Miami 1986 Part II

The story so far:  The Old Saleswoman has moved to Miami.   She's taken a job with an emerging yellow page company where she's made friends with Piper-- a beautiful, rich, smart young woman about her age.  Since South Florida is now bi-lingual, their new jobs aren't going well and they're starting to  "dog it".

With that solid excuse under our belts to tell ourselves or our sales manager if it came to that, we did what a lot of sales reps would do in similar situations, we started to dog it. The process started slowly, and probably subconsciously like it does for most salespeople in a discouraging spot. We left the office in Hialeah a little later every morning and started to meet at Piper's pool a little earlier every afternoon. In a short while, we established several pleasant routines to fill up the time in between.

One afternoon before settling down by the pool, we wandered through the kitchen in the main house looking for a snack. I noticed an empty bottle shaped like a fish standing on its tail sitting on the counter. It was made out of beautiful cobalt blue glass. The fish had eyes, scales, and fins. There was a cork in its mouth. It looked like a sculpture to me. I would have liked to have some jewelry made out of that glass, and I told Piper so. When I told her that, she smiled so broadly she almost laughed and gave it to me. She said it used to hold olive oil.

I carried the bottle around with me the rest of the afternoon because I didn’t want to forget it. When I left, I placed it carefully in the dry cleaning basket in the back seat of my car, and when I got to the condo I set it on the center of my kitchen table.

Sometimes we’d go window shopping. Piper’s favorite place to shop and look at people was the Bal Harbour Shops on Collins Avenue. All the high-end designers like Gucci, Versace, and Chanel had stores there. It was a popular destination for the new rich Miami crowd. She occasionally bought something in one of these stores. I never saw her look at a price tag before she brought an item to the counter. Once I asked her how she could do that, how she would be sure she had enough money. I never got a good answer to that one.

We both noticed a new type of spike-heeled, pointed-toe shoe had become very popular among that same crowd. These shoes had an arc of peacock feathers shooting out the back of the heels like fire, or like the wings on the heels of a goddess. Piper hated these shoes. She had a lot of negative things to say about the clothes she saw on these new money people. Fashion was one area in which I encouraged Piper’s own running commentaries, and I listened hard because by now I had begun to try to imitate Piper’s dress in my own down-market manner.

Piper wore beautiful fabrics. I learned from her a white blouse is not just a white blouse. A white blouse can be chic, can be stunning, can be understated, can make a statement. “Feel this fabric.” she’d say. “Look at this embellishment. See the weave. Look at this seam.” She’d tell me to always choose better over more, and to tailor my clothes. She gave me French fashion magazines to look at by the pool.

We also talked about makeup and she told me I had good bones, that in my case less was more, and that I had a great smile. She even told me I didn’t have to be so friendly to strangers and sales clerks and tried to tell me to hold myself back. She taught me the difference between 14k, 18k, and 24k gold; how shiny doesn’t always mean better, and that certain styles of leather bags are classic and always will be. She told me if I must show a status symbol there are ways to do so subtly, so only a few people, the right people, will recognize it, but those are the ones who count.

I didn’t know anyone who counted. I didn’t even know what she meant. But I knew she looked beautiful and the saleswomen treated her with deference, and that must mean something very significant so I listened.

Once in awhile, I’d get anxious about the way we were hiding out. I felt guilty about it and even guiltier for not worrying about the consequences. It wasn’t like me to let go, open my fists, and relax. A couple of times I tried to talk to Piper about it. But she seemed sure the company would extend our salary for another six months, or even a year because all the reps were having the same problems with the language. The thought that we could be replaced by bi-lingual sales reps must have occurred to her because it occurred to me. But that’s not the kind of topic you discuss while lying by a quiet, serene, well-tended pool with a stack of sweet-smelling towels within arm’s reach, holding a delicate crystal glass filled with what was to become my favorite wine, chardonnay.

So we kept on playing. I especially liked the mornings we spent comparing the amenities of expensive hotels. We rated lobbies, work-out facilities and we tested, or rather Piper tested the knowledge of the concierges. Then we rated their brunches. My favorite brunch was the caviar brunch at the Mayfair House Hotel in the Mayfair Shopping Plaza in Coconut Grove. We started going there at least twice a week. Piper soon began asking me to rate the various caviars served there after she noticed it was the first thing I attacked at the serving tables. She said she appreciated my reviews. I knew that for me, a person living paycheck to paycheck, to claim to like caviar so much, to talk about it like a connoisseur, made me look foolish. But I couldn’t help it. I really liked it. It came in rich, distinct colors. It popped in my mouth and it was expensive. And no one in the restaurant seemed to care how much I ate. What if someone stole a bowl of it?

Occasionally, especially on rainy afternoons when sitting by the pool was not an option, we’d drop-in on an old friend of her family. Piper said she liked bringing me around to meet old friends because she sensed they found me amusing.  I've always liked being able to amuse others at will, but at that point in my life, I don't think I understood the difference between amusing others at will and others finding me amusing.
One day after the caviar brunch in Coconut Grove, Piper decided she wanted me to meet an old friend of her mother’s, who she’d known since she was a little girl. The friend lived in a smallish bungalow in an overgrown section of the Grove where the houses were jammed together and the vegetation ran wild. The geckos lived there with more confidence and air of belonging than the people.

Constantino, a handsome Greek man in his sixties, opened the door after the tenth or twelfth knock. He looked like he’d been sleeping. I found out later he lived with Thomas, a cook, who was out that afternoon working the lunch shift. Constantino was a designer or an artist of some sort. There were pictures and sculptures everywhere.

After we declined his offer of ice-tea, Constantino showed me around his home at Piper’s prompting. That house was in full embrace of the Miami damp. The furniture had no sharp edges because everything was covered in faded cotton. A canvas hammock hung in one corner of the living room. Next to it on a small table, I saw a picture of a good looking young man with a dark tan, who had to be Thomas. All the wicker shades were lowered, and the ceiling fans lolled along. There were books and magazines with names I never heard of everywhere, even in the one bedroom. Out on the patio, there was a clay stove I later learned is called a chimenea.

