The staff at Maine Public Radio had been pasting my personals on their studio walls. Those were the only qualifications I needed to produce my first radio show. Had I known back then that people got paid for entertaining their friends on the radio, I would have earned enough by now to winter in Fuengirola. About the same time, I sent out samples of my writing to 5, newspaper editors along with an invitation to attend my Annual Free Lobster Picnic. Before I knew it, more than 50 newspapers were running my humor column, and every year on one day in August more than 1, people would show up in my back yard to picnic and watch a six-hour nonstop show by the top entertainers in New England.
Former Rochester Review editor Margaret Bond posted picnic invitations in the magazine, and a dozen or so Rochester grads, recognizing a good thing when they saw it, would be trolled in. More than a few requests for tickets came from hospitalized radio friends, some written by their caregivers because they could no longer write.
Radio friends who needed help to get out of bed would be bused in from nursing homes and wheeled or carried over to comfortable chairs under an apple tree. For years my humorous commentary and the old-fashioned music was the high point of their week. Some of my nursing home friends had few visitors, but they could count on me to say something on Friday nights that would make them laugh.
After I did a special program for one longtime radio friend who was ill, his wife called to tell me that he died the night before the broadcast, but that she and the family had listened and appreciated it. A woman in her 40s wrote to say that she had started college. She flunked her first psychology test and was crying on the way home in her car, when I said something funny on the radio. Would I suggest that you host a radio show? There are perks. You would have countless friends who collectively know everything there is to know and can answer any question you might ask.
Should you take the time to sit before a mike for one hour every week and carry on a thoughtful one-sided conversation with a good friend, yours would be a welcome, appreciated voice. Do rememberβyour friend is in a car, in bed, working in a shop, or enjoying a meal. This is an intimate one-on-one conversation between you and your one close friend who is listening.
