My friend the child prodigy Marxist in Appalachia who never told me his real name

Before we had the Internet there was shortwave radio listening. It was the way for United States residents to hear alternatives to the State Department spin on world conflicts, as well as domestic issue commentaries not sponsored by U.S. corporations.

Shortwave stations in the 1970s and early ‘80s, when my listening was at its height, were almost all operated by governments, and they broadcast in the languages of listener nations. Some governments slanted programming in their ideological interest, but the wide mix of perspectives – a forerunner to today’s podcasts and audio streams -- enabled listeners to make up our own minds.

I started shortwave listening in 1977, and Radio Havana Cuba soon won me with dazzling music programs and persuasive stories of the revolution’s great social policy successes.

Radio Netherlands and Japan’s NHK had particularly friendly informal programing. Radio Canada International was fresh and clever. Deutsche Welle (Voice of West Germany), Radio Stockholm Sweden, and Swiss Radio International were polished and eclectic. And the BBC was, well, the BBC -- and in the ‘70s and early ‘80s it was available to Americans only over shortwave.

But holding court as the grandest of them all was Radio Moscow, and their best show was the twice weekly “Moscow Mailbag,” featuring answers to questions from listeners, in our case to their English language service to North America.

For years, Radio Moscow announcers would read the full street addresses of those of us who mailed in questions, which would range from, “Do you eat pizza in the USSR?” to queries about human rights, the SALT treaty, Soviet housing shortages, and “Do the movements for Women’s Liberation and equal rights for homosexuals exist in the USSR?” (that was from me in 1978, and to summarize, the answer was: absolutely yes on Women’s Liberation, and absolutely no on gay rights.)

So, from what place in America would you think came this question I heard on Moscow Mailbag in 1979: “Is there any bourgeois thinking left in the USSR?”

Try Hazard, Kentucky. Someone deep in the flag waving, pickup truck driving, churchgoing mountains asked such an objectively conscious question right out of a manifesto you wouldn’t find in libraries for a hundred miles around Hazard.

When the Mailbag show was repeated two hours later, I jotted down his address and immediately U.S. mailed a letter to Robert Thomas of Hazard, Ky. which outlined my interest in the ideological realm of his question. I was surprised to get a hand-written reply about a week later.

I eagerly opened it, half expecting that Mr. Thomas was a prankster, a government agent fishing for leftists, or a holdover anti-poverty worker who had moved there in the 60s from New York or Chicago, though I held out hope that somehow this person was a born-and-raised Eastern Kentuckian.

Well he was. Robert was passionately interested in socialism, and the “great Soviet people,” he penned.
Oh, and he was 14. That was six years younger than I, a person who had expected I’d be corresponding with one of my elders, like a veteran of the 1930s coal strikes.

More letters ensued in which Robert said he had taught himself French, was fascinated with Beatles music and attended a prestigious boarding school near Hazard. He sometimes went with his family on shopping trips to cities including Louisville. When in the city, they had crossed the Ohio River to Clarksville, Ind., Robert added, for visits to the Green Tree Mall, which was 10 minutes from my home in New Albany, Ind.

On a Saturday, a surprise phone call came from a pay phone at that shopping venue, and minutes later, the Green Tree Mall -- where I had worked my first job, played my first video game, and bought my first necktie – became the place I met my first other young radical.

Young, as in pulling two crumpled dollar bills out of his blue jean pocket to pay for the soft drink he insisted on buying me.

Two socialists amid the bourgeois bounty, Robert Thomas and I met here,
in Clarksville, Indiana's Green Tree Mall in 1979.

Robert was eager to please, and reassuringly impetuous, like a 14-year-old should be. When exchanging left wing socialist observations with me, he was relaxed and knowledgeable.

Who Robert’s family was and how they felt about his championing the proletarian revolution was unknown to me. A girl about his age walked toward us from the middle of the mall and summoned him back to the Thomas party by calling “Hey Larry, we’ve got to go.”

The instant I asked about the name Larry, I realized I should have let it go; leftists who don’t yet know who they are dealing with would be wise to use aliases. And his name had to go out to the whole of North America over Radio Moscow.

He seemed off guard and uncomfortable during the moment it took him to explain, “that’s my middle name.” His letters began coming from “Robert L. Thomas,” with the conspicuous middle initial added seemingly to give credence to that explanation. But I totally understood his need for a boundary between us. I may have been his closest ideological friend between the Appalachians and the Rockies, but back home, he’s a Marxist in Hazard, Kentucky, for goodness sake.