After a little small talk that consisted mostly of Piper and Constantino catching up about her mother, it was time to leave. Piper excused herself to use the bathroom.

Constantino immediately turned and spoke to me in an urgent style very different from the languid manner he’d used while the three of us were talking.

He asked me: Were we spending a lot of time together?

How much did I know about her past?


Had I heard about Rick, her first husband, or her second if you count the first one that her father got annulled?

Did she tell me she was trying to break her trust?


Did I know her current husband asked her to move out?

At first, the questions struck me as simply polite.  But as the questioning went on I could feel myself sitting taller and taller in my seat. By the time Piper returned and Constantino went silent, I was almost standing up.
As soon as we got in the car Piper wanted to know what I thought of Constantino, but I couldn't talk right then. I needed time to sit quietly and think and find my balance.  I needed time to make sense of the questions I'd just been asked and time to blend the images they'd invoked with my own image of Piper. So I told her I had a headache and that it might be time for us to sit by her pool.

Continued in Chapter III

Miami 1986 Part I

Job transfers, expiring leases, looming changes in living arrangements of any kind, always place a question mark front and center in relationships with unacknowledged problems. But it takes guts, readiness, and to be realistic, a certain amount of financial freedom to take on that question mark. So when my husband's company moved him over 1200 miles away from our home in Pittsburgh to Miami, Florida to be the new swing manager of the student union at the giant University of Miami near Coral Gables I moved with him.


For the drive south, I bought a Time Magazine because the cover story was about the Mariel boatlift. One hundred and forty thousand Cubans arrived in Florida in 1980 alone, and most had settled in Miami. The story said Miami in the 1980s was in a state of upheaval. I remember thinking that’s fine. I am too.

When we got as far as Dade county we took a room in a motel right off U.S 1 that looked like it had been built in the fifties or sixties.  We had 48 hours to find an apartment because Roy's company would pay for our motel for only two nights. We had no idea where to look, and knew no one in the city, so we bought a newspaper and headed about 15 miles outside of Miami to Kendall where most of the apartments were advertised.

Kendall wasn’t so much a suburb in 1986, as a sprawl outside the city. The highway running through it was saturated on both sides with enormous flags and screaming signs advertising deals on new one and two-bedroom apartments that were essentially alike. All of them wanted us to fill out complicated applications asking for lots of references of different sorts, so we rented a condo from an individual who had placed a sign on her lawn.

The woman we rented from was a tall Latina in her 40s who wore a ring with a diamond so big she had it mounted on a tiny axle, so it would swirl in circles when she moved her hand. She owned one of the first portable phones I’d ever seen.

I was thrilled about the condo complex because there was a community pool and our place had a washer and dryer in a small laundry room off the kitchen. The laundry room was the only room in the condo that wasn’t filled with the smell of salt air mixed with wet wool. A “bug man” the landlady paid for visited once a month. I could always tell when he’d been there because whatever he sprayed mingled with the heavy salt air and left a distinct tangy gasoline smell for hours. When I first found out about the bug man I was insulted. I thought it was a sign we were living in something close to a tenement. But I found out that in Miami it was the opposite; not to have a bug man visit on a regular basis was a sign of that very thing. When I figured this out I started to look forward to his visits and tried to be home when he came because welcoming him in to spray made me feel like the real lady of the house instead of a renter.

Roy was spending long hours working at the university, so I spent my days going over the classified ads, looking for a job, or lying by the pool watching families playing in the water.

I was never so lonely in my life.

One of the few people I met during my first weeks at the condo complex was an older gentleman, about eighty-three. Al told me he made his fortune thanks to a health crisis in New York City in the 1930s. He’d been selling paper cups there at the time, but they hadn’t caught on yet. Then he got his lucky break. There was an outbreak of trench mouth in the city, and the government strongly encouraged everyone to use paper cups. (“Government agencies are a great ally to have if they’re on your side, but watch out when it’s the other way around!”) His sales sky-rocketed and the cups caught on for good. His future was secure.

I told him I was in sales too. Right away he asked me if I spoke Spanish. When I told him I didn’t, he just walked away and took a chair by the pool.

I didn’t understand his lack of interest in my job prospects, until a week or two later. Miami had become bi-lingual. He knew my chances of getting a sales gig in Miami in the 80s without speaking Spanish were as slim as a paper cup salesman making a killing in a bacteria-free world.

But then I got lucky; I got a trench mouth epidemic of my own. The federal government (“Good if they’re on your side!”) broke up Ma Bell and along with it the idea of one yellow page phone book per city.

As a result, a well known yellow page company out of the Midwest came to Miami to open new territory. A fleet of people came in from the home office to do the hiring, but because there were no feet on the ground permanently, their sales hiring criterion did not include the ability to speak Spanish. I saw their help-wanted ad in the paper, and I finally got a gig.

In my sales training class, I met one of the most beautiful women, in an old fashioned all American Beauty rose way, that I had ever seen. Piper Black was sandy-haired, blue-eyed, and just a picture. If Walt Disney wanted to send someone to sweep about and enchant the copier in the yellow page training room in Hialeah, and Cinderella was on assignment, he would have sent Piper.

I walked up to Piper right away and tried to make her my friend. I considered being friends with a woman so beautiful a test of my character. We clicked right away. Maybe she was grateful I approached her, or maybe women didn’t do that often. We were about the same age.

Piper was smart too. If she had been just a beautiful idiot I wouldn’t have had the character or the desire to get past “Hi!” But I could see right away, by the way she took simple concise notes in class, and just by the look on her face, she was sharp. She was doing this whole thing with one eye shut. It got so she and I would exchange glances, then laugh during the breaks at some of the comments made by the old-time salesmen; like making comparisons between selling yellow page ads to selling siding.

We started going to lunch together on the first day of training. She told me she’d just separated from her husband, a man who owned a chain of bakeries across the south, and was now living with her parents in Coral Gables. I believed this made her something of a kindred spirit. She needed this gig as badly as I did.

