WLT

Every spring and fall, Ray went to New York aboard the Broadway Limited, either with Vesta or, more often, with an Other Woman. If he was with Vesta, they put up in a dinky room at the Mayflower, and if he was with an O.W., they camped in the Salad Suite at the Waldorf, with a living room as big as a handball court. He went to the city to eat oysters and steak tartare, buy socks and cigars, to dance to hot music and order the best scotch and wash the taste of boiled vegetables out of his mouth and enjoy a vacation from earnestness. The cigars were Cuban, Questo de Floros, and the socks were silk, either yellow or pale green or white, patterned with seahorses. With Vesta along, it was all High Purpose: they made the rounds of bookstores and toured the sacred sites (Cooper Union, the Public Library, the Museum of Natural History). But with an O.W. he reclined in bed in gorgeous yellow pajamas and was waited on by the dear thing as he perused the newspapers and smoked and ate fruit and took shower baths.

About a week after his lunch with Lottie, he entrained east with a lady from Anoka named Gertie Berg, and one evening at 11 p.m., well-rested, well-informed, freshly bathed, a pale glow of nectarines on his tongue, Ray was treating her to a sirloin steak at the Cafe Angell when he heard the word “radio” twice, and then again. He traced the voice to a young man at a nearby table and stuck out his hand. “Soderbjerg’s the name, radio’s the game, and Minnesota’s where I hang my shingle,” he said.

Ray said: “You’re a busy man and so am I. I won’t waste your time with false modesty. I and my brother, an authority on radiation, are the owners of station W.L.T. operating at seven-hundred-seventy kilocycles, a year old and already the preeminent station in the Upper Mississippi Valley and Great Lakes region. Thanks to the solid layer of Laurentian limestone that underlies Minneapolis, the signal is clearer than any in America and can be received easily from the Alleghenies all the way to the Great Salt Lake,. and from the Mississippi Delta to the beginning of the great Canadian tundra, a region of vast untapped economic potential. With the construction of a one-thousand-foot tower, which we will undertake in the spring, this will be the preeminent radio station in America. All of this information you can verify with one phone call to Secretary Hoover in Washington. This station is now being offered for sale to selected buyers, in which connection we would welcome your interest, but I have taken enough of your time. Good evening.”

Paley gave Ray a cigar. He said he was forming a radio network, to be called either the Columbia or the Princeton Broadcasting System. “Columbia would be my recommendation,” said Ray. “Princeton sounds effeminate. You won’t regret it if you go with Columbia.” Paley thanked him and lit Ray’s cigar. Ray thought it tasted like damp cornstalk.

Three weeks later, the Columbia Broadcasting System sent a man named Stanford McAfee out from New York. He wore two-toned shoes and a mustard-colored suit and plopped down and grabbed Ray’s elbow and after twenty minutes of idle chatter about Victor Herbert and the dirigible and other things Ray didn’t give a fig about, leaned across the table and told Ray that WLT ought to become a CBS affiliate.

To become the owner of a CBS-affiliated station, McAfee suggested, was the greatest thing that could happen to a man. “CBS is the greatest broadcast entity in America, and CBS artists have earned top favor in every city in the land,” he said. “We are moving forward every day, signing people of the caliber of Smith Ballew, Lannie Ross, Louella Parsons, Marjorie O’Blennis, and Mary Margaret McBride.”

McAfee smiled as if correcting a child. “Hnnn. Local talent of local interest is all well and good, but the public demands the best, you know, and the best is not here, believe me, it’s in New York. The stars of Broadway and the great recording artists—that’s what the public seeks in radio! the allure of bright lights! the glamor and elegance and sophistication of the metropolis—that’s what folks out here in the small towns want.”

“Minneapolis? A small town? You must be joking. I know what people around here want, Mr. Manatee, and it’s not a lot of lazy, overpaid, overaged New York prima donnas, no thank you. All those two-hundred-pound chanteusies and those matinee idols with the dyed hair—no sir, we don’t need ’em. We’ve got something better here, we’ve got spunk and talent and the old get up and go. No, sir. You picked the wrong man for your particular sell, mister. I don’t go for that brand of ballyhoo. I’m what you might call a small-town kind of guy.” And Ray reached over and snapped on the radio.

“For your information, it’s an old Dutchman who was wounded in the World War,” said Ray. “Mustard gas. He was terribly disfigured while crossing no-man’s-land to rescue a chaplain of another faith and so he sings with a mask. I suppose he’s not a great singer but we’re a loyal people here in the Midwest, Manitowoc. We don’t knock a doughboy just because he’s no Caruso.”