Other than that awkward instant, Robert seemed happy and confident in the mall, and eager to communicate more.

Telephone conversations in the coming months revealed him to be every bit the classic 14-year-old – excitable and capricious, with flights of fancy for new passions each time we talked. His Beatles interest became all-consuming – when I asked him in a letter what he thought were the biggest news stories of the soon-to end-1970s, no. 1 on his list was the Fab Four’s breakup.

Robert and I were no ideology’s rubberstamps. After explaining in a letter his great enthusiasm for the Marxist economic methods, he added: “Unfortunately, socialism isn’t perfect,” mentioning such disparate matters as Stalinist cruelties and booby traps set for U.S. soldiers by the Vietcong.

And as for the stereotype that during the me-generation period, a 14-year-old who listens to shortwave and knows socialist ideology must be an isolated nerd, forget it. Robert told me of his girlfriends, dalliances, and age typical hormone-driven wishes.

Pornography entered his life, and he said his mother stringently objected to that. During a phone call, I explained that my understanding of Marxism (another of Robert’s tendencies his mother disliked) placed porn into the category of exploitation.

“Tell her pornography is bourgeois self-indulgence and your Marxist beliefs are the best thing you have going for you to fight the porn,” I said. I didn’t think Robert would give that any consideration, but he immediately lit up, exclaiming: “Hey, that’s right!”

Turning away from the phone he shouted: “Mom, pornography is bourgeois self-indulgence and my Marxist beliefs are the best thing I have going for me to fight the porn!”

You’re welcome, Mrs. Thomas.

In subsequent letters and phone calls, Robert talked up Hazard as an educated and elegant town that had been maligned as a backwater. He also said he had a ham radio system and he showed vast knowledge of the amateur radio technology. Ham lets a user broadcast, not just listen, and Robert began prodding me to buy and learn such a system, so we could talk without tying up our families’ lines or running phone bills up.

A very Robert-like young
person using a Ham radio.

I was just a listener to shortwave, not a broadcaster. Though ham operators did seem to me to have an intriguing mix of public access and privacy, I was not up for that much intricacy. Finding and tuning in a distant and unconventional station elated me in just the right way.

This was pre-internet so sending a missal was more involved -- and receiving one was a special occasion. Opening a hand-addressed envelope from someone whose observations you value brought a feeling of anticipation so percolating that you had to be careful not to tear the letter itself.

And over time, the relatively elaborate effort involved in letter writing made that habit vulnerable to life’s distractions, and my contacts with Robert would ebb and flow. I recall a letter in which my friend seemed less enthusiastic, then contact between us waned for five or six months.

Then, in mid or late 1981, Robert wrote again. I sensed that this letter would be different, perhaps because of the long disconnect.

Robert’s penchant for jumping from passion to passion was evident again.

“I have become a born-again Christian,” he wrote. That alone did not portend any shift to the right. This was a time of Liberation Theology and anti-nuke nuns, when Bob Dylan and Noel Paul Stookey had called themselves born-again Christians. Of course, it was also a time of Rolex-wearing hucksters making tax-free millions on their TV ministries.

In a phone call, Robert still seemed free thinking, though more sedate. He neither denounced nor praised his radical left views. In a subsequent letter, which I believe was the last I received from him, Robert told me he would attend Moody Bible Institute in Chicago.

Perhaps out of respect for Robert’s situation, or because it would have been awkward, I neglected ever to ask Robert the pertinent question, what is your actual name? Sounds silly that I never knew with certainty what it was; I mean we weren’t secret agents. But given his place and his views, guarding his real ID may have been called for.

In online searches in the decades hence, all I have found is that Thomas clearly was not his last name. Combinations, including that name that his relative uttered in the Green Tree Mall, have not connected with anyone at Moody, his boarding school, or the city of Hazard, Ky.

I do not know if Robert, Larry or whoever, went on to denounce “satanic Marxism” along with pornography, promiscuity and booze as the evils cleansed by his born-againness, or whether he is still a leftist who sees Karl Marx’s philosophy as being in line with the prophets of the old testament condemning greed.

Or maybe he went on to recycle 2-litres, buy home video, donate sweaters to the shelters, have a beer now and then, vote for Gore and keep the doctrinal zeal under control.