Right away she insisted on paying for lunch for both of us. She would say “you get it the next time”, but she was always too quick. I didn’t like that. I wanted to go Dutch like women do. I wouldn’t understand why she always wanted to pay for both of us until much later.

When she told me she’d never been in sales before, I tried to give her an education on the profession. She loved to hear my running commentaries on salesmen. She’d laugh till she pounded her palm in the steering wheel, or had to blow her nose. I was so pleased that I could make my new friend laugh, I started to set aside time in the shower in the morning to think of funny salesmen trivia to tell her later that day.

After we were given our assignments Piper invited me to her house to meet her parents. Her parent’s home in Coral Gables was big and old and beautiful. It was dark and cool inside like a castle. It was the first house I’d seen that had a guest room with a private bathroom or two ovens in the kitchen. The dual ovens so impressed me I was too dumbfounded to ask why this might be necessary.

On my first visit, her dad was sitting in a lounge chair under an orange tree near a beautiful swimming pool in the back yard, reading a book. Her mother was just leaving for a meeting. Both of them stopped what they were doing to say hello and ask a few questions about where I lived and where I was from. I liked that. It made me feel safe and secure. I was the new playmate, and the responsible parents were checking me out. They were older than my own parents, maybe in their 60s.

After her father met me, he went back into their yard and brought me an orange. Before her mother left she told us to help ourselves to whatever we wanted in their kitchen. Piper had her own apartment over a big three-car garage. It was larger than the first two apartments I’d lived in after I got married.

I realized Piper’s parents were rich, but I didn’t feel that changed anything between us. It was her parents who were rich. She was working in the same job I was. I imagined her parents were charging her a lot for rent. I also assumed she had a car payment, and of course other incidental expenses.

We had a salary for the first month after training to give us time to fill our sales pipeline. Then a straight commission plan kicked in. The salary was pretty good, and I tried to save as much of it as I could. Not because of any lack of belief in my sales ability, but I’d had salary/draw combinations before and I knew they could be tricky. You never knew when you might be presented with a complicated spreadsheet with a figure printed in red at the bottom.

Piper was different. She wasn’t afraid to spend her salary on manicures and pedicures, or hardcover books as soon as they were released, or on hand crèmes with foreign names. I thought that was a neat way to live; and I saw her as brave and confident.

We weren’t in the field a week before we began to complain to each other about the futility of trying to close business in our new gig. After the initial sales pitch, we were supposed to paste up the ads for the businesses’ approval ourselves in both Spanish and English. But neither of us knew enough Spanish to paste-up anything. We were dead in the water.

Continued in Part II

Old Saleswoman-Back for a Rematch-Chapter 3, Conclusion "Away We Go"

The story so far: The hot air balloon/celebrity/silver coin on-air promotion planned by the Old Saleswoman's new employer WEWO -FM has fallen apart.  A balloon shaped like a dinosaur has been delivered to the station and there's no one there who can fly it. 

It was interesting to see how Pat reacted to the no-show by her friend Jennifer Beal compared to how Kurt reacted to the arrival of a truly bazaar hot air balloon. Pat announced that her celebrity friend was not coming, murmured something about a mix-up, ignored the grumbling, and prepared to get on with the promotion. Kurt on the other hand groveled for forgiveness and went into a psychological fetal position.


“Kurt, hey, come on!” Pat said. “It’s not that bad! You and I can go up in the balloon!”

When Pat said that I thought I was hearing things.

She continued. “I know you can fly it! You’re a smart guy. You went to Yale right?” She stopped to take a breath. “So it looks like a dinosaur. So what?! I can dress like Carol Burnett when she does her Tarzan yell, and do my imitation. You know I’m good at it! Its part of my act at Laugh Till it Hurts!”

Kurt and I reluctantly followed Pat out into the parking lot and watched as she ran ahead and scrambled into the big basket hanging from the belly of the dinosaur.

“I’m sorry Pat!” Kurt said as he ran after her. “I don’t think that will work. What am I supposed to do up there? Interview you!?”

“No! I have an idea!” I shouted getting into the spirit of the moment. “Kurt, you can get into a costume too!” This was easy for me to suggest from the relative safety of the station back door.

It was decided that Kurt would dress up as Mr. T because the A-Team was hot now, and Mr. T. had a good tag line: “I pity the fool!”

Kurt  Vaselined his curly hair flat-- except for a hunk in the middle of his head that served to represent Mr. T’s Mohawk. He also took off his shirt and put on a bunch of beads that had been laying around the station since February when Greg went to New Orleans for Mardi Gras.

“Well!” Pat gushed and gave a great Tarzan yell. “Let’s give away some coins!”

It was a beautiful clear day and the dinosaur went up without a hitch. Leo, the WEWO announcer on the ground started the on-air play-by-play explaining that Jane and Mr. T were riding in the WEMO hot air balloon today instead of Jennifer Beal and Kurt Strong for reasons that were left unstated.

At first I, just like Pat, had a lot of faith in Kurt’s ability to fly the balloon. I believed Kurt would be able to host the remote and toss out coins while steering the hot air dinosaur without breaking a sweat, but by Leo’s first cut-in it was clear that Kurt, Yale grad or not, was sweating bullets.

Not only were Kurt and Pat not getting into their new roles, playing off one another, and being cute like I’d hoped, it sounded like they were having a hard time keeping in an upright position and anywhere near the microphone.

Not that any of this was our fault. None of us knew that no one really steers a hot air balloon.  We didn’t know that the most anyone can do to control the direction of a balloon is heat or cool the air inside it and hope to catch a breeze going in the right direction. If we’d known that we might have thought to build a few contingencies into the flight plan.
After a very shook up sounding Kurt told the listening audience during one of the cut-ins that he was over one of the three rivers that ran through Pittsburgh, but he didn’t know which one Leo demanded someone get in a car and try to follow them so we’d at least have a general idea where the balloon was heading.

The crew at the station insisted I should be the one to follow because I was a buddy of Pat’s and therefore guilty by association. Even my fear of getting lost or stuck on the wrong side of a bridge or tunnel didn’t get me off the hook.

