By Jim Hagarty
2013
I was seven years old before we got our first TV. Imagine that. No TV. I sat and stared at the wall for seven years, waiting for something interesting to appear and finally it did.
But the real entertainment in our farmhouse during that pre-boob-tube time was supplied by the radio. To this day, I am still a radio guy.
One day back then, when I got to be a pre-teen, the clouds parted and God said: “Jim. The world needs one more deejay and you’re it.” My Mom wanted me to be a priest (in fact, to drive the point home, subliminally, she used to call me Father Jim – no kidding) but God preferred a deejay so what was I to do? How could I ignore this true calling?
So, I had to practise. We had a record player in the parlour – we could have hung meat in there, it was so cold and never used – and about five singles: Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, Brenda Lee and a couple others. Maybe an album or two. So, I figured out a way to get this done.
I put the portable record player on the floor and pulled it over right next to the hot air register. Then I ordered – er, asked politely – my younger sister and brother to go to registers in the upstairs bedrooms, lie on the floor and put one of their ears right on the grate. Then, in my best ’60s deejay voice – all loud and booming and full of high and low registers (ironic, eh?) – I announced the next number.
“And now, here’s a song by that great singer, Buddy Holly, called Raining in My Heart.”
At that very moment, I would lower the needle onto the record and my delighted audience lying on the floor upstairs would have the benefit of hearing the broadcast being supplied by Buddy and I and the oil furnace. It was a miracle of modern technology.
Once in a while, my audience tried to rebel and go outside and skip rope or throw stones but the show must go on and I was a tough station manager. I can’t understand it, but they both have an aversion to hot-air registers to this day.
But Buddy and I are still pals and split us up? Ha!
That’ll Be the Day!
P.S.
For the “record”, my deejay career, tragically, never came about, a loss for radio listeners everywhere. The closest I came were some radio interviews I did across Canada back when I was making records in the early ’80s. Not the same but a thrill, nonetheless. I am still awaiting word from the Vatican on my application for the priesthood.
