A year or so ago I sat in my room staring at the e mail on my screen. A friend had sent me an obituary of a former local disc jockey. For a moment I went whirling back to places and times I associated with Wayne Thomas, the disc jockey. I can still hear an echo from the 60's shouting "The Waynillo Thomaso Radio Programmy - I am not a prima donna!!" He was more than a guy that probably lived in a mobile home and struggled to make ends meet. He was a key to a storage cabinet of memories.
I remembered the night one of my high school garage bands played at a high school dance and this very disc jockey was also hired to entertain.
He was angry for having to share the bill with us.
At the end of the dance, we both stood in a breezeway. He was waiting for whoever picked him and all of his records up, and I was waiting for my band-mates to back an equipment trailer up. While standing there together, I mustered up all my courage and muttered something to him. I admired him very much and was star-struck.
He was a much older guy and he looked down with a look of disdain and snapped something at me and looked away. I thought to myself "You needn't be that way - it won't always be like this - you won't always struggle."
I'd like to think I thought that, but maybe at the time I really thought "hey buddy, bite the weenie."
And now that the dance is over, as I looked at his obituary I realized that even though he changed his name to China Smith, and tried his luck in California, he always did struggle. And at the time of our encounter, he was only twenty-five years old.
And I forgive him.
5 comments:
Wayne was a unique individual with many devils to deal with, my first encounter was an interview I did with him for my "Occupational Theme" in my Junior year in high school...I wanted to be a D.J. even then. He was cordial, yet somewhat aloof, but he took the time to explain the not so glamorous life of being a D.J.
I did it anyway, but I met Wayne years later when I first started at WLAV-FM and it was shattering to see what years of struggle and even success did to that man.
My one regret was that I never got to work with him, but it just shows from your tale how fragile we all are in our own ways, and how we often to to extremes not to show it in public, or private for that matter.
Hey L. ya wanna write for my next radio show??
Ogie
Again...sick and wrong!!!
I still remember "Wayne Thomas Sings the Weather," circa 1967... a 45 rpm record that 'GRD put out and my brother proudly owned
I still remember "Wayne Thomas Sings the Weather," circa 1967... a 45 rpm record that 'GRD put out and my brother proudly owned
I still remember "Wayne Thomas Sings the Weather," circa 1967... a 45 rpm record that 'GRD put out and my brother proudly owned
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