It was the “Hnnn” that burned Ray’s bacon. Waiting for the man to arrive, Ray had hoped, wildly, that CBS was going to offer him a price, he would propose twice that, and they’d settle somewhere around $60,000, money he would have been thrilled to accept and invest in a fish hatchery in Aitkin. Soderberg’s would drop hamburgers from the menu and feature walleye and lake trout, “Choose Your Own from Our Tank.” But the “Hnnn” was so supercilious, so smug, so indubitably East Coast, Ray had no choice.

He was going to have to stay in radio for sure. By George, he was going to show the arrogant little bastard how hay is made. “You wanted to get my back up, okay, it’s up,” thought Ray. The man was a lowdown, lamebrain, sharp-eyed, three-piece, high-hat, hot-shit, numero-uno New Yorker. You leave the country in the hands of these people and it won’t be worth living in. That was what William Jennings Bryan said and he was right, boys. The same afternoon, Ray borrowed $20,000 to boost WLT’s power from five-hundred to fifty-thousand watts, and he told Roy Jr. that WLT needed some new shows and to pay people to do them, and then he did what he had told Roy they would never ever do—he said to Roy Jr., “Let’s go ahead and sell commercials. For six weeks. On a trial basis.”

(“Got WJZ in Newark and KDKA in Pittsburgh last night, clear as anything, and last week I got WSM in Nashville,” you’d hear men murmur on the streetcar), and ministers preached on its enormous potential for good, its power to bridge great distances and reach great multitudes and promote mutual understanding and world peace. Newspapers printed editorials about “The Responsibility of Radio” and urged the new industry to follow a path of sober adherence to solemn duty. To use such a gift and a godsend to peddle soap—would people stand for it?

Vesta would not, not for a minute—she said, “Introduce paid advertising into broadcasting and you will carry us down a road from which we will never return.” She advised the high path, but then she always had. She was a Methodist, the daughter of a minister who kept a box of discussion topics at the dinner table. The box was passed around before the food, and you took a card, and when it came your turn, you were supposed to sit and expound on, say, the Role of Women or the Prospects of Amity among Nations. Vesta took to radio like it was her church. After her debut, reading William Cullen Bryant, and then her success with The Poetry Corner (Vesta held to the If-I-can-help-but-one-person-out-there standard of success, a standard that leaves little room for failure), there was no stopping her. She took charge of Current Events, which leaned heavily on The New Republic and other gasbag magazines, and The Classroom of the Air, where University instructors she knew from Chautauqua gave lectures about The World and How I Would Save It If Only People Would Listen. Vesta thought WLT should stand for World Leadership Today. “If you introduce advertising,” she said, “it will send a message to the audience that WLT is not to be trusted or believed.”

Roy said, “Introduce advertising, and we’ll be selling jars of Cholera Balm and liver pads and Sagwa Resurrection Tonic made from healing herbs and elm bark and sacred buffalo tallow. But we won’t be able to get out of town like the medicine show does. We’ll have to sit and be sued for every hair restorer that doesn’t, every cake of soap that won’t cure dandruff, every jar of Wizard Oil that doesn’t cure rheumatism, dyspepsia, constipation, and sexual neurasthenia.”

But advertisers were waiting, hat in hand, to get into the temple. People approached Ray at the Minneapolis Club, inquiring about sponsoring a show. One day, Mr. Pillsbury spoke to him. Not one of the flour-mill Pillsburys but a second cousin named Paul Pillsbury who was in the pie business. He told Ray that many of the other Pillsburys got their ideas from him, that he was the forward thinker in the family, and that if Evelyn Pies (named for his wife) came to WLT and did well, then Pillsbury’s Best XXXX would not be far behind.

At last! A Pillsbury! Ray accepted his check on the spot, and that week Let’s Sing became The Evelyn Pie Hour—

You can serve soup that spills in our laps
And sirloin steak like old skate straps
With sawdust sauce on a sautéed shirt-—
You can make it up to me with an Evelyn dessert.

Almicus Whole Bran Flakes and Hot Bran Beverage picked up Organ Reflections, and The Rise and Shine Show briefly became The Blue Ribbon Shoe Polish Show and then The North Star Tooth Powder Program. Adventures in Home-making was picked up by Crystal Bottled Water (“When neighbors drop in . . . nothing shows you care more than a big cold glass of Crystal Spring Water”), and Elsie and Johnny were sponsored by Hummel Hardware and The Noontime Jubilee became The Green Giant Pea Shelling Party and then The Wheaties Jamboree and then The Bisquick Whoopee and finally The Wadena Beanfeed Jubilee sponsored by Wadena Canned Beans and Cabbage, with The Corn-shuckers Quartet to sing:

Everybody’s here and gussied up,
Yup!
We’ve all got a plate with beans and slaw,
Ja!
It’s time for singin’ so grab a seat,
Lots of songs and plenty to eat.
The boys are ready and the fun’s begun—
And there’s plenty of beans for everyone.

