CALLERS

posted by James Reel

    Being a classical radio announcer—a “Bach jock,” as astronomer Bill Hartmann calls me—is physically solitary, but it’s not exactly a lonely job. We get phone calls.
    Most calls come from listeners who half-caught the title of something they liked and want more information … a spelling of a tricky foreign name, or specifics on the CD and where to buy it.
    Some calls come from “regulars,” listeners who ring us up from time to time with a question or comment and want to chat for a couple of minutes. They become the telephone equivalent of pen pals, people we almost never meet but who become familiar to us through brief but repeated contact. Some “regulars” call all the announcers; others are more selective, avoiding announcers who’ve been curt if the call came at a bad time. (The worst time being during a short piece, or just before we’re about to go on the air.)
    A couple of our “regulars” are predictible. One guy calls, usually on the weekend, to gripe about the obscure music. There’s a woman who used to ring us up to correct the pronunciation of languages from an obscure corner of Europe; she doesn’t mess with me, but I gather that she became so pesky that she drove one of our weekend announcers to, shall we say, strong words.
    Speaking of “strong words,” we get surprisingly few obscene phone calls. I say “surprisingly few” not because I desperately wish there were more, but media people are easy targets for anonymous hostility and we seem not to get our fair share. The exceptions come as little shocks. One morning in the 1980s, announcer Nancy Fahringer shuffled into my office looking a little dazed, reporting that a man with a Southern accent had just growled into the phone, “F you, b*.” Except he didn’t speak in asterisks. Early one evening a few years earlier, a woman called me with some detailed physiological questions. I hope I answered to her satisfaction. Not obscene but still falling into the crank category was a call I got on my very first shift, Christmas Eve 1976. At about 10:45 that night, a young-sounding woman rang me up with great concern: “My father just lit a fire in the fireplace. Don’t you think that will keep Santa Claus from coming down the chimney?” I assured her, “Don’t worry. Santa wears an asbestos suit.”
    The advent of Caller ID has probably caused most ordinary cranks to think twice about making calls that can be traced back to them. Some people, though, are too unbalanced to care. A few are troublesome only insofar as they take up our time. Many years ago, there was a woman who would call and chat on and on about family gossip that wasn’t actually very interesting. She was obviously lonely, so most of us would listen to her patiently, at least for a few minutes. Others, though, are simply looney. Twenty to 25 years ago we’d hear periodically from a woman who ended every call with the plea, “If you see my son, please tell him to come home.” Rumor had it that the son, an adult, had simply broken off contact with his mother, but then someone heard that he’d committed suicide, which increased our sympathy for the woman, even when she called after a news report on solar energy and declared, “I want equal time—I am the moon!” For a while we were broadcasting concerts by the U.S. Coast Guard Band, and something about that set her off; we heard that Coast Guard Intelligence was investigating her for sending what was interpreted as a threatening telegram to the bandmaster.
    We try to be nice even to the lunatics, but there are limits. Yesterday, one person with a persecution complex called me four times in close succession, always within seconds of the end of a piece of music, and became incensed when I had to break away from her harangue to do my job on the air. At the end of her third call I suggested that she take her medication and call back when she felt better. She called back right away to declare that she didn’t take medication because it didn’t do any good and how dare I etc. Finally I told her not to call anymore and hung up on her. Whereupon she called our unfortunate station manager with an even longer harangue, after which said station manager came into the studio and gently suggested that I terminate such calls with more “values-neutral” language. He then returned to his office, muttering something about swallowing live frogs first thing in the morning.
    Ah, radio … if only it were a one-way communication medium.