To make sure I had a clear field of vision, I stuffed my hair under a ball cap and gave the car’s windshield a once over, but all that wasn’t really necessary because by now our dinosaur was hard to miss--hovering not more than 100 feet above Pittsburgh. I could see it skirting the golden triangle, moving in the opposite direction of the produce district where it was supposed to land. It was not so much sailing through the air as meandering around up there.

After a frustrating forty-five minutes of near collisions and dead ends, I ditched my car and went after the balloon on foot. I spent the next thirty minutes running across parking lots, in and out of department stores, and through a series of small courtyards behind apartment buildings.

At the intersection of Kaufmanns Department Store and Three Gate Way Center, I watched as the dinosaur caught a good gust of wind, and swooped over at least one block of buildings. It drifted out of sight and took its time sinking on the horizon. I held my breath and prayed it would come down on clear solid ground.

I caught up with it on a lawn behind a building that might have been a museum. On its descent it knocked over a dozen or so round banquet tables covered in thick white linen. One of the table cloths now draped the dinosaur’s deflating snout and I couldn’t help but notice the remains of what looked like a tasty brunch scattered in the grass.

As I got closer, I could see a bunch of older distinguished looking men and women dressed for cocktails at the Hamptons coming out from behind a row of hedges to reclaim their lawn after it was obvious the balloon was harmless and rapidly deflating.

Kurt and Pat were just creeping out from under the basket. Kurt was apologizing to everyone within the sound of his voice, and Pat was laughing and calling for help in getting clear of the tangled lines that ran from the basket to the dinosaur, so I guessed they were okay. Then it was a race to see who’d get to Pat and Kurt first, one of the people in attendance at what must have been a lawn party, or me. A very trim, exercised, sixtyish female with pale skin, and salt and pepper hair beat me to them by a good fifteen seconds, and she was bearing gifts.

“Here! Take these!!” she handed champagne flutes to Kurt and Pat, or Mr. T and Jane depending on how you looked at it. They gulped down the champagne and held their glasses out for refills.

”Are you part of the festivities? What fun! Who hired you?”

Pat and Kurt were too busy checking their arms and legs to see if they were still intact to answer. So she refilled their glasses and continued. Pointing to Pat, she said “You’re…you’re…” she paused to think. “You’re Jane. Right?” Pat let out a Tarzan yell and explained she was channeling Carol Burnett’s Jane doing a Tarzan yell. To my surprise, that seemed to make sense to the woman.

She then turned to Kurt, “And you’re…Tarzan?”

“No!” a gentleman, also sixtyish, in seersucker pants and a bowtie ran up to join us. “He’s not Tarzan! He’s Mr. T! I Pity the fool! Right? Am I right?”

“Right,” Kurt admitted and sat down on the grass with his head down, but with his glass held out for a third refill.

By then I’d caught my breath enough to ask the woman if she might have enough champagne for me too. When she returned,  both she and her husband wanted to know who we were and again asked who hired us.

Since I was the most formally dressed of the three of us in a ball cap, and acid-washed jeans, I made the introductions, adding we were from WEWO and that our dinosaur/flash dance/ silver coin promotion had hit a snag, and we weren’t part of their entertainment. I was prepared to offer a much lengthier explanation as to why we had crashed landed in the middle of their party but it wasn’t necessary because as is often the case, they were more interested in telling us about themselves and what was going on there that day than hearing any more about us.

The woman introduced herself. “I’m Lillian.” She extended her hand to each of us. When none of the three of us lit up with recognition, she added, “Lillian Morris, and this is my husband Robert.”


We all murmured nice to meet you.

“I hope you know you’ve landed at the Pittsburgh Public Radio spring fundraiser.” Lillian whispered, “We have a very large goal this year, but Robert and I have been fortunate enough to line up some very generous matching funds.”

“Great, wonderful, good for you.” Pat and Kurt muttered while I asked myself what matching funds were. “Perhaps you’d like to contribute?” Lillian asked. After five awkward seconds of silence, she asked, “Are you at least listeners?”

Kurt told her he was, and that he was even a dollar-a-day member. Pat lied and said she was too, but I knew she wasn’t, she listened to old comedy tapes in the car and didn’t have a dollar-a-day for anybody. I admitted I wasn’t a listener, but I promised I’d start. It took another ten years, but it was eventually the truth.

“Robert! Guess What? Two of them are listeners,” she pointed to Kurt and Pat, “and dollar-a-day contributors!”

That pleased Robert no end. “Let’s all sit down and talk about this dinosaur promotion. Tell us how it is you attract listeners to your station. We use pledge drives. Have you heard?”

“You go on.” I said to Kurt and Pat, “I’ll head back to the station.” I made excuses to Lillian and Robert about having to deal with the deflated dinosaur that very minute and hurried out to the sidewalk. I stopped and looked back. I would have liked to have stayed a while longer, I would have liked to get to know Lillian and Robert and the entire group of people there that day, but I felt too far out of my element, so I left.

A few people mentioned how lucky we were that there weren’t any serious repercussions from what Pat and I came to consider “our promotion”. There were a few complaints about the lack of silver coins on the ground and no celebrity interview, but that all got quieted down with free albums, and concert tickets and no one mentioned the balloon promotion again.

Except for Pat and Kurt. After their chat with Robert and Lillian at the balloon's crash site, both of them started to move in the crowd they were introduced to that day.

Kurt made enough contacts to get a gig in public radio. Eventually, he moved on to the Washington, D.C. bureau. His ratings were good, and his family was very happy.

Pat began providing entertainment for charity events attended by local TV personalities and various Pittsburgh movers and shakers. A year or so later she left Pittsburgh for L.A. to make a sit-com pilot. She played the funny friend. The show was picked up by one of the new emerging networks and lasted for two seasons.

I've read that Woody Allen has said half of life is showing up. After I saw how life changed for those two after they crashed landed at a party and decided to stay awhile, I've come to believe the other half, the more important half is hanging around.

Maybe if I'd stayed later that day and connected with Lillian and Robert, I’d have met someone who could have introduced me to be the world of NPR and professional fundraising. Maybe I’d have volunteered at a gala and met other people who could have influenced my life. But I couldn’t stay in a place so far out of my comfort zone, even for an afternoon.

