Lower Manhattan is much as I remember it from last year’s visit. Unfortunately, check-in at my hotel is, too. As with last year, I’m at the M Social Hotel (the former Millenium Hilton – and that’s not a typo; it was intentionally spelled with one “n”) across from the World Trade Center. This is a neat hotel and you can’t beat the rates, but getting checked in can be an adventure. The guest lobby is on the third floor. As I get in the elevator, a guy probably in his mid-40s who’s also on the way up says, “How long you been waiting?” I told him I’d just arrived. Turns out he’s been waiting a couple hours to get checked in.

The good news is that this year, the lobby’s not under construction. The bad news is that, like last year, there’s a long line. There’s exactly two clerks working check-in, and there are all kinds of problems: IT issues, rooms not ready, you name it. A lot of people are sitting at tables or on couches waiting for issues to be resolved. At times some of them are vocal about it. There’s a young couple that’s flown in from Turkey, and they’re very unhappy; the female half of the couple marches up to the counter, loudly protesting, almost in tears. Another frustrated guest issues a few four-letter words to one of the clerks about the lack of personnel up front. The guy I was on the elevator with is in front of me, and at times he turns and gives me a sardonic look. I’m tired, of course, and I need something to eat and something to drink, and after about 20 minutes the standing there with my bag’s strap digging into my shoulder gets to me. I start to wonder a little bit if I’m going to be sitting around like some of these other poor souls, waiting and waiting and waiting. Last night’s reading comes back to me. How would Marcus Aurelius handle it? I can’t control the circumstances, but I can control how I feel about it and I can control my response to it, and no matter what happens, this moment will pass. Float with it. 

As it happens, after a half-hour’s wait, I’m up at the counter checking in, and it all goes well. Not only did the “why not?” upgrade offer I took a chance on pay off (to what the clerk promises is a great room), but the clerk throws in a drink voucher to thank me for my patience, and she calls me “dear” three or four times throughout the transaction. (I get the impression she’s very thankful I’m not yelling at her. I feel for her and the other staffers who are having to deal with a mess that likely stems from management issues.)

With happy relief I go to the elevator. The room number starts with 30. The last button on this elevator’s panel is 30. “Top of the house, Ma!” I chortle as the elevator zooms up, Willy Wonka-style. Then up on 30 and to the end of the hall, and I open the door…and have my breath taken away by a corner suite. The sitting room looks north, with views toward City Hall and the Woolworth Building. The bathroom is between the sitting room and the bedroom around the corner. On one side, the view north is toward Midtown. The view west is toward the World Trade Center. I’m overwhelmed. I’m just some kid just up from the country, grew up in a tiny rural town, and here I am with an amazing corner room on a high floor of a fancy hotel in lower Manhattan. It’s too good, too much. I’m too happy.

None of that, however, is going to make up for more urgent needs. I walk a couple blocks up to Walgreens for some provisions, then head back. Before going back to the hotel for the night, there was one more thing. Last year, I visited the World Trade Center memorial and found some names that were significant to me, in particular the flight crews of American 11 and United 175. I’d been haunted, however, that I’d forgotten to find Father Mychal Judge at the memorial. This time, I didn’t leave until I did.

Back in the room for the night, I got cleaned up, scarfed down some food, caught up on things (including the outcome of the Preakness, whose victor made me think of Robert Vaughn), and took lots of photos from up on high. But I also knew I had an early report time next morning, so I didn’t stay up too late. Somehow I eked out about four hours of rest.

Then the day dawned. I wasn’t prepared for how beautiful it would look: the orange glow over the horizon out one window; through another, warm light reflecting off One World Trade Center’s curtain of glass. This huge city, and yet this moment of quiet beauty and wonder. What a blessing to see this, to have this moment.

I didn’t want it to end. But a day was waiting on me. One last check of everything, one more elevator ride. Out in the lobby is the hotel’s flag from September 11, 2001, now preserved behind glass. (Last year I wrote about this hotel’s association with that awful day and how it’s haunted me.)

Then out the door, up to the subway station and Houston Street, then over to Varick and 7 Hudson Square. Into the lobby and the security desk. Why is it every time I check in at ABC, I get nervous and own-goal myself? All set, I wait for my friend Dennis to meet me in the lobby.

It doesn’t take long, and Dennis brings me up to the multi-purpose room where the editing and other magic happens. There’s my friend Gary, who’s happy to see me again. The next four hours or so are a blur, as Dennis does updates and fixes for Good Morning America while Gary manages things, and I observe all of this while devouring one of the delicious cranberry muffins that’s been brought in for our enjoyment. (The guys don’t know this, but what keeps me coming back are these muffins.) They practice their trade the way skilled, experienced hands do them: what seems intricate to the layperson is quickly dispatched with quiet precision, then it’s on to the next task.

Fortunately, there’s not a whole lot to fix today (and when I have a chance to help clarify where a fix was needed, I get this little thrill! Yes! I got to help out in big-time teevee!), and that leaves plenty of time to talk shop. At points visitors drop by, including the weekend executive producer. At another point, we visit the control room to take care of an errand. This, really, has become why I like to visit: the people, all of whom are very kind and welcoming to an interested outsider who works on the fringes of this business. Last year, and in 2024 at the old ABC campus on 66th, so much of why I was there was to see the place and go everywhere we could. Now, it’s different. As much as I like looking around, I’ve seen it. I’m here because Dennis and Gary are my friends and I don’t get to see them enough. And, as I tell Gary, I keep coming back because I learn stuff (including, this time, such valuable life skills as who to channel when leading a labor negotiation). I can then take that back and use it for what I do with the students. It’s an ongoing education, and it’s always worth the effort to get here. 

