Narciccissm in the secular broadcasting field

I graduated from a local Catholic high school in 1973
I was a nerdy and lonely teenage dude...with greasy hair and acne.
The pretty girls on the school bus heckled and snubbed me
And my parents misunderstood and overprotected me.
My only consolation was listening to Top Forty radio
I grew up listening to WLS, WCFL CKLW, WABC and WING.
My first love was music..which helped to set my spirits free
Gene "By Golly" Barry, Bob Holiday and Steve Kirk felt like close freinds to me.
I tried a broadcast school in Columbus where its promoter was John Cameron Swayze
The same guy who anchored NBC's "Camel News Caravan" and being a spokesperson for Timex watches
Was only there for two weeks and got kicked out
And never got a dime back of my mother's hard-earned money.
So I took a job for nearly a year packing Alcoa aluminum siding
The factory was so much filled with noise and I had to wear earplugs to protect my hearing.
I finally got my third class FCC permit with broadcast endorsement..and continued my longed-for dream.
All the local stations took my applications...but all of them refused to hire me.
So I hit the road to a little town "in the middle of nowhere" of Central Indiana
Was hired in a little town which boasted a local politician and author named Wendell Willkie.
I didn't realize how naive I really was back then...until I was over-inundated by callers asking me to play their favorite tune
The owners of that station were control-freak narccisists....who were "big fish in a little radio pond" out to bully "lowly 'ol me."
They aired daily five minute programs promoting racism and anti-semitism
Under the misleading phrase of "a group of americans working together for good government"
Only to find out otherwise they hated blacks and jews...and it offended and abhorred me!
...in short it was tabloidized exaggerated fake news perpetrated by the likes of the ever-racist "Liberty Lobby"
and the Holocaust -denialist John Birch Society.
Reminds me of that old TV news guy saying ever so violently:
"I'm mad as hell and I can't take it anymore (from that creepy "Network" movie.)
I was fired five years later and was hired by two stations back home in Ohio
I struggled to find freinds in that field only to discover that they wanted to use and expolit me.
Granted I made some stupid on-air mistakes and was learning the broadcast biz "the hard way"
I had no money to go to college..and didn't have the good grades in high school anyway.
I encountered cut-throat narccicisst control freaks who cut my throat over the little embarrasing mistakes I made
I discovered the dark side of the "office politics" of broadcasting....and I finally threw in the towel realizing I brought in on myself
Needless to say...after a thirteen year struggle with the arrogant powers that be.
My only freind in the radio field was a pretty and sweet lady named Kim Faris
Who was always full of smiles and hugs..and a practicing Catholic too
I also eventually got to meet her husband Steve too
And they both meant so much to me!
I took a job stacking lumber in a re-man shop from 1987 to 2022
I'm now retired and now do volunteer work from my home for Catholic radio too.
And I also produce a weekly blues show from my home for a low-power FM station at Indian Lake
In the beginning I was never a success.
Though I don't get paid monetarily
But now looking back after all those years...I finally now feel so blessed!
JML 5/14/23