There was a format change at WEWO only a few months after the dinosaur promotion. Album oriented rock stations were dying, and WEWO went “Lite”.  But I wasn’t around long enough to see who made it through the format change. My husband decided to move again; this time to Miami. I like to tell myself if Miami hadn’t sounded like such a glamorous place to live, I would have stayed behind. You’ll notice my husband doesn’t play a very prominent role in my stories. But the security I found in comfort zones not only kept me from experiencing new things and meeting new people, but it also kept me experiencing the same things over and over again with the same person. So in this case, it was more comfortable to hang around a while longer.


Next Week "Miami"

Old Saleswoman-Back for a Rematch-Chapter 2 "Preparations?"

The story so far:  The Old Saleswoman has wrangled a  sales job at WEWO-FM, an album-oriented rock station in Pittsburgh, and finds herself in the middle of preparations for a station promotion that involves a hot air balloon, the actress Jennifer Beal, and silver coins.

“Pat, you’re sure you can count on Jennifer Beal?” Greg asked.


“Of course darling!” Pat said in what had to be an imitation of Bette Davis. People were still doing Bette Davis in the 80s.

“And you’re going to find us a sponsor for the coins?”

Pat bowed deeply from the waist. “Your wish is my command.” I didn’t know exactly who she was doing this time, but she definitely made her point.

“And what about the hot air balloon? Kurt?”

Kurt jumped to attention at the mention of his name. “No problem! I have it covered. I have a buddy who works at a company that rents those things, and I got us a great deal.”  Everyone nodded in approval.

“And you’ll get someone to operate the thing?”

“Yeah, sure. Of course.”

When Pat told me Kurt's back story a few days later I understood why he struck me as particularly eager to please; and why he felt he had to tell me as soon as he met me he’d been the morning man at a big radio station in Boston.

Kurt's brief stint as a morning man at the Boston station had ended on less than a stellar note.  In fact, he was let go because his ratings were so bad even his father pulled the advertising for his Mercedes dealership. Kurt took this especially hard because as a Yale Drama School graduate, he knew his family already thought sitting behind a microphone was a waste of his expensive education. His eagerness to please seemed almost like an apology for doing radio instead of doing Shakespeare in the Park.

“Great. Good to hear Kurt. Okay, everyone, I’m counting on you all to work together and make this a super event. We’re heading into a rating period, and I’m blowing the budget on this thing, so let’s make a difference!”

I was assigned to train with Pat, who besides being a part-time comedian at Laugh Till It Hurts, was the senior sales rep on staff.

“It’s easy to pitch WEWO,” Pat told me. “Number one-every other stations’ listeners are old and don’t spend money. Number two-AM stations still bothering to play music are ridiculous. They should stick to doing what they do best-running a full hour of commercials. Number three-don’t worry, you’ll sell something. We’re cheap! Now let’s find a gold and silver buyer to sponsor this thing.”

We grabbed a Pittsburgh Press someone had left in the break room, and looked for big splashy ads with lots of dollar signs. There were a few gold buyers in town that week, but Norman’s Gold and Silver at the Ramada Inn in McKeesport had the biggest advertisement.

On the way there we stopped at Pat’s apartment off Forbes Avenue near the University of Pittsburgh to check her answering machine for any news about her latest comedy gig. Pat's place was small and cluttered. I waited for the usual excuses about the mess, but none were forthcoming. Obviously Pat was a busy person, and her priorities didn’t include putting clothes back in the closet, or refolding newspapers once they were read.

There were a number of messages on her answering machine, besides the one from Laugh Till It Hurts. There was one about parking tickets and one about late rent, but Pat only had ears for the message from the comedy club.

On our way back to the car, we ran into some of her neighbors on the sidewalk. Pat made sure she spoke to everyone and reminded all of them about her upcoming show on Thursday night. She gave at least three especially enthusiastic Tarzan yells and didn’t wait for a reaction after any of them. She just kept walking and looking for an opportunity to give another.

When we got to McKeesport and met Norman the gold and silver buyer in his hotel room he was upbeat and full of conversation. Then we told him we were from a radio station.

To soften him up and get him talking again, Pat did a few of her impersonations and I talked about WEWO’s young male listeners who probably had old class rings laying around to sell to him. Then we poked around for his hot button and found out he wanted to add a sense of legitimacy, stability, and trust to his gold buying business. From there we proceeded to convince him that being part of a radio station promotion featuring a hot air balloon and a celebrity would do just that, and we had our sponsor. It was obvious Pat and I were going to be a great team.

When the event was two weeks away the station started hyping it on air. The promos generated a lot of buzz. Listeners called the station with questions: how many coins would be dropped, what was the route, and would Jennifer Beal be available for autographs.

But no one had any answers because no one person or department was in charge of answers. The truth be told, this is the way a lot of radio stations put together promotions in the 80s. Someone would have half an idea for a promotion. Someone else would have another half an idea. Sometimes they even talked to each other about their ideas, but more often they didn’t, or only very briefly. Yet somehow out of these two halves a promotion would be born and put on the station’s calendar. But Pat and I didn’t worry about these sorts of things. We were too busy talking up the event and working each up other up into a frenzied state over what a great promotion it was going to be.

The morning of the promo Pat and I were so psyched we got to the station at 6 a.m. We were the unofficial cheerleaders for the event. When we got there, there wasn’t much to do but wait for the balloon and Jennifer Beal to arrive, so we just wandered department to department drinking coffee, giggling, and kibitzing.

When Kurt got to the station around 8 a.m., he noticed right away that Jennifer Beal wasn’t there, and he started to worry. Pat assured him she’d be there. By 8:30 a.m., when she still wasn’t there, I started to worry. Finally, at 9:00 a.m., Pat started to worry and began calling everyone she could think of who might know where Jennifer Beal was, including her mother, who didn’t know anything but was glad to hear from Pat anyway. Still no Jennifer Beal.

