Showing posts with label Room 222. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Room 222. Show all posts

Saturday, September 20, 2008

3 Chords & the Truth: 1971 . . . and 2001

I'm sitting here in Room 222, waiting for Pete Dixon's American History class to get over with so I can do my air shift at KWWH, the voice of Walt Whitman High.

Maybe, if I have a little time, I'll drop by Miss Johnson's class to say hi. I know she's an English teacher and all, but she's still a totally groovy chick.

Anyway, my show is on during lunch period, so I know I'll have a big audience. I can't wait to play the new Grass Roots and J.J. Cale records . . . the J.J. Cale thing will be enough to straighten out Bernie's white-boy 'fro. I mean, it's really far out, man!

OH, HANG ON for a sec. . . .

Jason! What's happenin', man?

Groovy!

Later, man! Right on, bro!

Anyway, man, I was going to play more acid rock, but I don't want to push Mr. Kauffman's buttons too much, you know? Yeah, he's kind of a square, but he's a square who can shut me down.

I guess sometimes you got no choice but to play by The Man's rules. It'll be different in college, man. There, we can organize to fight the Establishment oppression.

Well, gotta run. Catch me in a bit on 3 Chords & the Truth . . . straight talk and cool music, right here on KWWH.

It's the grooviest show on the radio! Be there. Aloha.


P.S.: I wonder what people will be playing in 30 years? I don't know why I was thinking of that -- like, I just was, man.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Glimpses of humanity

Once upon a time -- at least for a kid growing up in the Deep South with Jim Crow as the crazy-angry, crazy-hateful uncle in the attic -- television actually had the power, and the moral imagination, to point to a way out of madness.

I KNOW this seems crazy by today's standards, but TV once offered glimpses of a better world beyond parochialism, segregation and hate. Everyone in the Treasure House was so happy, and Captain Kangaroo was the benevolent ruler of a make-believe place where moose could dance with bear, where Tom was always Terrific, and where Green Jeans always were in fashion.

And Fred could just be Fred -- sans apology and secure in his electronic blobitude.

Meanwhile, after dinner, the 21-inch Magnavox showed us "colored" nurses -- nurses?!? -- like Julia, cool spies like Bill Cosby and variety stars like "Flip" Wilson. In later years, the Sony portable in my bedroom would take me to places like Walt Whitman High School on Room 222, where integration wasn't a big deal at all. And who wouldn't want to have a teacher just like Pete Dixon.

Oh, right. Half of the class . . . and their parents . . . back in the Real World.

EVEN NOW, some four decades past, I still wish I could turn back the hands of Grandfather Clock and flee into the arms of the better angels of the Treasure House.