Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories.
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At the end of my sophomore year in high school, I got a summer job working at the Scotts grass variety plots on West 6th Street. They also hired a couple college boys for the summer. One of them was a boy named Bob Turner.
Bob was a friendly kid, and he had a really special sense of humor. I mean, that guy could find something funny in almost any situation. Let’s say he fell down and skinned up his nose. When he told you about it, he would have you in stitches. I mean, he could be really funny.
One day in midsummer when Bob and I were pulling nutsedge out of a plot of bluegrass, he told me he had just bought some new device called a “wire recorder.” It was several years before tape recorders were introduced. It recorded sound on a thin wire, and was much larger and heavier than a tape recorder. He said we could record our voices, and then we could play it back. Then he invited me to come to his house and try it out.
So a couple days later on a Sunday afternoon, I went to Bob’s house. He carried the recorder into their living room and plugged it in. Then he turned it on and the two of us sat on the floor and started recording our voices. We did the usual stuff, you know, reciting “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and things like that. But it didn’t take long until we decided to try something else.
We pretended we were on a radio show, and we did “man on the street” interviews. One of us would be the interviewer and interview the other. The one being interviewed could be anyone he wanted to be. He might be a policeman, a chiropractor or a deep-sea diver … whatever he wanted. And we would take turns being the interviewer. Nothing was scripted. It was all ad lib.
One of my favorites was when I was interviewing him, and he was a lifeguard at a swimming pool. Everything was going normally in the interview until he said that he couldn’t swim. Oh man, a lifeguard that couldn’t swim. I couldn’t wait to see where this was going.
When I asked him how he could save those drowning people when he couldn’t swim, he explained that he carried a megaphone with him at all times. Then if a swimmer got in trouble, he simply shouted instructions to the person. He told the floundering swimmer how to move his arms and kick his legs, and he could do it all without even going into the water.
He explained that he had to yell instructions fast before the swimmer went down for the third time. “Once I see them go down for the third time,” he said, “I usually just quit yelling and climb back up in my lifeguard chair.” I laughed so hard I got a pain in my side.
There were other interesting people that we interviewed. One time I played the part of a circus tightrope walker, not a normal tightrope walker, but one who was afraid of heights. I can’t remember the details of that interview, but I remember laughing like crazy.
A bit later, I interviewed Bob who played the part of a young girl who was actually a mermaid. He explained all the advantages of being a mermaid, including how he could beat all the other girls in swimming races. But there were disadvantages, too, like when she went to the prom at school. Then he looked at me and in a wonderful falsetto voice he said, “It isn’t easy for a mermaid to dance.” I’m telling you, that guy could really break me up.
Those wishing to contact Bill Boyd can e-mail him at
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