Meanwhile, Kurt was making calls of his own-to his buddy’s rental company. The balloon his buddy’s company had sent was not at all what Kurt or the rest of the station expected. When Pat and I first saw it we both screamed, and ran around looking for him. The balloon was in the shape of a giant green dinosaur. It had large black eyes without pupils and a huge gaping mouth with a long red floppy tongue that whipped back and forth in the breeze. By the time we found Kurt, we’d also found out no one was coming to fly the scary looking thing.

Continued in Chapter 3 "And Away We Go"

Old Saleswoman-Back for a Rematch -Chapter 1 "Wandering Around Without Permission"

Last winter the Old Saleswoman told you about living in a small flat in Rutland, VT while selling gift boxes in the late 70s, and about breaking into a male-dominated sales team at WWVA-Radio in Wheeling, W.V. in the early 80s.  Just before the summer break, you read how things didn't work out so well for the Old Saleswoman when she tried selling advertising in a more professional environment than she was used to.   As a result of that experience, the Old Saleswoman is now out of work, and thinking about her next sales gig. 

After my unceremonious leave of the KDKA-Radio premises-- at least I didn’t knock over any office furniture-- it took me a couple of weeks to get the courage to look for another sales job at a radio station in Pittsburgh. Working for a big city corporate-owned radio station had been a stretch for me. I felt like I went from barnstorming in a one-seater bi-plane to trying to fly in formation with the Blue Angels.


At first, all I wanted to do was hang around my apartment brooding and reliving my glory days at the local country station I’d worked for previously. But eventually, I realized if I was ever going to feel good about myself again, I had to reach out of my comfort zone and head back to Pittsburgh for a rematch.

In the three days it took to get my interview suit back from the cleaners I had time to use the big green Thomas Registry at the Wheeling Library to research the most popular FM stations in Pittsburgh. My criteria for picking stations was straightforward, the level of competition they gave my former employer  KDKA,  and their close proximity to each other so I wouldn’t have to move my car from one parking garage to another, or heaven forbid, resort to using a map.

Unlike most salesmen in the 80s, who had a collection of maps somewhere in their car; in the back seat, in the trunk filed in a milk carton, or smashed in the glove box, my library of maps consisted of one big dog-eared, coffee-stained, sheet of poorly folded paper that covered the major highways on W.V., PA., and Ohio. If I suspected my map wouldn’t get me where I wanted to go, I gave myself plenty of time to get lost, ask directions, and then get lost again.

My plan was to leave Wheeling for Pittsburgh at 6 a.m. That gave me three hours to drive there, get turned around a few times, find a parking garage, take the hot rollers out of my hair, and find the first station on my list by 9 a.m. This was all accomplished by 8 a.m. so I took a walk around the block to calm my nerves. While walking, I noticed a poster in a store window advertising a Red Cross Blood Drive to be held that morning at the album-oriented rock station WEWO-FM.

I’d heard of WEWO, but it wasn’t on my apply-to list because an album-oriented rock  ( AOR for short) station's music and demographics: male, single, and 18-34 years old, were foreign to me and this time I wanted to keep culture shocks to a minimum. But then I remembered WEWO was owned by a local Pittsburgh family, not a big corporation, which meant their chain of command began and ended in the same building.

Besides, a blood drive would mean a little confusion at the reception desk. I changed course and headed to WEWO. When I got to there, I fell in line to give blood with everyone else, but as soon as I got the chance to break away I headed for the ladies' room. After that stop, I was free to do a little wandering.

I know the idea of a salesman wandering around a business, without an appointment, trying to sell something, or meet someone, sounds sketchy. But at that time living breathing receptionists, normally women, guarded the door and answered the phone. If they didn’t want you to contact someone, you just didn’t. So, I did what I had to do.

I hurried down the halls, reading doors, looking for the sales department. A red-headed woman who looked like she was on a mission took a left. On instinct, I followed her.

There it was--the sales bullpen: the familiar grey steel desks scattered over an open area, mostly men and a few women on the phone fiddling with Rolodexes, a sulky traffic girl staring at a large green computer screen with a flashing C prompt. In many ways, it reminded me of the two previous radio stations I’d worked for. Except that everyone looked like they lived in a small apartment in a city with roommates. The walls were covered with concert posters or signs supporting or condemning something.

“Hi!” I said as loud as I dared. “I’m here to see the sales manager.”

A tall, lanky, curly-haired guy who was walking through the bullpen head down, and reading out loud what sounded like ad copy, stopped in front of me and shouted into the air. “Greg! There’s someone here to see you!” He glanced over at me and asked, “You looking for a job?” When I hesitated he said, “Well, good luck anyway.” and kept on walking.

Before I could stop blushing, a short stocky guy with a brown mullet walked into the bullpen. He checked me out for a second or two and he told me to follow him to his office.

Greg was about my age and the only one in the station wearing a jacket. Robert Crumb’s ‘Keep on Truckin’ poster was hanging on the wall behind his desk.

I launched into my tale: I was successful at KDKA, but it wasn’t a fit. I brought in new business, but that wasn’t good enough. I got cash in advance, but that didn’t matter.

“I get it. They’re uptight idiots over there. But they must have seen something in you.” He tipped back in his chair. “If you want a job, show up tomorrow at 8 a.m. for a meeting about a station promotion we’re doing.”

“I’ll be there,” I said as fast as I could. I was scared to death of talking past the close.

The meeting the next morning was held in the station's break room. There were people draped on counters, sitting on the edge of the sink, and on the floor. The tall curly-headed guy who’d wished me luck the previous day was leaning against the frig. He introduced himself as Kurt. He told me he was the morning man there and added right away that he used to be the morning man at a station in Boston.

The red-headed woman I’d followed to the bullpen was standing next to a table loaded with bagels. She let out what I thought might be a Tarzan yell. I found out later Pat worked a couple of nights a week at the comedy club, Laugh till it Hurts, and it had become something of a tradition for her to bring these meetings to order with her intimation of Carol Burnet’s famous Tarzan yell.

Greg got right into the promotion. It seemed that the actress Jennifer Beal was a childhood friend of Pat’s. She was in town filming a movie called Flashdance, and she’d promised Pat she would take part in an on-air promotion as a personal favor to her.