Wherever you are my anonymous friend, I’m sure a visit with you, in a mall or elsewhere, still is unforgettable.

Brian Arbenz lives in Louisville, Ky. USA. For this true story, the name Robert Thomas, and the middle name Larry, are changed from the name his real life friend used over shortwave radio, in letters and in person.

Tom Snyder's Tomorrow -- A Breakthrough in the Night

 

Tom Snyder's classic grasp of viewers'

First World problems

 Not just cursing the darkness, but lighting a candle.

 

In 1973, American TV was three networks, half-hour newscasts, the polite comedy of Carol Burnett and a long procession of strong-jawed cops named Kojak, Banacek, McCloud and Harry O.

All in the Family was past its peak, the cynicism of St. Elsewhere and Hill Street Blues was yet to come, Letterman was still in Indy and Donahue in Dayton, and Walter Cronkite could not have imagined Colbert and Stewart’s live audiences.

Television was an industry resting comfortably, its finances and ratings still unchallenged by cable or the Internet. And though Richard Nixon was falling before their eyes, newscasters, actors and producers felt the American system overall was legitimate, so TV programs were deferential to the power structure.

But in late 1973, the staid institution of television was about to get a little cooler. NBC quietly gave a few intrepid viewers a more edgy and street-smart talk show than the straight up Mike Douglass, the glittering Merv Griffin, or the iconic and aloof Johnny Carson.

Tom Snyder began hosting “Tomorrow” on NBC after Carson’s Tonight Show, at a weeknight time slot drawing 2nd shift workers, insomniacs or school kids planning to play hooky. In other words, people just a little off the mainstream.

Immediately, the deep-voiced brawny Milwaukee native with the big smile and even bigger eyebrows began appealing to such viewers, cutting through the formality of network TV with a fun rebelliousness. Snyder often would turn to an unseen stage person for a little on-air banter. Sometimes he’d ask them how that night’s intro’s special effect was done, using the unscripted spontaneity of today’s in-home YouTubes, though the voice and delivery of the longtime news anchorman were fully professional.

Though respectful and engaging toward his guests, Tom Snyder would frequently rag on the layers of phoniness of his industry -- even his own employer.

“A man coming back from Disneyland asked a gas station employee where he could buy his kid a Mickey Mouse outfit. The employee responded, ‘Why don’t you buy him NBC?’ “

A booming laugh, or a sly grin would follow such comments, then Snyder would glide to the next segment or guest, always while wielding his cigarette and seated so laidback he could have been in a beanbag chair.

 John Lennon in 1975 on the music world,

 and the "bed in" for peace. 

Watching Tomorrow was like dropping in at your fav used bookstore to exchange observations with the bohemian owner. The TV screen disappeared, as though you were there with Tom Snyder and his guests. You weren’t confused or put off by his constantly talking to some off-camera person you never knew.

That device wasn’t Snyder’s only breaking of TV protocol. There was also his light regard for the powerful.

This reached a then-shocking high point in 1976 when he read before the nation a brief letter from President Ford’s re-election committee asking him to endorse the president. Snyder read it politely and professionally then, saying nothing, vigorously crumpled the letter up and thrust it toward the floor, smiling all the way as he casually segued to the next segment.

Tom Snyder’s politics weren’t left or right, but anti-orthodoxy, whether that meant hammering the hypocrisy of anti-communist bombast Billy James Hargis in 1977, or the next year reading a news story about an Inspector General report alleging that $6 billion was misspent by the department of Health, Education and Welfare.

“This isn’t six million. This is six with nine zeros after it,” Snyder said. “Bureaucracy in action, and you can depend on it!”

 

In New York, Tom shows how to start a show. The buzz eases you into watching.

 

                        ...And those effortless Segues
                                  He seemed to be at leisure rather than at work 
 

The more political Tomorrow interviews were with guests ranging from Huey Newton lauding the Cuban revolution of Fidel Castro, to Ayn Rand lauding, well, very different ideas.

Snyder’s quintessential interviews were with stars and fringe characters from pop culture, such as grown up Our Gang actors, original Star Trek cast members; Mickey Dolenz and Davy Jones 10 years after The Monkees TV show peaked; and a group of sidekick announcers including George Fenneman of Groucho Marx’s You Bet Your Life and Don Wilson, the second banana to Jack Benny.