The morning passes quickly and we have a lunch date to keep, so Dennis and I head out and catch the subway up to Lincoln Center, then cross over to 66th. Two years ago, this was where my first visit to ABC took place. There was a tall office tower in the middle of ABC’s campus. Now, almost everything is gone. There’s about eight stories left of the office tower, and even that’s not long for the world. The site is surrounded by plywood sheets with diamond-shaped Plexiglas windows, but there’s not much to see; just rubble. I see a strangely intact brick and wish I could levitate it over the fence as a souvenir. Dennis takes several photos over the fence and from the opposite side of the street, while I amble down the sidewalk and try to peer between the gaps. In what had been the office tower’s lobby, I see shattered windows and what’s left of an escalator. It’s sad to think that two years ago this place was alive, functional, busy. Now it’s a wreck, and soon what’s left will be hauled away. The old, landmarked portion that once housed Durland’s Riding Academy remains, and I hope it’ll find new purpose, but everything else is gone. Soon the only reminder that anything television happened here will be the street sign reading “Peter Jennings Way.” 

As I wander along, I see an older couple, obviously tourists, looking through the fence and trying to piece together the scene. I don’t ask where they’re from, but their accent sounds kind of German. They see me and ask what was going on here. I tell them that this is where the ABC Television Network used to be. We strike up a brief conversation and they ask me where I’m from. I’m up from South Carolina, I tell them. They start telling me about the places down my way they’ve been, most of them in the Lowcountry. I’m in full Southern charm mode by this point, nodding and smiling and laughing a little. The man goes on in a little bit of detail, gets hung up on remembering where this one place was, and then the wife says in this weary way, “Do you think she really wants to hear all this?” The interplay between them is a hoot. We wish each other well and part ways, I catch up with Dennis, and then it’s off to our lunch date at P.J. Clarke’s. As we’re walking along we’re alongside a family group with a couple pre-teen kids who are trying to top one another with gross-out bodily function humor of the sort pre-teens will do. The mother suggests something that’s kind of a tongue-twister. It’s all I can do to not suggest the “cottonpickin’ finger-lickin’ chicken plucker” routine. Instead, I kind of laugh to myself at a scene that’ll never play out.

There’s a table waiting at P.J. Clarke’s, and already there is our friend Gady. With him is his lifelong friend Joel, whom I met last year when I was up to visit Gady. I knew we were going to meet up with Gady, but I didn’t expect Joel, so that’s very much a treat. They’ve got a lot of stories to tell, since Gady worked at CBS for more than five decades and Joel worked at NBC for a long, long time. A little bit later, Gary joins us. The next hour and a half are a fun blur of stories and history and remembrances of folks from back when, and laughter and the enjoyment of sharing good company over a good meal. I try to take the scene in as best I can, knowing how rare a treat this is, that back home this kind of thing doesn’t happen. Memento mori. 

Regrettably, the time comes. There’s a train leaving Penn Station at a quarter after 3, and my name’s on a ticket for it. There’s handshakes and hugs, a request from Joel to come back soon, and I head off to begin the long journey home. As I wait at the subway station, it’s oddly still. Fifteen minutes ago, there was fun and there were friends. Now I’m alone, and it’s too quiet. My heart is full of love for the guys I was just with, and I ache for having left them; yet I also know there are folks (and critters) back home who need me. It’s an exquisite agony, the simultaneous joy and ache of having people you care about in so many far-apart places, knowing you’re blessed to have them but knowing that blessing comes with an ache, and for a moment I’m verklempt. But soon the train is here, and I’m quickly at Penn Station. There’s a picket line of striking Long Island Railroad workers outside the entrance. Then past the Garden and into Moynihan Train Hall, where I stop in the Walgreens and get a couple supplies for the trip, and then wait for the boarding call.

Soon enough, down we go to the track. This time, it’s a regular train back to Baltimore instead of an Acela, but I’m in no hurry; the nice thing about the trip from here on out is that I have no deadlines to meet. The three hours pass without anything of note, and it’s back to the BWI station. I get Supercar out of hock, program the moving map, and follow the directions south. I’m very deliberately making the transit past the District of Columbia on a Sunday evening, hoping the traffic will be a little less, and the transit east of town works well. Where things do back up is in northern Virginia, and there’s a lot of stop-go-stop for at least 45 minutes. Once we’re past Quantico, things open up and I make Thornburg in good time. 

All was going well…or so I thought. The directions in the moving map were supposed to take me to a Holiday Inn Express. Instead, they take me to a little shopping center in the corner of a Food Lion parking lot. I’m rather perplexed by this, and for a moment wonder if the hotel actually exists. I pull over into a parking space to sort things through and find out that, yep, I’ve been pranked by a whopper of a map issue. (Cue Lewis Grizzard saying “We been ho-axed!”) I figure out where the hotel is, set course, and inside about five minutes I’m there. It isn’t the most inspiring location; there’s at least two semi trucks parked in the small lot, and there’s a lot of clientele between this hotel and the adjacent hotel, but it’ll do. I finally find a place to park, get my bags and stuff, and check in. It takes a couple minutes to get a clerk, and when I do get my room, it’s on the first floor…right next to the breakfast lounge. I can hear the television from the lobby through the wall. At least it’s a short hike, though, and for my purposes this room will be fine. I get cleaned up, eat something, catch up on computer chores, and turn in.

The next morning I’m up bright and early, ready for the rest of the journey home at my own pace. I refuel the car and set out, taking the bypass around Richmond, and then into North Carolina. There’s a brief stop in Fayetteville to visit a hobby shop I hadn’t visited in about a decade, and then on toward South Carolina, resisting the urge to travel east to Kinston and commune, at least in spirit, with Vivian Howard. I content myself with a wave as I fly past on 95.

At the state line, there’s the now-obligatory stop at South of the Border (and by this point in the drive, obligatory because I need a restroom stop), and I amble around one of the shops for a little bit, soaking in the ambience of a bygone roadside era I knew way back when, and buying a couple suitably tacky souvenirs. After that, it’s back on 95, then to 20, and then the first signs of Columbia start to materialize. Then north on 77, a stop for fuel, and then my giant circle closes as I take an exit toward Winnsboro and the last miles home, and the folks and the critters who are glad to have me back. 