The plan was that Miss Beal would ride in a big hot air balloon along with Kurt, who would do the cut-ins with another announcer on the ground. They planned to take off from the station parking lot at 9 a.m. on a Saturday morning and head to her movie set in the produce district. While the balloon was floating to the movie location, Jennifer was supposed to toss out coins for listeners to find along the way.

OK, I thought.  I don't know if I'll make any money here, but at least this could be interesting. 

To be Continued in Chapter 2  "Preparations?"

Big Time Radio, Conclusion - "Are You All Right?"

Story so far:The Old Saleswoman's sale to a fireworks dealer didn't bring her the kudos she had hoped for, but she'd kept on plugging, trying to bring new business to KDKA. Now, once again, her bosses have asked to see her behind closed doors.

Once again Roxanne was behind her desk and Gene was playing lieutenant.

Roxanne started the conversation. “You’re one of the best, most talented reps we’ve seen here. No one in this room is saying you can’t sell. In fact, we wanted to ride with you that day to see what it is you say to close these deals.”

Gene jumped in, “We thought after we turned down the fireworks order, you would have understood…”

He drifted off and waited for me to finish his thought, but I just sat there and refused to help him out.

He continued, “…we thought you understood. Our goal is to develop long term, solid business here. We want accounts that can grow with us, that have the potential to be with us long term. These accounts you’ve brought us, they...” again he drifted.

“They all paid cash in advance is what they did …I never added a penny to the receivable problem you guys have.” I made the deadly switch from “we have” to “you have.”

Roxanne responded, ”Yes, cash is necessary at times for certain advertisers, like concert promoters, but the need to get cash in every case means we are dealing exclusively with bad credit risks. That’s not the portfolio of accounts we care to accumulate. Besides, half the sales you bring in here can’t be broadcast.

“But, but, but……” I actually stuttered. Roxanne put up her hand.

“Let me finish. This is a very high profile radio station and we all have very important jobs here. KDKA doesn’t advertise hair restorers. We don’t make outlandish promises on products that are not FDA approved. We don’t advertise DSMO for pain. My understanding is that DMSO, whatever that stands for, may be approved for use as horse liniment, but that’s all.”

“Well, I had two real testimonials, from grandmothers. And I know they were considering buying an FM station before I sold them.” I could literally feel my hair stand on end. “You said you wanted new accounts! All the big accounts are taken!"

Gene went on, “That professor who advertised with us for test subjects. His ad said he wanted healthy men and women between the ages of twenty-two and thirty for an experiment at his university and he would pay them five hundred dollars each. He got a lot of responses, but we had to handle the fallout when the university found out he was conducting some sort of sex study, off-campus, unsanctioned, and without their knowledge.

“He was basically a voyeur for God’s sake. Roxanne added, taking in deep breathes. She was way ahead of the curve and already into yoga. “When you took his money after his own campus radio station turned him down, didn’t that tell you something?”

“It told me I was scoring one for the AM side!” Now I was past ruffled, and onto wise cracks.

Roxanne ignored this. “Frankly, the most solid account you’ve brought us is the Starving Artist’s Group, and they only come to the Ramada once a year.”

From wisecracks, I went to sarcasm. “Hey what about the gold buyers? Sometimes they stay in town for two weeks. And  the Starving artists come twice a year.”

“Still, you can’t build an advertiser portfolio based on the price of gold, or art sold by the yard. Needless to say, we have to wonder here at KDKA, if we have a match.”

I could have gotten mad. That would have been alright, natural enough. I could have cried, been disappointed, again that would have been alright.  But what I got was worse. I got humiliated.

That’s the worst response I could have had because that kind of naked embarrassment makes a person want to fight and cry at the same time. It makes people want to hide away and beat up on themselves, but only after they’ve taken their anger and frustration out on the people who’ve made them fall so completely, so miserably, out of love with themselves.

Comments made to me over the past several months raced through my mind. Glen, congratulating me on my new suit. Roxanne laughing and telling me I’d lived in Wheeling too long after I mistook a bookcase for a gun cabinet. Laura commenting on my perm for the twentieth time; with Roz following up, asking me if I wanted her to recommend a new hairstylist. Brad telling me to call the things that hold up men’s pants braces, not suspenders, and informing me that not only movie stars owned tuxedos.

I got up from my seat, walked silently to my office at the end of the hall, and sat on the edge of my chair. The view from the little window held me transfixed for at least fifteen minutes and would have for a while longer if I hadn’t noticed Brad and Laura hovering in the doorway. The realization that these two may have known what had gone on in my meeting was beyond contemplation, but definitely not beyond addressing.

“What do you two want!?”

Laura jumped a good foot. “Nothing!”

Brad tried a smile. “We just wanted to know if you’re all right.”

I stood up and grabbed a bunch of files, piling them in the center of my desk.

“All right? Am I all right? I’m all right. Are you all right?”

While Brad and Laura backed out of my doorway into their offices,  I gathered as many files as I could in both arms, and grabbed my WWVA tote bag from under the desk. “Cause I’m all right. I’ve never been better!”

I remember shouting to no one in particular as the elevator doors shut, “I listen to FM radio as a matter of fact! Cause there aren’t so many damn commercials!!!!” and leaving a trail of manila folders from my desk to the main entrance of Three Gateway Plaza.

After I spent 15 minutes wandering in a daze looking for my car, I finally found it in a side alley and dumped everything in the back seat. Then I got lost and turned around a few times on one way streets, searching for a sign pointing to I-79 South. Eventually, I found my way to the mall in Wheeling which felt like a safe place to pace and disappear inside myself.  I ended up at my favorite payphone which was in the narrow corridor closest to Sears, next to the water fountain and the ladies' room.


“Hi Doug! How are ya ?"

“Ms. KDKA! What are you doin’ callin’ us, good ole boys, down here in Wheeling? I thought you were gettin’ too big-time for us down here?” Doug sounded genuinely surprised to hear from me, but also genuinely pleased. “How’s everything goin’ up there in Pittsburgh, at K-D-K-A?” Doug strung the letters out slowly.

