I was busy trying to save my fledgling career. I had only a few days to prepare for my professional debut, and since I’d never listened to WLIR, I figured I’d better get acquainted with it in a hurry. It was rough sledding for an eighteen-year-old. I tuned in the night I was hired and heard a man with an incredibly deep voice, extolling the virtues of a quaint expensive restaurant called the Wee Tappee Inn in Old Westbury, Long Island, old-money territory. The announcer sounded so worldly, so knowledgeable—as if he dined there several nights a week. It was intimidating as hell. This guy was probably in his late forties and would regard me as some snot-nosed kid who didn’t belong on his sophisticated radio station. The music he played was the very stuff I’d had so many arguments with my parents about—vanilla, syrupy, soporific instrumentals. For all my suffering, I was paid the rich sum of a dollar ten an hour. I’d made more the previous summer washing dishes at a New Jersey diner and tending the greens at the Saddle River Country Club.