Although there’s been some changes in recent years, you still don’t see as many gimmicks as you would in other golf broadcasts. It’s still kind of a throwback. In the opening montages, you don’t see these tough-guy hero shots of golfers backed by edgy music; you’re much more likely to see gauzy beauty shots of the tree-lined road to the clubhouse, of Amen Corner, of the stone bridge at 13 over the tributary of Rae’s Creek. Even the commercials are lower-voltage corporate image spots instead of attitude-driven, in-your-face hard sells. All in all, the final round is a soothing broadcast to have on in the background, and it’s also the last surviving example of a kind of broadcast I grew up with. It’s what sports broadcasting used to be, before we traded in our Vin Scullys and Jack Whitakers for sportscasters whose main selling points were attitude and volume. Yes, it could seem stodgy and stuffy, more than a whiff of “don’t upset Grandpa,” but there was a dignity to how they handled their duties, a dignity that’s missing in so much in modern media, let alone modern life.

This year, the tournament takes place against what’s been going on at CBS in general. As it’s been impossible to ignore, what’s left of CBS has been swallowed up by yet another conglomerate that’s making deep cuts. CBS Radio News will soon be no more. The Broadcast Center, I’ve heard from reliable sources, seems more and more like a ghost town. Television City and Black Rock were sold off a while back. As sad as it is to see play out, CBS has been little more than a brand in a portfolio for a long time. The network that Mr. Paley and Dr. Stanton brought to greatness really started to ebb in the mid-1980s, a victim of changing times and changing philosophies in the business and financial realms, and downhill has rolled the snowball since. It’s a longer story than I care to write here, and the story has been told many times over by now, anyway. 

Yet there are times, like this weekend, when I think about what’s now a lost world. Really, not just for CBS, but for the broadcast industry in general, and the audience as well. The changes in television, the booming music and flashy graphics, the explosion of options, shorter attention spans, the constant need to monetize everything…it’s rare when a broadcast is allowed to be the pleasant company you enjoy on a lazy weekend afternoon.

All of this came back to mind, not only because of today’s broadcast, but because I recently watched again this clip I first stumbled across about 15 years ago. It uncorked a lot of memories (and if you read the comments on the original YouTube page, you’ll see I’m not alone):

That’s the end of the 1983 Talladega 500, which CBS aired on July 31, 1983. So many things come back from my memories: Don Robertson’s voice announcing the billboards, the lengthy credit roll over still-store images, the peerless voice of Ken Squier, and the way CBS would end these kinds of big broadcasts with wistful music. (In this case, it was “Rising Star,” the love theme from the movie The Electric Horseman. CBS used cuts from that soundtrack for several years on its NASCAR broadcasts, including the main theme under the starting grid. CBS Sports liked using soundtrack cuts, such as Chuck Mangione’s “Children of Sanchez” for some big events, or Lalo Schifrin’s theme to St. Ives for golf tournaments. But, I digress.)

Now even that seems like a thousand years ago, even though it’s only been four decades. And so many of the people in that credit roll from Talladega are no longer with us. So many folks in that recruiting video are also gone now. But, really, all of it’s a lost world. The voice of Don Robertson speaking for Pontiac and Sears? Pontiac’s gone now, and the once-mighty Sears is all but dead, victim of modern corporate techniques. Don Robertson died a few years ago. So did Ken Squier. 

But there’s something else. That long closing credit roll gives what’s due to a lot of hard-working people who made possible that telecast you’d just watched. They were the people that made all that hard work and coordination happen, and made it look so effortless. Many of them had been at the network for decades, built lives and careers around CBS, and represented so much institutional and technical knowledge that would be impossible to replace. You can get an idea of what that world was like if you watch this video, which CBS produced in the 1980s while seeking the next generation of technicians and other broadcast specialists. (And happy coincidence: you can tell that much of the location footage was taken while CBS was setting up to cover a race at Talladega.)

For some people, that tape is an interesting artifact. For me, though, it has an emotional punch. Not just in what I remember from that era, and not just nostalgia for a time I missed. It’s because it makes me think of people I know. One of my friends is a CBS retiree; he worked there for more than 50 years. His wife also used to work at CBS. Last year I went up and spent the day with him. He told me stories, shared artifacts, showed me clips that he worked on and told me the stories behind them. Those stories told of teamwork, of craftsmanship, of a pride he still felt in the work he did. It was a privilege to hear those stories firsthand. And it made me a little sad that I missed it all. To this day I can hear the voices of CBS announcers that I remember, see little visual cues or characteristic qualities in a promo, and it takes me back, makes me smile…and makes me ache, even more so since some of the people who helped make that history are my friends. It makes me ache for an era that’s long gone, but it also makes me ache because the people who made all that happen are fewer with the years…and with them go so much history, so many memories, so many stories. And it makes me realize I need to get back and spend more time with my friend and his wife while I can, not just because I love the stories, but because they’re sweet people of whom I am very fond.

Progress is inevitable, I know. The strange new media landscape makes so much more possible. (Heck, I’m the beneficiary of that, since it means I’m now executive producer of a program we produce at work. And I assemble that program on a ridiculously small and ridiculously powerful laptop computer, running an editing package that cost me nothing to download, and yet can do in a second the kinds of effects my CBS retiree friend would spend untold hours doing in sessions at Broadway Video back in the day.) The networks that dominated television 50 years ago are now competing for eyeballs and clicks with hundreds of other outlets. It says everything when NBC’s centenary is coming up and it’s barely registering, let alone that its anniversary promo would make you think most of the network’s history took place after 1984 (blink and you’ll miss Dave Garroway). And I’ve found out the hard way that modern corporations really aren’t interested in legacy or tradition unless it can somehow be monetized. 

