February 13, 2023

The Radio Contest

The Zevys ate dinner at 6:00. Not at 6:05.
Not at 6:09.
Not, heaven forbid, at 6:15. We ate dinner at 6:00.

If you asked my bubby at 5:59 if she were hungry, she would look at the clock and shake her head no in a way which intimated that it was the craziest question she had ever heard.

But at 6:00, she was famished.

Aside from the precise starting time, my father had two important rules about dinner which we had to abide:

1. You had to finish everything on your plate.

2. You could not answer the phone.

Now, if you are envisioning a long elaborate dinner ending with dessert and a cheese plate, then you may have stumbled into the wrong house.

Dinner was over by 6:30.

Unless, of course, you were having a problem with rule number 1.

Then it was over whenever you finished your plate.

I once sat with twenty-two green peas, I had plenty of time to count them, until 8:15.

I eventually finished them, with the help of my mother, who, may she rest in peace, may have had a forkful or two.

But this story is not about food. It is about rule number 2.

Both my siblings and I have romanticized thoughts and memories of our parents. I think that is a good thing. The three of us don’t have to embellish or exaggerate the past because we were blessed to have had amazing parents.

Now, my brother Dov is five years younger than me. One of the things he loves to tell people about my father is that he would answer the phone with the traditional Italian salutation of ‘pronto’.

Which is true.

He was not Italian. It was just his schtick.

The thing is, because Dov is five years younger, in 1973 he would have been 9 years old and nobody he knew was calling him on the phone. Least of all, between 6:00 and 6:30.

Because if they had, they would have heard what my friends, the biggest culprit being Stevie Sheen who reveled in my entire ordeal, heard when my father, quite a bit irritated, answered the phone.

He did not say pronto. He did not say hello.

What he would say, in either French or English depending on his mood or disposition, was:

“What time do you have dinner at your house?”

And then, after what was surely a moment of stunned silence, “Ronnie can’t come to the phone.”

Then he would calmly hang up and go back to his plate of spaghetti.

So that’s what I remember.

Which was all well and good and I guess at the time more than a little embarrassing, but it would not have been a big deal if Jethro Tull had not come to town.

Those of you of a certain age will know that Jethro Tull is a 1970s rock band. You will also know that there were no Jethros or any Tulls and that the lead singer’s name was Ian Anderson.

One of the gifts I had received for my bar mitzvah was a Sanyo cassette deck, and my cousin David recorded two albums for me on my very first cassette. On one side was Santana’s Abraxas. And on the other, was Aqualung by Jethro Tull.

It is now nearly 50 years later and I still get a kick out of the lyrics ‘snot is running down his nose.’

I wanted to go to the concert.

Badly.

But I did not have tickets.

My only hope was a contest being run by the local Montreal AM radio station CKGM.

CKGM was the AM top 40 station in the city, and their two big name disc jockeys were Ralph the Birdman Lockwood and Marc ‘mais oui’ Denis.

In 1973 they ran contests the entire year. Sometimes for cash prizes up to $1000, and sometimes for concert tickets.

The concept was easy.

You would send in postcards to the radio station with your phone number. Then, the whole week before the concert, every hour between 4 and 8, the DJ would pick a postcard and dial the number.

All you had to do was answer the phone and say “I listen to CKGM.”

Like I said. Easy.

I had inundated the radio station with postcards. So had Stevie Sheen. We had planned to go together if either of us won. Now, in order to enlist my sister’s help, I might have promised her a ticket too. But I would cross that proverbial bridge when I had to. Since my bubby never answered the phone, I now had my brother, sister, and even mother, who had a little trouble remembering the call letters and tried, unsuccessfully, to convince us it would be ok to just say “I listen to the radio,” instead, now covering the 4-8 time slot.

The only problem was dinner. 6:00 to 6:30.

My father, though strict and serious, was a kind, generous, and very fair man. He was honest to a fault and had a dry sense of humor which my friends, after overcoming their initial fear and trepidation, came to appreciate and enjoy.

But he was never, ever, ever going to answer the phone by saying, “I listen to CKGM.”

Not that we didn’t ask.

Not that we didn’t plead.

Not that we didn’t beg.

But it was never going to happen.

He wouldn’t even engage us in conversation. He found the whole thing ludicrous and not even worthy of his attention.

My mom even tried and his answer, in English, was the only time he ever addressed it directly. He said, “But I don’t listen to CKGM.”

Which, for him, ended matters.

As luck would have it, the phone did not ring once between 6:00 and 6:30 that week.

And, as luck would also have it, the radio station never called at any other time either.

My mother, after tiring of explaining it to her friends and relatives, quit after the third day. I think I may have even heard my sister say hello once or twice.

I never saw Jethro Tull.

For a couple of weeks after the concert, whenever the phone rang during dinner, we would wait and see if my father would make a joke.

But he never did.

After a while, although there were still contests, we just forgot about it.

About a month later, we convinced my mother to take us to McDonald’s for dinner. It was a huge treat.

My father, surprisingly, did not hate McDonald’s. In fact, if memory serves, he was a big fan of their French Fries. But that night my bubby, his mother, was feeling a little tired so it was just the three kids and my mom.

When we got back, French Fries in tow for my father, he waved a notepad at me.

“Aaron,” he said, “you got a phone call while you were gone.”

It was not like my father to write down messages from Stevie Sheen.

“From who?” I asked.

My father looked down at the pad and said, “from a Mr. Ralph Lockwood from CKGM,” he said.

My sister squealed, “Oh my god!!! Oh my god!!”

I was but a year older than my sister, but, in my mind, many years wiser.

“What was the message?”

My father looked down again. Then he looked up.

“Usually at around 8:30,” he said.

My sister said “What????”

I turned to her and said.

“Danielle, that is when Ralph Lockwood has dinner at his house.”

My father nodded, smiled, and took the French Fries from my hand.

The End