San Francisco's Last Top 40 Disc Jockey

     On a sunny Saturday afternoon, I drifted into a neighborhood pawnshop while waiting for my data. Grandma Ella warned me about places like that: “Stay out of pawnshops—you can do better.” Yet by chance, I discovered The Living Language Better Speech Course—four 10-inch vinyl records with booklets full of drills. That finding changed everything.

I used the course in my modest apartment—my “penthouse suite”—late at night when the city quieted. The recordings blared through the walls:

• “The only thing we have to fear.”—enunciated deliberately, avoiding “ting.”
• Incorrect: “Yesterday, she comes in and sits down with me.”
• Correct: Yesterday, she came in and sat down with me.
• “Put the mast in the roasting pan,” I repeated, exaggerating the -i-n-g.

Many of us Southerners often drop word endings, so those exercises helped clean up my diction.

One night, Sam from apartment 1A slammed his fist against the wall. His nasal voice cut through the silence: “It’s one a.m.—I need sleep!” The first instinct was to snap back: “That’s your problem, pal!”—the words burned on my tongue, but I forced them down.

My outspoken neighbor stood twenty-five feet away, his wrestler’s frame radiating brute force. I dialed the volume down, waited ten minutes, and resumed the lesson.

• “The bacon was hung in the smokehouse.”
• “There were twelve men there by twelve o’clock.”
• “Give me liberty or give me death.”

(Not the smartest statement to make, “Simpleton” Sam—he was prone to suggestion.)

Another exercise had me gripping a wine cork between my teeth while reciting phrases—picture a low-budget Jim Carrey from Ace Ventura. My classmates mocked me, cracking jokes, while some said I sounded like I came from another planet—perhaps Alabama.

My go-to reaction was pure Popeye (The Sailor Man): “Well, blow me down!” Sounding different didn’t bother me.

Shakespeare’s sonnets became part of my routine, full of peculiar phrases like “prithee,” “dispunge,” and “smilets,” plus stingers such as

• “Thou art as fat as butter.”
• “Villain, I have done thy mother.”
• “Go, prick thy face and over-red thy fear.”

It wasn’t easy, but I persevered. Working part-time and taking a full course load, I had proper study hours only late at night. I wasn’t living like a monk, but my dedication to mastering voice delivery was real.

Over time, LA’s easygoing rhythm smoothed the edges of my Southern drawl. The switch was a double-edged sword—out West, I blended into the California cadence; back home, I stood out, catching good-natured jabs for “talking differently.” Still, I saw it as a sign of growth.