And yet, this one Sunday a year when, by decree of the venue, a sports broadcast is allowed to breathe…it makes me think of what we once had, what we once took for granted, and what’s vanished.

My parents implored Santa to do something about it, and the following Christmas I got a portable cassette recorder.

Over the years to come, I would make many tapes on that machine and the several that would follow when they inevitably broke. But the very first tape I made with that first tape recorder it is an interesting artifact. On Side A, there’s a few moments from Christmas morning: me goofing around and Dad’s voice commanding me to bring something to him; me giving a couple of inventories of my haul from Santa. Then there’s an extended cut from the next day, when Dad thought it would be hilarious if we secretly recorded Sunday dinner at my grandparents’ house, and so we conspired to hide the tape recorder on a nearby shelf. In the moment, it was funny, for we played it back about an hour later to our astonished family (at one point my grandmother, hearing herself say something kind of harsh, did a spit-take worthy of Danny Thomas). Now, with half the people at that table now dead, it’s a precious artifact. It’s the only recording I have of my great-grandfather’s voice.

Side B, though, has a time capsule of a different sort. After I got home from Sunday school, I turned on the hand-me-down cabinet-model stereo in my room (which didn’t have a cassette deck, alas), placed the tape recorder next to the speakers, and recorded the last 45 minutes or so of that week’s “American Country Countdown.” That’s interesting in a lot of ways. In the previous installment I talked about country music being what I grew up with, so the eleven songs that led the week’s chart are a good idea of what the typical week in my fourth-grade life would have sounded like.

For the uninitiated, “American Country Countdown” was the country music version of “American Top 40.” Like AT40, it most often aired on weekends. It was hosted by the super-cool Bob Kingsley, who had one of the best radio voices I’ve ever heard (seriously, listen to some of this for a little bit and I dare you to not keep listening), and who was so good at telling you the little stories that gave you a glimpse into the artists and their hit songs. As the best DJs could, back when radio was an art form, Bob had this way of making you feel like you were a couple friends spending a few hours together on a weekend morning. (I came to appreciate this even more about a decade later, for one of my responsibilities working Sunday mornings at the radio station was playing “American Country Countdown.” By then it arrived at the station as a package of four CDs. Each segment within an hour was a separate track, and I’d pause the CD player after each track to do our local breaks. At the start of 1993, our program director figured out how to integrate the “Countdown” discs into our automation, and that was the beginning of the end of my young radio career. But, I digress.)

I wish I could say my recording was perfect, but it’s far from it. (I keep hoping the complete show will surface someday, either through one of the video/audio sites or that I’ll happen across the LPs on an auction site; regardless, if anyone reading this has the whole program, please let me know, for I’m interested.) It’s straight off the speaker, and that means you get background noise. My folks were wanting me to get finished so we could go over to my grandparents’ house for lunch (where Dad and I pulled our prank). You can hear me opening and closing the door to my room, and my voice calling out to my folks, trying to buy time. (I was a completist, even then.) At one point you can hear me trying to sing along to the David Frizzell song. On the other hand, I had the foresight (or laziness?) to keep the commercials and IDs intact, and those speak not only of a bygone era in radio production but also of local businesses that are gone with the wind.

But, what are we waiting for, right? Let’s get into the songs that led Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart for the week of December 18, 1982. (The full rundown is visible here, if you like. There’s some stuff on there that’s pure gold, and some stuff that didn’t age well, but that’s the nature of time capsules, no?)

Up five notches (as Kingsley would say) to number 11 is Johnny Lee and Friends, with an enhanced version of “Cherokee Fiddle.” For some reason, I loved this song a lot as a kid, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the chance to capture it on tape was the reason I wanted to record this program. One of Johnny’s friends on this version is reportedly Charlie Daniels. Say what you will about Charlie (and I have about his later years), but the man was a musical genius, and without peer on the fiddle.

At number 10, up three notches this week, is Rosanne Cash with “I Wonder.” It’s…well, only vaguely country music (to borrow a line from William Poundstone, curved lines and considerable imagination must be used). It’s closer to “Linda Ronstadt with Nelson Riddle” than “Loretta Lynn with Conway Twitty.” On the other hand, it’s Rosanne freakin’ Cash, who is awesome and is welcome to do whatever she wants.

Number nine is one of the first George Strait songs I remember, that’s now a deep cut. “Marina Del Rey,” up two notches this week, has George pining over a beach weekend he’s just spent with a mysterious lady. It’s lovely, evocative, haunting. George Strait knows how to select good songs and interpret them just right; in this one, you feel both ecstasy and ache. I can’t think of a bad George Strait song, but without question this is one of his best.

Bob leads into this week’s number eight song (up one from last week) by mentioning that David Frizzell (brother of Lefty) plays a bit part in the new Clint Eastwood movie Honkytonk Man. (As did several other real-life country artists, including beloved Marty Robbins in a scene made even more poignant by the fact that Marty died one week before the movie’s release.) It wasn’t David Frizzell’s first go-around with Eastwood, for he had contributed to the soundtrack for Any Which Way You Can. Clint helped make Frizzell’s first solo album a reality, and it’s from that album that we get “Lost My Baby Blues.” Frizzell’s voice was perfect for songs about getting drunk after getting dumped. (The same album also gave us the immortal “I’m Gonna Hire A Wino To Decorate Our Home,” without question the greatest song title in history. Young me missed the point of the song, loved the over-the-top mental imagery, and bought the single.)

Continuing that theme is Merle Haggard, whose “Going Where The Lonely Go” advances five positions this week. It’s a typical solid song from Merle Haggard in the early ’80s. He was reliable, one of the human gods on the country music Olympus of my childhood. Like Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and George Jones, Merle Haggard had just always been there, reliable as my dad’s Chevy truck.

