"The Plymouth Gran Fury is back, and it runs like a rocket. Get yours from the Chrysler dealership in Buchanan, at Highway 24 and Main, but hurry -- they're going fast." Then the foley guy tipped the switch that played our sound reel, an engine roar and a five-second jingle that Robin's brother had whipped up on the piano years ago. Oh, Robin owned the Chrysler dealership. That jingle was on every ad, this included. All told, it was fifteen seconds tip to tail, and in the next month there were seven of those Plymoths driven off the lot. Robin was thrilled. Shook my hand like he was shaking good luck out of it. Took maybe ten minutes to write the spot, all told. That was in my first week at the Wianoke local radio station, second or third day there.
The way things were done back then, you'd be at the station by half-past eight with a coffee in your hand, waiting for the phone to ring. About nine o'clock, it rings and you get your assignment, throw two sheets of carbon paper in a typewriter and hammer out the spot, call your boss and read it out to him before nine fifteen. Maybe you get a chuckle out of him, maybe you just hear a cigar being chewed and he tells you to do the thing different. Usually it's just 'good' and you call the client for approval. Clients were all guys like Robin, all local to Cave Spring County, people you'd run into at the grocery store. Ring him up, 'hey Rob, I've got this ad for your cars,' 'sounds great, run it' 'but don't you want to hear the script first?' you know, just nice to a fault. Then you give the go-ahead to the man with the Golden Voice, who's been reading over the other carbon paper, and he reads it live on the next commercial break around nine-thirty. Right out on the airwaves and all thousand-some people listening.
Now, the junior writers today, you tell that to them and their eyes go wide. You'd get the brief and run the ad in the same day? The same half-hour? What a turnaround! You say yeah, and go on telling your war stories so they'll buy you a beer to keep you talking, but that ain't half of it. Regular schedule was eighteen of those each day, five days a week. Saturday to Sunday, that's ninety ads. Forty-five minutes of air time total. Some of the Voices at Wianoke local and other radio stations too, they do a half-hour weekly show, they don't know what it's like for the ad guy. These kids in the big agencies, they get maybe one real project a week and they're lucky if they're the only creatives on it. Don't even know they're lucky, they get scared because nobody's holding their hand. Too used to working in teams, used to taking forever and a half to get the thing done. Takes 'em a month to write a spot. The way we did it, twenty minutes was too long. Now, all the agency conference calls ending with 'let's regroup on this next week,' just makes me shake my head. No wonder the kids are scared to get things done.
That ad for the Plymouth, mind, it didn't sell seven of them because it was so well-written. It sold because they ran the recording one hundred and sixty times that month. And it was written a week in, so that was about fifty-three times a week they ran the thing. Every commercial break that came up, there was that spot for the Buchanan Chrysler! Seven guys went and bought the car, but everyone heard the ad enough times to remember, for damn sure.
Now, we used to get into the drive-in movies for free. The attendant would just wave us in, because we were all on the donkey baseball team, and… Maybe I should back up. We had some local fame. You know why? There was this thing in Cave Spring County that they don't do anywhere else, a game called donkey baseball. Better? Yeah, it was a real popular attraction. The stands were always packed. We used the little league field, and there was probably a bigger crowd for us than for the league. Everyone cheered when they brought in the donkeys, they knew all their names.
So, the way it worked was, you play baseball. Only, when you're at bat, you don't run the bases. No, you go to the donkeys. There's three of 'em, and the crowd tells you which one you get. First one, Nurse, she's real easy. You jump on, she trots around the bases, you get a home run every time with her. Second one, Trigger, he'll take you halfway, but he gets fighty and he'll throw you at second unless you wrestle a triple play out of him, but there's no way he'll take you home. Then there's Boots, and Boots throws you off as soon as you're on. Mean old bastard must have had a spur under his saddle or something, because that ass was just ornery as anything.
I was just about at bat when I got the good news about the cars. It was month-end and the air time they'd bought had just run out, but it sure paid off for old Robin and he was pleased as punch, said I was the best salesman he had and I hadn't even set foot on the lot. I'm feeling pretty full of myself when I walk up and hit a clear home run, just beam that ball over the stands, if you could've seen the smile on my face. Proudest moment in my whole life. Then the announcer, one of the guys from Wianoke local, says over the P.A., "Flew like a rocket! Good hit by the kid who wrote the ad for Buchanan Chrysler," and the crowd starts chanting "Boots! Boots! Boots!" The umpire takes me aside and says, "for God's sakes, just don't sit too high on him, he'll break your neck. Just stay low," so that's what I do. Flat as I can be, I just dive straight at the saddle, thinking, he'll just flop me over and that'll be that. Maybe Boots had that plan sussed out, because I'm in midair when he bucks up and catches me straight in the nuts, throwing me face-first into a pile of gravel. First the crowd said "oooh" real quiet, then they laughed as I got to my feet, and then they cheered as I walked, limped really, around the bases. They gave us the point, but we ended up winning by a whole three runs anyway.
The week after that, I was so sore I had to wear ice packs strapped to my, you know. But I heard two more people went down to Buchanan and bought Plymouths. And that wasn't the last time I played donkey baseball, either.
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