Today’s Good Citizen was brought to you by Munsing-wear Wool Work Socks (“One size for all makes a comfortable fit, / Three nice colors and they’re hand-knit”) and there was The Excelsior Bread Show with sweet Alma Melting and her Bakery Boys singing “Excelsior! Excelsior! It rises ever higher! It’s white, you see, for pur-i-ty, so join the Excelsior Choir.” There was Edina Chewing Tobacco (“It never offends”) and DuraTop Desks and VentriloTone (“Ever wish you could throw your voice like this man here?” Help. Let me out of this box. “Amaze and amuse your friends with VentriloTone!”) and The Minneapolis Institute of Graphology and The Donna Marie College of Charm and Ramon’s Warm Cafe.

As for rates, Ray told Roy Jr. to charge what other stations charged. So he did. The advertisers bought every minute offered to them and begged for more. To discourage them, Ray raised the rates in the fall, and again in the spring, and six more times in the next three years, and nobody complained. “A fool and his money are soon parted,” said Ray. “If they didn’t give it to us, I guess they’d throw it in a ditch.”

But the plain fact was: if you were in retail sales and you advertised on radio, you got rich, and if you didn’t, you went broke. There were ten big department stores in Minneapolis and five of them turned up their noses at radio and began their long steady decline toward extinction. Newspapers were all well and good if the reader had his eye out for an ad, but for planting the seeds of customer loyalty, nothing beat friendly broadcasting. By 1931, WLT was netting a profit of about $10,000 a week.

The spring of 1931 was cold. There was a false thaw in March and then the blizzard hit. It dumped snow for three days and after that the thermometer froze. On March 15, Ray got his dividend check, and the next week he boarded the Super Chief to Los Angeles. Alma went with him. They stayed at the Gardens of Allah Hotel, gambled at the S.S. Rex in Santa Monica, ate dinner in a restaurant shaped like a hat, rode rickshaws around downtown, and snuck into the Paramount Studio and became extras, standing at the rail of a fake ocean liner and waving and waving as the Marx Brothers darted past, ducking behind them. Ray told Roy Jr. it was the heavenliest two weeks he ever spent in his life. It cost almost a thousand dollars and when he got home, on a cold wet April afternoon, and recalled California, he knew he was in radio to stay. It was the money. He wanted to earn that kind of dough. And it was nice to think that Stanford McAfee, the big man from Manhattan, wasn’t earning a fraction of that.

That wasn’t McAfee who took the beautiful Alma west on the Chief and made love to her in a cozy roomette as they rocketed through the night, no, and it wasn’t McAfee plunking down C-notes and scooping up the chips at the roulette table, with the lady on his arm, and it wasn’t McAfee who squired her to snazzy dives and bought her oysters and bootleg French champagne at fifty bucks a pop. It was Ray Soderbjerg, the iceman. “Good for me!” he thought.

He had founded a land-office business and he had firm control of it with Lottie on his side. She had put her twenty-percent in his hands. She told him to run the company and to consider her a silent partner. She said she hoped that she and Roy would reconcile someday, the big stoopnagel, but that she was with Ray when it came to WLT. He was the business head in the family and always had been. So that was that.

Lottie wasn’t as bad a singer as a lot of people thought, he decided, and she was sure to improve with experience. So now she had her own show, as “Miss Lily Dale, the Lady With A Smile,” and every morning at 10:45 a voice with a carnation in its lapel said, “And now . . . Gruco brings you Miss Lily Dale with more of your favorite songs—to bring a smile or a tear, but always . . . to lift the heart!” Gruco was a sort of plaster that made wet basements dry. “My basement was dark, damp, a place where I kept potatoes,” said Lottie, who now was ensconced in an apartment at the Antwerp, a stately old pile next door to the Ogden, “but now, thanks to Gruco, it’s as elegant as the rest of the home, light and dry and sweet-smelling, a place where one can entertain guests.” She sang three songs, a big horse-faced lady in a wheelchair, and chirped “Goodbye everybody! See you tomorrow!” and then the voice said, “WLT, Your Home in the Air, originating from studios in downtown Minneapolis,” pronouncing “Minneapolis” as if Minneapolis were Paris. The next time you’re downtown at the lunch hour, may we suggest a visit to the famous Soderberg’s Court restaurant—home of Soderberg’s delicious and handsomely prepared sandwich plates—he went on, while underneath a piano softly played the “Meditation” from Thaïs. Then came The Classroom of the Air, when Ray lay down and took a deep snooze.