Reba McEntire, some time before she became a Southern-fried queen of all media, is up four notches with “Can’t Even Get The Blues.” Even in this early track you get a glimpse of the exasperated Southern-fried sass that would become her trademark.

Hank Williams Jr. gets topical with this week’s fifth-place song, “The American Dream.” Bocephus takes on professional athletes signing million-dollar contracts (one wonders if Nolan Ryan’s ears were burning), well-dressed televangelists mooching for donations (“they want you to send your money to the Lord, but they give you their address”), and Democrats complaining about Reagan’s budget cuts, all while the rest of us are making hard choices about what we can afford. Hank was a few years away from fully embracing the outsized Bocephus character of “All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight,” but for those who knew his albums’ deeper cuts, nothing to come stylistically or politically was really that much of a surprise. The post-chorus bridge incorporates the first line of “Hail to the Chief,” which is reprised at the end with Hank saying “Hail to the chief.” (The version we get here ends with that, but another version has Hank pausing for a moment before laughing and saying “Hail, yes. Heh-heh-heh!”)

My brother, then in his mid-teens, was becoming a full-blown Hank Jr. fan about this time; the macho Southern outdoorsman aesthetic of Hank’s music really resonated with him, and a few months later Mom took him to see Bocephus when he performed at the (now-demolished) Greenwood Civic Center. He also had all of Hank’s albums, and when he would do the driving he’d play Hank’s cassettes, and I thus got exposed to a lot of his late ’70s and early to mid-’80s work. Some of it is cartoonish, some of it has not aged well at all, some of it is outright gross (seriously, “Fat Friends” should never have existed), some of it goes places you wish it hadn’t, but if you know where to look there’s some really nice, sensitive and sometimes outright gorgeous stuff in there.

Kenny Rogers was white-hot in the early ’80s and it seemed like everything he touched turned into a best-seller. In his lead-in, Bob mentions that Rogers attributes much of his success to having an ear for good songs that he knows will become hits. That continues this week, as “A Love Song,” written by Lee Greenwood, is up four. Mom didn’t like Kenny Rogers and thought he acted like a conceited showboat, but even as a kid I could appreciate that he was a reliable hitmaker with mass appeal, and even if I wasn’t necessarily a fan I couldn’t deny that some of his stuff was just plain good. (“Love Will Turn You Around,” which he had taken to #1 earlier in the year and was used as the theme to Six Pack, may be slickly-produced, but…my word, that groove. It’s a particular favorite.)

Number three this week is John Anderson, up three on the charts with “Wild and Blue.” Lots of fiddle, lots of steel guitar, lots of John’s twangy, yodeling voice encompassing the ache and frustration at the song’s heart. It’s a great version of a great song, but within about three months it’s going to be lost in the super-colossal shadow of a breakout hit from the same album.

Aw, son. Jerry Reed’s up two this week as “The Bird,” one of his reliable comedic turns, moves into second place. Reed leaned so much into his goofy comic persona with his songs and on-screen appearances, but, my word, the man was an outright genius with a guitar.

Bob leads in to this week’s number one song by telling us that for his hit songs, Earl Thomas Conley – who, from Bob’s description, sounds like kind of an introvert – gets inspiration from things that he’s learned in his life. Each song is, in a way, Conley saying “Well, if you liked that, here’s another side of me.” It’s something that Conley expects will be happening the rest of his life. With that, up one notch to take this week’s title is “Somewhere Between Right and Wrong.” And wherever that may be, this song makes it sound like a rockin’ good time.

And after the fade-out and Bob’s closing remarks, my efforts to stall for time with my parents gave out and the recording abruptly ends.

Many more tapes were to come in the months and years ahead. I have many of them, and sometimes I’ll listen to them. The sound isn’t the greatest, but the memories are vivid. I’d never dare let anyone else listen to them, but I wouldn’t trade them for anything. It doesn’t seem like it really was that long ago, and it’s strange how these sounds can bridge the decades I’ve lived, and yet some of the things I captured – like these eleven songs – make me glad I got to experience the times I’ve lived.

On the way out of town, we stopped by the cemetery to visit my mother’s gravesite. We lost her back in January, when a sudden illness took advantage of frailties she either hadn’t known about or had kept well-hidden from the rest of us. (Since she was one of the most selfless people I have ever known, and never wanted to ever be a bother to anyone, I can’t help thinking it was the latter.) Not two weeks into the new year, she was suddenly gone. Everything changed for all of us. We have mostly coped well, but as you can imagine, every family get-together now has a hole blown in it the exact size and shape of her.

My mother now rests on a hill in the town cemetery, in a site that had been bought years ago by my folks as a family burial area. A couple years back, they had a gravestone made and had a granite perimeter installed and gravel poured in. I remember the day I saw that grave marker for the first time, with my parents’ names and dates of birth, and below it the area where, someday, another date would be carved in. It was sobering, for here was a hard, cold reminder that my parents’ days on this earth would someday run out, and they had prepared. This thing I hadn’t wanted to think about? It was no longer unavoidable. I had no idea it would be needed so soon, that within a couple years that second date would be carved in. But we’re not the ones writing the script.

Family burials aren’t new to me. My great-grandmother, who lived with my great-grandfather in a house next door to my grandparents, died when I was eight. It was my first close experience with death and maybe I was too young to really grab its meaning. Two years later my great-grandfather, who had spent two years in mourning, passed away. I remember going to the visitation for him, seeing him in his casket, this man who had been so gentle to me, told me stories, sang funny songs to me, had this marvelous hearty laugh when I’d say something he thought was funny, who always had a stick of gum in the front pocket of his bib overalls that he’d tear in half and give half to me…he was now lifeless in that box, wearing his best suit on the voyage into forever. Somehow I had accepted it and yet was still numb to it. I missed him, I knew I’d never hear that laugh of his again, and yet I somehow knew there was no escaping the reality. I knew he hadn’t been well, and there was one memory of visiting him in the hospital that had genuinely scared me. Somehow I got the concept of death as release. I thought I was supposed to cry, but I was oddly logical about it. I knew crying wouldn’t bring him back.

