KRLA – Reb Foster – December 7, 1967 – Rob Frankel Collection –
Christmas vacation – 1967. Your job – working at May Company Wilshire. You have ever since 7th Grade. Santa’s Helper – nervous kids, handing out candy canes – helping clean up “accidents”. You didn’t mind – it was fun. The Santas were usually guys from UCLA and they liked you. Last year you dated one.
Not this year – this year you got assigned Gift Wrap. You don’t know anything about wrapping presents – you are all thumbs. You just never got the hang of wrapping down. It’s the odd sizes that get to you. Customers look at your creations and wince. You peer nervously from behind the counter and duck out of sight when a customer walks in. You pray they don’t see anybody and leave.
The Saturday before Christmas the store floods with customers – a lot are shopping last minute. Most are hysterical. They ALL want gift wrap.
It dawns on you the only way you can get around this is to fake a broken arm. So you fashion a sling and start apologizing to people who come desperately looking for Gift wrap. The best you can do is offer wrapping paper, tissue paper, ribbon and sympathy. You excel in sympathy. You also groan in pain, maybe a little too much.
It seems to be working, but just before closing time there’s a commotion coming from the Wilshire entrance. An ambulance has pulled up and two attendants pile out pushing a stretcher. Customers are pointing in your general direction – and quickly the stretcher, the store manager and onlookers are converging on the Gift Wrap Department.
You are politely but firmly told to get on the stretcher while the Store Manager, who is in borderline hysterics hovers over you asking if you need anything and should she call your parents. This wasn’t what you had in mind, but you oblige the ambulance crew and are soon racing down Fairfax, heading to Mid-Way Hospital while you think of something.
It’s just as you round the corner, heading for the Emergency entrance that you finally fess up and tell the crew you aren’t what they imagined.
An hour’s worth of lecture later – a stone-faced store manager who comes complete with severance check and you are left taking the walk of shame back to your house where your parents read the Riot Act and ground you for the rest of the year.
So it’s just you and the walls and KRLA until the dust settles.
Here’s an hour’s worth of Reb Foster, just as he was on December 7, 1967 from KRLA.
