KHTZ-FM – Beaver Cleaver – September 1979 – Rob Frankel Collection –
Summer’s over and all of a sudden it’s another semester. You were just getting over the last one – three months wasn’t long enough. And there was Summer School and that put a damper on your social life and now it’s back to the regular program. All the familiar faces. A couple new ones. They look freaked out. You go to a big school and there are thousands of you. And if you haven’t been here before, it can be strange. You feel sorry for them – you remember what it was like when you got here. Seems like a century ago. Feels that way.
Your class schedule leaves something to be desired. Driver’s Ed first thing in the morning means you can’t show up late. Gym after lunch means doing laps on a full stomach. And Typing class at the end of the day means falling asleep in the middle of a sentence.
Why Typing? Because all the Music classes were full and that was the only Elective you could get. Besides, somebody told you learning how to type was actually a good thing. You forgot who conned you into it – probably a counsellor.
That’s your life – Monday through Friday until Christmas Vacation. And then it’ll be 1980. That’s almost another century as far as you’re concerned.
The upshot to all this is, if you ace Driver’s Ed you can get your license. And you’ve been bugging your parents about giving you money for a car for Christmas since August. And one of your friends’ dad owns a used car lot in Culver City and he said he would “fix you up” with “something sweet” when the time comes. You just hope it’s not the 1963 Plymouth Belvedere he’s had on the lot since last year and can’t sell.
You wonder.
To go along with September 1979, no matter where you were or what you were doing or even if you weren’t born yet – here’s 45 minutes worth of Beaver Cleaver on KHTZ in L.A. – Forty-one years ago.
Beaver Cleaver was actually Ken Levine, who later wrote for Cheers, Frasier and other well known tv shows (I think by the time of this aircheck, he was already writing for MASH). He also became a baseball play by play announcer–he has had a very interesting career.