The next time was almost a decade and a half later. My parents had to rescue my paternal grandfather, who had fallen victim to Alzheimer’s Disease, and we took care of him at home until he could get accepted at a care facility. When he passed away there early in the new year, it was more a relief than anything. The man I had known was long gone. He was buried next to the site my parents had bought for the family, and after the funeral service we gathered as a family and embraced, and many in the circle wept. Again, I couldn’t. I was sad for them, and I knew it was a grim milestone in our lives, but his passing had been a release. The man I had known was long gone before he died. I had already mourned. I was sad for my father, who grieved a man he hadn’t known that well (to make a long story short, his parents separated when he was young, and my dad wasn’t reunited with his dad until he was almost 40 years old). But I hadn’t known my grandfather that well, hadn’t seen him that often, and what I did remember of him was gone. To me the shock came not at his passing, but when my parents brought him home after rescuing him, when this man from my childhood memories was suddenly this frail shell of a man who was no longer occupying this plane. It felt, to use a phrase I sometimes overuse, like walking straight into a plate glass window.

After that, the passings came more steadily. My father-in-law died a few years later, after a long final illness. My paternal grandmother (with whom I had never really gotten along) died a few years after that. A few years later, my mother-in-law passed away. And then my maternal grandparents passed away, though I had known their days were numbered, especially my poor grandmother after a sad, decades-long struggle with progressive dementia. And thus were my parents the last line standing. Now that line is half gone, and emotionally I am preparing for the inevitable.

But, really, the relatives are only half the story of why things feel so different now when I’m back home. It’s because so many of the people I remember from the town where I grew up are now up on that hill, too. Some of them are relatives, but others were part of the fabric that made up the town I knew as a youngster: the eccentrics, the gossips, the neighbors, the people who knew how to do a particular something and could do it really well, the men who helped build the house I grew up in, the folks who were there when you needed them, no matter what it was you needed. The friend, confined to her home with chronic illness, who used to call me to talk about baseball (and whom I loved even though she was a Yankees fan), and her mother, a very sweet woman who looked like Imogene Coca. One by one, they filled the empty spaces in that graveyard. Someday, sooner rather than later, those still among us will join them.

In my younger days I’d go on long walks around town on sunny summer evenings. It let me get out of the house and also gave me some exercise. Most evenings, the far point of my journey would be the cemetery. I’d wander through the paths, stopping sometimes to visit the tombstones of people I remembered or to read decades-old inscriptions on overgrown headstones. And, often, this song would be in my head, for it captured exactly how I felt:

Sometimes I’d hear that the neighbors had noticed me walking up to the cemetery so often. In the way of small-town gossips they wondered what was behind it, as if there was something weird or occult about me being there. I’m not sure they would have bought my explanation: I was up there so often because it was peaceful there, because I was fascinated by the little clues about the lives of those who were now at rest there. I was fascinated by the grave markers of the long-gone Woodmen of the World members, carved to resemble hewn timbers; the ornate marker, tall as I was and longer still, for a family of obvious means; the heart-shaped marker with a lamb atop, the resting place of an infant. Some of those graves were a century old, even then. It was soothing to be there, the stories telling themselves on a warm summer evening, the setting sun glowing gently, the crickets singing away. The people in those graves were long gone, in some cases more than a century, and yet I still felt their presence somehow.

Three decades later, so many of the people who are now there are people I knew somehow. One or two were more or less from my generation, cut down by cancer or chronic disease, and that makes it cut even deeper. If that’s how I feel, I can’t imagine what it’s like for my father. He visits my mother’s grave just about every day. A few months ago I rode to the cemetery with him on the secondhand golf cart he uses for short trips in town. After we’d spent time with Mom, he took me on a meandering tour through several gravesites. Every turn brought us to another grave of someone about whom he had a memory. I’d often hear a sad “he was a good fellow.” Dad is 82 now, has survived a couple of health scares in recent years, and is in good health. His mind is sharp and he can still get in a day’s work in the field on the tractor. And yet there are times when I understand why living a long life is a double-edged sword, why you never want to wish for immortality: you will live to see so many of the people you love be lost. The Green Mile will seem so long.

In my own mind, I find myself fighting waves of nostalgia, and the older I get and the more complicated I find the modern world, the more tempting a refuge it becomes. On occasion it’s made me wonder if someday I’ll move back to the tiny town where my story began. Almost as quickly, though, I remember that town no longer exists. Yes, it’s in the same place on the map. Many of the landmarks are still there. The house where I grew up is still there. But it’s not the same. Most of the people who made it the town I remember are now up on that hill. New people have moved in and, in their way, made the town theirs – and that’s good, for it keeps the town alive, and it’s also not right for me to expect that town to live up to my expectations. My nostalgia also elides the frustrations I so often felt, that I had to get out and experience a bigger world than I could ever find there, that the images in my mind from a childhood reading the encyclopedia had to become my own reality that I could experience firsthand, and I knew I couldn’t find that if I stayed there.

I’ve built a decent life, on my own terms. I’ve done not only so many things I wanted to do, but so many things I never imagined I could. I’ve been, as the song says, blessed and lucky. I’m also still hungry for things I haven’t yet been able to do, but it gives me something to keep going, and sometimes that’s as important as anything else. Be that as it may, it’s a life I’ve lived on my own terms. That little town will always be my hometown, and I’ll always be thankful it was. Not for the riches of Nineveh and Tyre would I trade growing up there, in a place that will forever live on in my heart. But in many ways, my idea of my hometown now belongs to history. Now, the rural acreage we happened into many years ago and the goofy little house we built there, the expanse of pines and the wildlife that frequently ambles through…over the last two decades, through financial and emotional commitment, that’s become home, the place that re-centers me, the place where (barring some kind of unforeseen calamity) I’m content to spend the rest of my days, on my own terms.

