Tracey Crosier - Keys to the Castle

 

I was a little nerdy child. I did not engage in a lot of spontaneity. I might have just been born this way. I also moved around a lot. So, by fourth grade, I had already been in five schools. I found a lot of comfort in both the band hall where I played flute and piccolo, and also in the library. I decided at age 10 that I needed to pick a career path. [audience laughter] This is what you do when you don't actually have playmates. 

 

You think of into the future, of happier days. I decided that I loved Barbara Walters and that she would need to be replaced. [audience laughter] God bless that woman. Man, she didn't retire until a couple years ago. But in 1974, I was 10. I did the math, and I figured out that when I was 30, she'd be 65 and ready to retire. So, I had it mapped out.

 

Then, I got to high school, and you know how fun that is. I thought, I don't think I'm the person that can actually stand in front of a microphone. I just don't think that's my thing. And so, I was also loving Mary Tyler Moore and Lou Grant and Ted Baxter. And I thought, that's it. I am going to be a newscast writer, and this is going to be my thing. 

 

And so, I went to college in the fall of 1982, and I decided that the best way to really kick off my newscasting career is I would apply at the radio station that the college had. The one problem was that they just played music on the radio station. Really, all the time. From 08:00 AM until midnight. It was just music. 

 

Now, this was in Dallas, Texas. They did not even do football scores. [audience laughter] There was no news at all. And so, finally, in January of 1983, and Barbara Walter still on the air, good Lord, [audience laughter] I decided I needed to take matters into my own hands. And so, I called and I left answering machine message for the station manager. 

 

I gave him a little elevator pitch which went like this, “Listen, I get that your demographic is the young, hip college people of today. I get that you're competing with MTV,” which at that point was one year old. “But this is what I think. Even if you're cool and you're going to parties or whatever it is that everybody else is doing that I'm not invited to, even if you're a cool rock and roll person, you need to know if it's raining, because you'll want to put your little marijuana cigarettes in a Ziploc bag [audience laughter] before you go to your fun outdoor concert or so I'm told.” [audience laughter] 

 

Now, this actually worked, because the station manager called me back. I'm envisioning I'm talking to Lou Grant, and we make an appointment for me to come in the following Wednesday at three. Now, it's not that I have a good memory. It's just that Wednesday and three are important things to remember. So, I go in. My station manager is not Lou Grant by any stretch. He is more like, you know, in Scooby Doo, there's his friend, Shaggy. [audience laughter] It's like Shaggy, only he's drinking a beer. [audience laughter] 

 

I know I'm a little bit of a nerd, but he's drinking the beer during my interview, which I'm trying to look slightly cool. And then, as he's drinking his beer, the phone rings and he actually takes the call. And it's short. “Yup, yup. Mm-hmm. Yup. Okay, Friday,” and then he spins so that he's not even looking at me anymore. 

 

This is really getting awkward, very fast. He's packing up his backpack. He puts it over his shoulder, he stands up all shaggy and ripped jeans and everything and he says, “Well, that's my dream job. I'm starting in Houston on Friday.” [audience laughter] And I said like, “Two days from Wednesday, Friday?” And he said, “Yeah. So, I got to go because I got to find a place to live and stuff.” [audience laughter] And then, he reaches into his shaggy jeans and he throws me the keys. [audience laughter] I'm not being figurative here. I mean, he gave me a key ring and he said, “This one's to the front door. [audience laughter] Please play the music until midnight and lock up when you're done.” [audience laughter] 

 

And I said, is there a host? Because again, I'm still Mary Tyler Moore, and I'm typing and I'm handing my witty words to Ted Baxter. And he said, “No, I was the host and I'm leaving. So, don't overthink it, kid. The one rocker switch, you push up and the mic comes on, and then you talk. And then, the red button is if you want to cough, and it's three. So, yeah, just spin some records for another nine hours.” [audience laughter] And then, he leaves. 

 

And so, there's an album on the turntable, which some of you may remember. And first of all, I'm a little pissed off, because I put a lot of time and effort into this news station proposal that I had put together for shaggy, and now he's not even here to hear it. [audience laughter] Second of all, as a nerdy, librarian loving band, flute playing person, did I know rock and roll? I didn't. I didn't. My musical expertise stopped with John Philip Sousa, who I think died in 1890. [audience laughter] 

 

So, then I'm mad, because I feel like I have been booby trapped. Well, if you want this little news nugget here, you're going to have to do something that terrifies me. And then, I go from mad to terrified, because the other thing he said is, “Listen, you can't have more than five seconds of silence or you're going to hear from the FCC in the morning. Yeah, no pressure. And you know how many rocker switches there are on a board? They're a lot.” So, I look at it and I think, okay, I have two choices, both involving crashing and burning failure. 

 

The first choice, is that I just leave, because no one knows I'm here. [audience laughter] I don't work here. I sure as shit don't know anything about no rock and roll stuff and I can leave. But then, being a good kind of Lutheran person, I was like, [audience laughter] “But who would I give the keys to?” [audience laughter] Because you can't leave a radio station unlocked, because then whose fault would that be? It would probably be mine. 

 

So, then, plan B is that I will just suck it up. I figure that my public humiliation is going to be less than the FCC yelling at me for some five second silence. And so, I'm so scared of the music, that I wait for the album to go to the end where it makes that [onomatopoeia] noise. I had a fistful of press releases and a window. And so, I looked out and I said, good afternoon and welcome to your campus radio station. We've had a mild January day here in Dallas with temperatures in the 50s, and then there were clouds. And I'm like, “Looks like it's going to be a rainy rush hour home.” [audience laughter] 

 

And then, I just did it for nine hours. I put albums on. I got albums and bands mixed up. I kept saying, here's that nice breakfast in America group with their new Supertramp album. [audience laughter] I probably cut off Bohemian Rhapsody more than once in my career, because Sally Ride was going to be the first astronaut. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was now holding its head above 1,100, first time in history. I mean, music could wait. News was important. 

 

Now, here's the funny thing. There was no station manager [laughs] and I had the keys, and so, nobody fired me. I just kept coming in. [audience laughter] And then, about 10 days into this, this girl stops me on campus and she goes, “Wait a minute, I recognize your voice. Are you the Tracey from the radio?” And I was like, “Oh, this is where it starts.” And I said, maybe. And she goes, “Oh, my God, my whole sorority, we'd love your show. And we tune in all the time. We'd love how you just play really random music.” [audience laughter] 

 

So, half the very small campus thought I was being irreverent on purpose, and the other half thought that I needed a little help. And at the end of the day, I connected with people like I never had before, and I actually had fun along the way.