THE TALLYWHACKER BRIDGE

by Randy Reynolds

When I was fifteen, my dad decided it was time for me to get a job and start paying my own way. He ordered me to put in applications at the A & P, which needed bagboys, and the local radio station, which needed a janitor. I applied at the radio station first. The manager was on the air and really too busy to talk with me, but handed me a booklet, told me to read it, go to the New Orleans' Federal Building, take an FCC test and come back to see him. I thought it was a lot of trouble to go through for a janitorial job, but I memorized the book and took the test.

When I went back to tell the manager that I'd passed, he assigned me an air shift and told me I was a deejay now. That was 1965.

For the next 40 years, I was a deejay, then a deejay-turned-reporter, deejay-turned manager, and finally, at my last station, all of the above. My morning show was number one with women/number two with men in a 13 parish area of Central Louisiana when new owners called me late on a Sunday night in 2004 and said, "Don't come to work tomorrow. Our financial model does not include paying your salary. And tell your wife she's fired, too."

Thus ended my adventure in radio ...and my health insurance. Two months later my wife had a heart attack, followed by several other health problems and we began our adventure in homelessness. But that's a different story...

It's week seven of the 13-week ratings period and my imaginary co-hosts and I are in rare form. My jokes are funny, my listeners are funny; even the wooden duck-call known to listeners as Plucker-the-Duck and the plastic squeak-toy I call Mr. Winky are in rare form today.

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(No, I don't have problems distinguishing reality from make-believe, but my listeners do, thanks to the magic of radio. I treat Plucker as a real individual and so do listeners. Though it's only a duck-call, I have conversations with it. Listeners love to suspend their disbelief and play along; they even call in to ask him questions, he responds in duck-talk, I interpret and deliver the punchline, ergo! people think Plucker is hilarious! As for Mr. Winky, he's just a plastic toy that makes a metronome-sound when shaken, so I frequently shake him and tell the audience what he's saying. Women call in and blast him for his male chauvinist opinions. They don't get mad at me. It's not my fault. I'm only the interpreter. They call and argue with Mr. Winky. And, often, it's hilarious.)

I punch the mic button and ask, "Where's the most unusual place you ever did it? That's the question of the day, and the phone lines are open!"

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I blow into the duck call and pretend to have a conversation with Plucker-the-Duck. "We already know you're in the mile-high club, Plucker. But let's give some listeners a chance to respond."

A school teacher calls in to say she "did it" on the desk in her classroom with a DARE officer.

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I say, "Hey, I read about you in the police chief's self-published novel!"

"I know," laughs the teacher. "He said he gave plaques to two DARE officers for doing it to teachers in their classrooms and I don't understand that. I think the teachers deserved the plaques. We're the ones who put our jobs on the line."

"You mean on the desk," I say.

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She giggles and I blow on the duck call again and say, "You don't sound like the kind of teacher the chief wrote about. You didn't really do it with a DARE officer on your classroom desk did you?"

"Oh, I DARED all right," she says.

I laugh again, shake Mr. Winky, blow into the duck call, play a laugh track from the computer and start the next song.

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When we're safely off the air, I ask, "Hey, what's your name?"

"I don't give out that information," she teases.

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"I'll need it for your plaque," I persist.

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"You are so funny, Randy. I love your show. It just brightens my day."

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"You're the one that's funny--thanks for calling," I say.

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It's time for I.B. Flyin', my imaginary Cajun traffic reporter. I've already recorded, in a heavy Cajun accent, I.B.'s part of the script; now I'll ask questions and the I.B.-voice will answer from the tape. If my timing is right, it'll sound exactly like two people having a conversation.

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I punch a button and a helicopter sound-effect fills the airwaves.

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"Aaaiiiyyyiiieee!" shouts the recorded I.B. voice above the thwump-thwump-thwump of the rotor blades.

"Sounds like I.B. Flyin'. How's traffic?"

"Movin' slow on the Tallywhacker Bridge. Two lanes blocked with a accident."

"The Tally-what?"

"The Tallywhacker Bridge. I named it that because of what that state representative was doin' on the Pineville side of the bridge with that other man."

"I.B., we're not going to have another show about politicians and their tallywhackers. Let's talk about what's happening in the news. How 'bout that 41 year old Mississippi triple-murder case up there near the Tallahatchee Bridge? The government convicted an 80 year old man yesterday."

"Don't give the gummint all the credit. It was a school project by three little girls in Illinois that got the feds to reopen the case."

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"Three little black girls found the evidence...40 years after the murders?"

"No, no, no!" yells I.B. above the sputter of the chopper's motor. "Three little white girls from Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois. These little girls got obsessed with the case and made a ten minute film about it and rest is history. Just goes to show what you can do if you get obsessed about sumpin'."

"Obsessions are dangerous," I say, thinking of several obsessions I haven't heard from lately and wondering if they ever think of me anymore.