My little hometown will always call me back. I’ll always relate to Martin Sloan, age thirty-six, vice president in charge of media, wanting to escape to his days of childhood, giving in to that errant little wish, needing to be reminded that where he came from, there were merry-go-rounds and band concerts, and that maybe he hadn’t been looking in the right place.

The more I’ve been looking behind me, the more I’m reminded I have to look ahead.

Last year, I got to know Joe Pinner. If you know anything about South Carolina, you’ve likely heard of him. If you ever lived in Columbia, you’ve certainly seen him on television, and may have even bumped into him in person. He was the larger-than-life personality who worked for WIS-TV in any number of capacities: as Mr. Knozit, the children’s show host; as the weatherman on the Seven O’Clock Report (and such was the might of WIS-TV in its salad days, so highly-regarded it was, that it could use the network news as the lead-in to its own news program); as a co-host on Carolina Today; as the on-air spokesman in countless local commercials. Even if you didn’t live within viewing range of WIS-TV, you knew of him, and even out where we lived, where you could only get Channel 10 on the rare mornings when the signal would skip far enough, you knew the name and the face, and the voice. Oh, that voice.

Joe tried to retire in 2000, but was persuaded to do some part-time work for the station. He finally retired for good in 2018, spending his days cheering the fellow residents of his retirement village, visiting his friends, and caring for his wife, whom he dearly loved. Her final illness and her eventual passing saddened him deeply.

Last year, one of his sons sent out a request for people who might be interested in helping Joe write his memoir. He’d actually started work on it a few years before, but it was a project that fell by the wayside while he saw after other things. But Joe wasn’t getting any younger, and the time to act was at hand. I’d just published my book about Dave Garroway, and after years of work I wasn’t sure if I wanted to get into another project just yet. But something in my head kept urging me. Why not?

I’d very briefly met Joe at the breakfast meetings of the Slightly Legendary Old Broadcasters (the SLOBs) in Columbia, but I didn’t really say that much to him. I was, to be honest, in awe that this man I’d known from the television for so long was sitting next to me. (See the story Tom Hanks tells about the first time he was on The Tonight Show, as a young television actor, as he suddenly realizes I am shaking hands with Ed McMahon.) So the day I met Joe to discuss the project, I was a little nervous. Fortunately, it all went well and I ended up with the job.

Off and on that summer, I spent time with Joe and his son at Joe’s apartment in the retirement village. We recorded hours of interviews, his son offering prompts that sent Joe off on marvelous (and often funny) stories. We started going through a small mountain of memorabilia in his home office, and just seeing a particular picture could send Joe meandering down memory lane once again. As a historian, it was fascinating, but as a human being I could detect a wistfulness in his reminiscences. There’d be a note of melancholy, of heartbreak, as he remembered colleagues who were gone – or, hardest to bear, when a memory of his beloved Peggy would come to mind, and the ache in those moments was unmistakable.

After several sessions I was able to get most of the work done on Joe’s manuscript, and we had a draft more or less ready to go. We were close enough, at least, to start going through pictures. But, of course, life got in the way. I had to go back to teaching and seeing after everything at work. Joe also had to see after some health issues, and scheduling became an issue. In the meantime, I was able to get some interviews with people who had worked with him, and I also did a lot of digging through archival resources. Joe was amazed with the work I had done, that I had been able to find so many details and flesh out the stories he told, and after all my apprehension about the project, I was relieved.

Something else that relieved me was finding out that the Joe Pinner you saw on television was pretty much what you got in person. Many were the times in conversation when he would crack a joke or make some kind of funny observation, sometimes at his own expense. As we got to know each other, he would ask me questions: about my background, about my job, about the things I liked to do in my spare time. It was very much like being a kid in the audience on the Mr. Knozit program. Once he even asked me, in that familiar voice, “And what do you want to do when you grow up?” And without missing a beat, I eagerly replied, “I want to be on television like Mr. Knozit!” And it prompted that smile of his. (I think part of the fun we had together was that I knew his trade and understood timing, and could readily provide a comeback. It would have been fun to share a desk with him.)

Sometimes Joe would send a text message to check in on me or to say hello. I’d sometimes think: once upon a time, I was a kid watching this guy on television, thinking he was larger than life, and more than four decades later he is a dear friend who’s checking in on me, giving me encouragement, telling me he cares for me. And sometimes I would be the one offering him an encouraging word. Other times, I’d post something to Facebook and Joe would post a sweet (and often funny) comment.

This past April his son sent me a message: they were putting Joe in hospice care. I was saddened but not terribly surprised. I soon after arranged a visit, expecting to see my friend at death’s door. To my great relief, he was much as I remembered him, but with an oxygen tube below his nose, perhaps a little depleted but still in fine, booming form. We visited for a while, talked about the project, but by this point we were running out of stories anyway. I’d recently rebuilt the power steering pump on my truck and had posted about it on Facebook. During my visit, Joe asked, “Hold out your hands for me.” He was amazed. “These same hands that can write a book are the same hands that can fix a truck!” I’d been in awe of Joe Pinner, and yet Joe Pinner was in awe of me. At the end of my visit, I put my hand on his arm, looked straight in his eyes, begged him to take care. Maybe somehow I knew that was a last farewell, even if I didn’t realize it at the time, or maybe the memory of the last time I saw my mother was in my head, this subconscious realization of how fragile it all is, how no tomorrow is guaranteed any of us, that we should love those we cherish all we can while we can, that we don’t regret the things we do nearly as much as we regret the things we didn’t.

