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Shep's Signal Corp days
Date: 07-24-2008
By: SpaceCat
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Hi Gang- I'm a new old guy here who grew up in the northeast listening to Shep on WOR; came to Florida in the late '60's to go to college and eventually work for the space program and other stuff.... such that now I'm an eccentric old space guy who lives alone with a bunch of cats.
Some years ago, I wrote a little story for an old girlfriend to explain the significance of the old nail holes in the ceiling beams of my living room. Shep 'purists' might find some fault with my history, but you can't dispute the spirit. Funny how some things run full-circle.... and I'm looking up at those beams now.
A Voice In The Dark
Something I never admit to my southern friends- unless they become very good friends and it happens to come up in conversation- is that I was born in New Jersey and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The best response I ever had to such an admission came from the then not so reverent son of Palm Beach Atlantic co-founder, Reverend Dr. Jess Moody. When I casually and absent-mindedly mentioned to Pat Moody that I was born in New Jersey, he gave me a blank stare and seriously asked, "How come you're not an asshole?"
I suppose I am not, because for 38 years I've had the good sense to realize that I am merely a guest on this sandy peninsula where eons ago nature decided nothing would be permanent. But the focus of this writing is not my adopted allegiance to the South, but to an influence on my formative youth in the North. It happened like this.
In the early 1960's when the first wave of cheap Japanese transistor radios hit the American market, every youngster had to have one. My first carried the brand name of "Coronet," a two-transistor wonder that emitted scratchy sound from an item about the size of a cigarette pack. In central New Jersey, it was not even powerful enough to receive the mighty AM pop stations from New York or Philadelphia. In most cases, it only brought in one station- the rather bland news and talk format of WOR whose New York studios transmitted from towers in Carteret, New Jersey. For young kids, it was amazing enough to hear a voice come out of a tiny electronic marvel in the palm of your hand, but six nights a week at 10:15 or 11:15 the voice we heard shaped a generation. It belonged to Jean Shepherd.
These days, a one-line biography of Jean Shepherd would label him as 'an American humorist, writer and storyteller.' To young boys with vivid imaginations and transistor radios hidden under their pillows after dark, "Shep" was our window to the world through the 1960's. Each night his broadcasts diametrically opposed the staid, conservative, low-key talk from WOR. In essence, he was a beatnik who made good, coming from the same period of Ginsberg, Kerouac or McLuhan- and some nights he would irreverently play his kazoo between short jabs at current pop culture, nonsensical politics or idiots in the news. Mostly though, Jean Shepherd told stories. Stories of his travels and experiences- SCUBA diving in the Red Sea, learning to fly an airplane, fishing in the upper Great Lakes or the Gulf of Mexico.... and mostly stories of his youth growing up in a Midwest steel mill town; and stories of his Army days where he spent World War II "watching for Hitler" in a secret Signal Corp radar installation deep in the Florida Everglades.
Added to an early 1960's TV show called "The Everglades," an early Ivan Tors production wherein Park Ranger, Lincoln Vale seemed to constantly pursue bank robbers from Miami through the swamps in his airboat; Shepherd's stories of Florida substantially contributed to my early visions of this magical place I would one day call home- in ways more intimate than I could imagine.
You have to keep in mind that during the 1940's, all of South Florida more than ten miles inland was considered 'the Everglades.' Not far from my present home, a small portion of those glades are preserved in the form of Jonathan Dickenson State Park. During World War II, this park was Camp Murphy- a 'secret' Army Signal Corp test and training facility for the new technology of Radar. There in the swamps, amidst a myriad of shanties, tents, barracks and workshops connected by duckboard paths, great dishes on platforms swiveled around transmitting and receiving their locating radio signals as they "watched for Hitler."
It was there too, that Jean Shepherd and his Army buddies "Gasser" and "Zinsmeister" maintained and tested the equipment between bouts of traumatic encounters with bloodthirsty mosquitoes, cantankerous alligators and cockroaches large enough to saddle.
There is little doubt that listening to Shepherd's stories each night for the better part of nine years was a major influence on the way I've learned to tell stories of my own. His vivid word-pictures, vocal sound effects and frequent detours into coincident topics before returning to cap off a main theme were contagious. Despite his nightly candor and embellishments on his past, Shep's personal life was largely unknown to his fans. I did not know he had a seven-year marriage to the pretty blonde actress, Lois Nettleton, until I found it mentioned on the Internet well after his death. His stories made their way into print in several books and were frequently featured in Playboy, Field and Stream and other magazines; though most of America will know him as the author and narrator of the movie "A Christmas Story," where his alter-ego young self, Ralph, longs for a Red Ryder BB Gun. In the late '60's and early '70's, the New York PBS television station took him into another medium, resulting in a series of shows called "Jean Shepherd's America." Before Charles Kuralt's "On The Road" productions made small-town American back roads popular, the camera followed Shepherd on travels to the obscure which he narrated and elaborated on with his own stories. The episode on Florida was unforgettable; contrasting the glitz of Miami Beach where Jackie Gleason golfed and Barbara Streisand seemed to endlessly sing, "People- who need people" with twangy, haunting guitar riffs behind glimpses of now long-gone quiet fishing villages full of rugged individuals and rusty pickup trucks on the Gulf coast.
I last heard Jean Shepherd on the air in 1974 when I was headed back to Florida in a U-Haul truck full of family possessions following my mother's passing. Ultimately, Shep retired to Florida and died quietly at home on Sanibel Island in 1999 at the age of 78.
After the War, the Army Signal Corp abandoned Camp Murphy leaving the old wood buildings there up for grabs amongst the locals, before the area was made into Jonathan Dickenson State Park. Through the years, old-timers have told me that most of the older homes in Port Salerno, many now long gone, were moved here from Camp Murphy or built of salvaged Dade Pine from the Army shacks there. Today, as I look up at the old nail holes in the Dade Pine beams of my living room, it's a comfort to know I'm surrounded by timbers that once sheltered one of the most influential voices of my youth.
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