“Pretty good, I guess.”

“Just pretty good?”

“Well, pretty good, but, shaky.”

“Shaky?” He repeated. He spoke slowly. “Shaky people? Situations? Customers?”

“Everything. All three.”

“Well,” Doug said, “That’s pretty shaky alright.” There was silence on the line for a few seconds. “Hey, did you eat yet? There’s a special out at the diner. I can round up the other salesmen, and maybe after lunch, we can all stop in at Ron Small’s Mobile Homes. We can rattle his cage, get a payment from him. We can always use your expertise in these sorts of situations.”

“Anything I can do to help,” I said and I meant it. “Glad to be of use.”

Message from the Old Saleswoman- I'm taking the summer off to work in the garden, sail with my husband, play with my dogs, and write some more stories. Writing and posting these stories has been a lot of fun, and I'll be back with more in the fall.  Next story in the hopper- "Old Saleswoman, Back for a Rematch" then it's on to Miami. Thank you for reading !

Big Time Radio, Chapter 3 - "Bing, Bang, Boom"

Story so far:  The Old Saleswoman finally made a sale at her new gig at KDKA-Radio in Pittsburgh- to a fireworks dealer.  She's now on her way back to the radio station, eager to share the good news with her colleagues.

All the salesmen reported back to the radio station at the end of the day to book their orders because of the 18-minute commercial limit. No one could risk getting shut out, and we were coming up on the busy Fourth of July weekend. It was first come, first served, which led to some pretty crazy races to the traffic desk and more than a few nasty blow-ups. I hustled up I-79 in order to get to the station in time to strut around a bit before the race was on.

As I drove up to the station, Roxanne and Gene waved me down. I’d completely forgotten we were supposed to make calls together that afternoon. Gene stuck his head in my car window, “We knew you wouldn’t forget. What appointments do you have set for us? ”

Roxanne got in the front seat, Gene climbed in the back beside the laundry basket.

Before I could answer Gene asked, “What do you have here? Dynamite?”

Gene had a real nervous laugh. So did Roxanne.

“And in the shoebox, is this your money? I see a little grass in there too.” Another giggle. Roxanne turned to look, twisting her neck at an unnatural angle.

“No and no. It’s a surprise.” I told them. “You’ll see.”

I took them on a couple of boring, straightforward calls to people I knew would likely be in, and willing to sit through my pitch on AM versus FM. Roxanne and Gene were very quiet during the calls and the ride back to the station. Gene just kept running his finger over the crease in his pants, and Roxanne’s bob just kept bouncing and quivering. She glanced back at my laundry basket of fireworks and cash more than a few times.

We got back to the station at about a quarter to five, and I followed the two of them up to the offices happily carrying my basket. After a quick stop at my desk, I grabbed a few of the samples and hurried to the ladies' room where I prepared to take advantage of what I felt was a perfect opportunity to impress my fellow salespeople and sales management.

My sense of showmanship told me that before I could regale my audience with the tale of how I snatched a sale from the jaws of the FM enemy, I  had to get everyone’s attention first. So when I hip-checked the glass door to the sales department, I was all smiles and both hands were blazing.

At first, there was just silence. It even got quiet around the traffic desk. I could hear Brad on the phone, reading a 30-second spot to his big account- a local chain of tire stores. He trailed off at about 20 seconds. I figured –they’re all mesmerized. So I reached in my jacket pocket and snagged a long roll of Chinese firecrackers with my pinky. I lit them with the sparkler in the other hand.

The secretary closest to me screamed first, followed by the girl at the traffic desk. Laura grabbed her purse and hid under her desk, pulling the phone down there with her. Gene and Roxanne both ran out of their offices into the hall. The janitor pushed through the double doors with a stack chair over his head, ready to swing. He was a brave guy I guess, looking back at it.

At first, I tried to stomp out the firecrackers. When that didn’t work, I ran past the traffic desk to get the jug off the water cooler, but one of the other salesmen stepped in first and extinguished the mess with a 7-11 Big Gulp of coke.

My sudden dash toward the water cooler must have really scared the traffic girl because she staggered from her chair and rolled into a corner. Shortly after that, I heard a siren in the distance. Then I heard Brad and Laura and the rest of them laughing.

Roxanne called me into her office the next day. Gene was there too.

“You understand, I’m sure, after yesterday’s visit from the police department, we are not going to accept this order from your fireworks person- Big Bang Fireworks.”

“Why not?” Admittedly, things hadn’t turned out as I’d hoped yesterday, but this development still shocked me. “I got cash in advance! And now Big Bang will advertise on an FM station!”

“Be that as it may, there are many laws surrounding the sale of fireworks in the tri-state region. Group W, a Westinghouse Corporation, and owner of KDKA does not want to incur any unnecessary litigation should there be an incident.”

“But can’t we have a disclaimer or something… we ran his spots at WWVA.”

“This is not WWVA, and I am not here to ne-go-see-ate with you.” Her blond hair quivered and bobbed. “Return the money with our regrets. And bring him a KDKA mug.”

I looked over at Gene. He looked at the crease in his pants and told me he had to agree with Roxanne. No sale. Then he looked up and smiled, and asked me how I ever found this guy. I refused to smile back, and I certainly refused to tell him my trade secrets.

After the meeting, I was even more resolved to make it at KDKA. I wanted to be invited for cocktails with Brad and Laura and the rest of the sales staff. I wanted to shop at Loehmann's with Roz Goldberg, or be asked a glamorous question like could a person travel around Europe (Europe!) without knowing a second language. I wanted to be a person marked for bigger things.

So I kept at it. I’d learned in life so far, that if I wanted something, I only had to work hard, laser my energy, and apply my ability to think on my feet. I put it in overdrive and I made a few sales. There wasn’t a lot of long term business developing, not a lot of repeat business, but I always got cash in advance. And none of the businesses I sold ever bought ads on an FM station.

After a few months, I was called into Roxanne’s office again.

To be continued in Chapter 4,  "Are You All Right?"