I had worked the graveyard shift on the AM dial for more than two years when the idea struck me – Why don’t we have a sports department? I knew from first-hand experience the Yale hockey team had a fan base well beyond the campus borders. New 
Haven, back then at least, thrived on the skates of its minor league hockey team. Yalies and townies alike delighted in the drama provided by the Yale icemen and their young new head coach – but only during home games. When the team went on the road, it left the fans high and dry, yearning for a shred of news. Until I had my idea…
The AM dial – my home – had a limited audience due to FCC restrictions on its signal. The FM side, however, reached halfway into the Long Island Sound. This fact, given few people actually lived on the Long Island Sound, was less impressive than it seemed. More impressive, however, lay in the detail that radio signals swept a circular area, meaning two-thirds of the signal strength seeped into homes along the southern Connecticut shore and into the very heart of the state. Within these homes lived tens of thousands of hockey fans. It was the call of these people that brought me to the Continue Reading “My Greatest Sale”
Coke versus Pepsi
[This Commentary originally appeared in the May 11, 1989 issue of The Mendon-Honeoye Falls-Lima Sentinel.]
The third day had been the worst. The muggy Mediterranean weather combined with the smoggy sky to produce a parched throat. This searing summer air in the land of my ancestors’ roots evoked memories of hot hazy August days and my grandfather’s pizza stand at the Erie County Fair. Perspiring and exhausted, my mind drifted back to those 16 hour days when, as I stood selling saucy slices, the sizzling sun seared one side of me as the fiery oven cooked the other. Only the frequent Pepsi breaks could quench my body’s sweaty thirst (despite my grandfather’s complaint, “You’re drinking all our profits!”).
Walking among the dusty ruins under the torrid Roman sun created an unnatural thirst. The Aqua Minerale (senza gas), offered only temporary reprieve. I knew my ultimate Continue Reading “Coke versus Pepsi”