
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