Months passed, and they had their hands full as it was, and I didn’t want to be a bother. They knew how to get hold of me when the time was right to resume work. In the meantime, I conducted another interview or two with Joe’s friends and former associates, finding once again that people light up when they get a chance to talk about their friend Joe. (Some of the stories I’ve heard are for the ages, and when the book finally gets put together and hits the stands, I think you’ll be very happy – and amused.)

On September 20 I had flown to New York City. A friend who works at ABC had offered to let me sit in as he worked on the Sunday edition of Good Morning America. I would have to be at the huge ABC facility on West 66th early in order to clear security and do a couple other things before the program began. I was also trying to rest after a full day of traveling and then walking around Midtown, and I just couldn’t spool my mind down that well. I tossed and turned for a little while, and about 1 a.m. I had this urge to check my phone. Sure enough, there was a text message from Joe’s son: Joe had passed away that evening. It wasn’t that much of a surprise, but it saddened me. It hurt not just because we’d lost a titan of South Carolina television, but I’d lost someone I had come to love as a friend.

But, life went on. There was talk of a memorial service in November, but with the election, a busy work schedule, and so many other things competing for attention, it may as well have been a decade away. Time does what it does, though, and soon came time for the last farewell.

It didn’t look promising, though. The sky was gray that day, and there was light and insistent rain throughout. I was kind of concerned about it, not only because I’m not fond of driving in downtown Columbia even on a good day, but because my usual parking garage in Columbia is a few blocks away from where I needed to go, and I was bound to get wet. But I owed it to my friend to be there, and I pressed onward. As the miles ticked away, as I got nearer to Columbia on I-126, there were the scenes from that 1975 WIS-TV news intro I’ve watched countless times: the Columbia skyline, that weird interchange where 126 splits into Elmwood and Huger. And even that name – “Huger Street” brings back memories of the stories Joe told about how Nevin Broome, he of the carpet and rug store, demanded it be pronounced “huge-err” and not “yoo-gee.” I used to take this same route when I’d drive over to see Joe at his retirement village, but now I was taking another route to say goodbye.

A left onto Lady Street, past the rear of the Whit-Ash Gallery, another Columbia institution that’s now about to pass into history; across Assembly, and then up to the parking garage. The rain is light but steady. Down the five flights of stairs to street level, then up and over a few blocks, all the while thinking about how much this city has changed just in the time since I lived here in the late ’90s, let alone how much it changed in the decades Joe had called it home. Walking past a downtown restaurant, where sunny guitar music rings out from speakers, I’m struck with a mix of emotions. Lost in my thoughts, it seems to not take that much time before First Baptist Church – which I once saw described as “an entire city block of bricks” – is before me. Up the long flight of stairs and into the auditorium. I’m not accustomed to churches this big, certainly not a sanctuary with two upper tiers of seating. But here I am.

I went through the receiving line, renewing my acquaintance with Joe’s sons and their families. The big pink Mr. Knozit couch had been brought in, right in front of the pulpit, and in the middle was the urn holding the remains of my friend, whom only half a year before I had taken by the hand, looked in the eye, and urged to take care. After greeting the family, I looked for my pals from the SLOBs. We were listed as honorary pallbearers and had a special place in front. Soon enough, I found some familiar faces and was soon at home.

In time, the service began. The string ensemble that had been providing music during the visitation struck up a version of “Mr. Sandman.” I started chuckling. What a Joe Pinner moment! The family came in from a side door, as did the governor and his wife, who sat in the front row of our section.

The service itself was full, and heart-filling. A colonel from Fort Jackson spoke of how Joe had devoted so much time and effort to the same fort he once served at, and presented a flag to the family. Top officials from local arts organizations testified to Joe’s happy promotion of the arts. There was a video about him and his beloved Peggy, testimony to the life they’d built together; at last, they were together again. Three of his WIS-TV colleagues spoke: Dawndy Mercer Plank remembered Joe’s cheery, outsized presence in the newsroom, and sports director Rick Henry had funny stories of the charity baseball games they played in back in the day. Then Judi Gatson gave some particularly moving remarks, made even more poignant by how much she was trying to maintain her composure, and I don’t think there was a one of us in that sanctuary that didn’t wish they could take her hand and help her through, because her grief spoke for us all. There was testimony from a couple of members of the clergy, including a former WIS-TV colleague who ended up becoming Joe’s minister and was with him when the end came.

Toward the end of the service, there was a video presentation. Joe was fond of the song “My Way,” and of course the only version that counts is the one Ol’ Blue Eyes did, and that’s what we got. The visual was a collection of many, many photos throughout Joe’s life and career. So many emotions tumbled around in my heart as I watched, like puppies trying to climb over one another. There were little signs of things I knew, scenes that were familiar, scenes that didn’t seem like they were that long ago (has it really been that long since the “Our Pride Is Showing” campaign?). There was that familiar face I knew from television. But there, too, was my beloved friend – and yes, he has gone off into the big forever. It’s for real.

Broadcasting has changed so much, particularly in the last three decades, and “local station” is more often than not a relative term, since most stations are now owned by conglomerates. So often people get shuffled around from market to market, and the odds of becoming a decades-long presence at one station are not that favorable. And that’s most unfortunate. Joe Pinner was as much a symbol of Columbia as the State House dome or the Adluh Flour sign. But those days are gone. And now, too, so is Joe. He could have made a fortune in a larger market, or maybe even at a network. But he found his home in Columbia. Like the protagonist of Roger Miller’s “Kansas City Star,” he had found his happiness. Now, neither Miller’s hero nor my friend could pull the same happy trick. We’re the poorer for it.

The service ended, and I said goodbye to a couple of my pals and headed out. The rain had let up just a little bit. It was the start of rush hour, and getting out of town got interesting. But, in time, I was on the way home. That evening, sitting at home, I could see just the slightest hint of clear sky, a warm glow of amber from the setting sun. I couldn’t help thinking that maybe it was our Joe giving us one more smile from beyond.