                 Tom and Trekkies: a natural combo

 

Tomorrow underwent changes to try to reverse a drop in ratings in the early ‘80s, including the addition of a live audience and a nightly segment with Rona Barrett. NBC cancelled Tomorrow in 1982, but Tom Snyder reprised the show’s format twice in the ‘90s, on a cable show, then on CBS’ The Late, Late Show with Tom Snyder, which ended in 1999. Six years later Snyder announced he had chronic lymphocytic leukemia, from which he died in 2007 at 71. 

As for me, I loved the no-audience, Snyder-and-guest centered years of Tomorrow. Though I was always a devoted and contented viewer of the NBC show, I sometimes bristled at Snyder’s giving undeserved attention to the outlandish, a trend epitomized by his prison interview with Charles Manson, the racist, murderous, sex offender who used media to steal a mystique.

On the sillier but still dangerous side, Tomorrow gave time in the early 1980s to the ridiculous pseudo-philosophy of "Breatharianism," interviewing Wiley Brooks, the founder who claimed he had not eaten in 17 years and that with the right spiritual mindset, all anyone needs is air and sunlight, instead of solid food. (Don't try this at home; witnesses years later said Brooks frequented restaurants and food marts for regular grub while insisting Breatharian followers need not do so.)

Happier memories are of John Lennon on Tomorrow in 1975, acclaimed news anchor Douglas Edwards in 1980, and a group of rising yet obscure TV personalities to keep an eye on for the future whom Snyder interviewed circa 1977 – one was a bit part actor and game show panelist named David Letterman. 

But night in and night out, Tomorrow guests were grass roots figures who exuded innocent quirkiness to end the day with – a woman found to have the world’s loudest laugh, a man who claimed to have been cognizant of his own birth (hard to disprove, really), and two atheists from Madison, Wisc.

I remember them for the way they raised my civic hackles by asking, “If we’re controversial in a liberal place like Madison, imagine how people would feel about us in Louisville?”

“I don’t know,” a pensive Snyder responded. “I’ve never been to Louisville.” At least he reserved judgment on our underrated liberal city, but the exchange still tarred us as the definition of a town time forgot.

 

      In 1977, Tomorrow's Visual Art 

  

Professor Abe Rezny and filmmaker Steve Cohen demonstrate a hologram

 

And of course, what anti-orthodoxy show could go nine seasons without an entire week of guests on the theme “The Business of Sex in America.” That was on Tomorrow in 1976.

And in nine years, any big star is going to have a celebrity feud or two, and Tom Snyder had one each of three varieties: the quickly settled, the drawn out, and the put on.

Rob Reiner, while guest hosting The Tonight Show, was reading a quick promo for Tom’s guests coming up and he thoughtlessly started it off by saying, “Most of you probably don’t stay up for Tomorrow, but…”

An incensed Tom Snyder on the air blasted Reiner’s dismissive line, and Reiner apologized in a letter which Tom read the next night. The All in the Family star said that intro was spoken unintentionally, and he realized how unfair it was. Tom accepted, saluted Reiner for his class and all was fine between them from then on.

But not necessarily with Edwin Newman, who called Tom Snyder “an incompetent” in news. The great upholder of standards said NBC should not have let Snyder anchor a primetime news special on rising health care costs (yep, that long ago; it’s the permanent American issue). Whether or not the two ever spoke about Newman’s criticisms isn’t clear, but when Edwin Newman was the host of Saturday Night Live in the early 1980s, Joe Piscopo played Snyder in a skit chatting with the real Newman.

Then there was the mutually beneficial “feud” that started in 1977 when Tom Snyder gave his opinion of the new Fernwood 2 Night, a parody of talk shows, by moving his thumb downward and making the sound of a bomb descending and exploding.

Fernwood star Martin Mull, in character as host Barth Gimble, jumped at the opportunity to get talked about among the more recognized shows, and explained to the Fernwood 2 Night audience that disparaging remarks from a person like Snyder could be expected “when you’re as old as he is and still haven’t made primetime.”

Tom Snyder played a clip of that remark on Tomorrow, then let out a resounding laugh, his oversized eyebrows flailing, baritone voice booming and cigarette smoke dancing in approval.

 

                 ____________

Brian Arbenz passed judgement nightly on "Tomorrow With Tom Snyder" during his college years in the late 1970s watching on WAVE-TV, Channel 3, in Louisville.