What I learned from Matt Dillon

I planned to write something a little lighter today.  I began La Tercer Edad in order put together some ideas that had been percolating in my mind for many years.  An original subtitle was "A few things I wanted to say before I go."  But I find my mind, here in July 2018, filled with shit on a daily basis.  I apologize for the crudity ... I might have said bullshit, but I actually have a great fondness for bullshit, that is the real thing.  I love it on my garden.

I have lists of literally hundreds of topics I want to write about ... deep thoughts to helpful hints ... but the terrible things that the United States government is doing dominate what I read and talk about.  I wake up every day and turn on my computer, hoping that finally the dam has broken and the waking horror of what my country is going through will begin to end today.  A criminal, fascist traitor is causing daily damage to our norms and institutions, but more importantly he is intentionally inflicting suffering on decent, innocent people.  He is abetted by truly horrible people ... politicians, unholy preachers, sycophantic toadies.  The perfect exemplar of that is Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, III.   I cannot call him Jeff, that is too friendly.  This man smirked and invoked the words the Apostle Paul to justify taking babies from their mother's breasts and locking them in cages.  The silent do not get a pass.  Paul Ryan and anyone who still supports this situation will live the rest of their lives with the guilt of Himmler and of Judas.

I began this blog mainly for myself.  I wanted to think through what I have learned.  I began life knowing nothing.  Childhood, the first age, was a time to be a child and to learn how the world works.  The second age was to do the burdens of life, to earn a living. I finally finished school and then spent 30 years earning a living.  Most of that time, I went into prisons daily, my main duty being to help keep a lid on things, defusing violent situations, preventing suicides, and caring for the seriously mentally ill who were put in prisons because society could not think of anything else to do with them.  I made enough money and saved enough money to finally bring my second age to a conclusion.

Yesterday I watched hours of the repulsive spectacle of Trey Gowdy, et. al., harrying an FBI agent, all clearly an effort to protect the Benedict Arnold of our times.  For endless weeks and months now, one outrage has followed another.  When I sit down to write my thoughts in my third age,  I find myself pulled every day to that shit being shoveled into my brain.

The subject I wanted to write about today is what is called 'old time radio.'  Radio is called a warm medium.   Perhaps I can talk about Marshall McLuhan later.  We interact with radio, our imaginations are more involved than with television or the internet. Who cannot picture the blank stare of the television addict.  Often nothing they see sticks, the brain disengages.  Currently there is a resurgence in  learning through auditory information.  Podcasts and audio books are exploding in popularity.

What many don't know about is the golden age of radio ... detective stories, mysteries, westerns, comedies, serious dramas ... that were broadcast between the 1930's and the early 1960's.  Much of that material was preserved and there is growing interest and availability.  I have sought out copies of these programs for years.  I used to buy cassette tapes of Sherlock Holmes and The Green Lantern in truck stops because they were popular with long haul truckers.  More recently the Internet Archive has made available masses of recordings for streaming and download.

Finding those programs has now become simple.  I wanted to focus on a favorite source, the podcast Boomer Boulevard.  Disk Jockey Bob Bro has been collecting radio programs for years and has packaged them in a convenient and entertaining form.  He currently has available about 100 two hour packages, each including three or four individual shows.  He is a stickler for audio quality as well as artistic value.  He has a number of favorites, including Dragnet, Philip Marlowe, Jack Benny, Night Beat, but he is especially fond of Gunsmoke.

I recently had the opportunity to binge listen to Boomer Boulevard for four days while losing ten pounds on the Montezuma Diet.  I drifted in and out of sleep, but the sound was soothing and when I was awake, the stories were diverting.  Listening to radio shows is nothing like watching television when you are sick.  There are no flashing lights, and you can close your eyes and fully understand what is going on.

D.J. Bob Bro has no commercials, he does not even ask for donations.  It is a labor of love.  He sees the golden age of radio as a lost art form and he is providing easy access to people who remember them from their youth and to newcomers.  He intersperses the shows with music and commentary.  He does hours of research for each two hour segment.  The packages are professionally produced, and Bob Bro is a bright and perceptive, and seems to be a very kind person.

As I said, he is particularly fond of Gunsmoke.  Many of these short plays are literary jewels.  Like a good short story, they can bring tears to your eyes, chills to your backbone, and make you think about your own life.  The core of all the Gunsmoke stories is Matt Dillon.  Although there are some lighter stories, most place him in situations of great moral pressure.  He has to decide who to arrest, who to counsel, and who to shoot.  He is alone in those decisions and he is often bitterly opposed by outside forces.  There is a reason this was called the first adult western.  Many of the situations are agonizingly stressful.

Matt Dillon was a territorial U.S. marshal, a representative of the oldest national law enforcement agency.  He had broad latitude in his authority.  There was no supervisor to call.  His touchstone was keeping the peace and carrying out the law with judgment and integrity.

Of course, he is a fictional character, but his job is little different from any police officer on the beat.  The radio shows put you in his shoes, incidentally, far more effectively than the television version.  You feel the pressures, the loneliness, the fear.  You wonder if you could stand up as well.

Another of Bob Bro's favorites is Joe Friday of Dragnet.  Although his character became somewhat cartoonish late in the television years, during the radio series, he was a full fleshed human trying to uphold his code and his oath. Police departments nowadays are rightly criticized for incidents of violating that code and oath, but anyone who knows a lot of police officers knows that most are remarkably moral and admirable people.  The exceptions are painful to the honorable majority.

The recent obscene grilling of James Comey, Rod Rosenstein and Peter Strozk intruded on my intention to write about old time radio and Boomer Boulevard in particular.  In my career as a forensic clinical psychologist, I met dozens of FBI agents, and I recognize these guys.  They are straight arrows.  They follow procedure, they are honest, they would give their lives to carry out their responsibilities ... very much like Matt Dillon and Joe Friday.  They are being smeared by small, nasty and selfish men.

Our military personnel are the same way, as are most police officers.  One does not become an FBI agent simply by signing up.  The qualifications are rigorous, and their lives are examined thoroughly before being accepted.  When I was hired by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, my background was investigated by the FBI.  After many years, that thirty page report was released to me, and I was stunned to know how much they knew about me.

In my youth, the FBI had a serious reputation problem, primarily because a Machiavellian cross dresser was given too much personal authority from 1924 to 1972.  He ordered investigations of Pete Seeger, John Lennon, even Dave van Ronk, an affable Greenwich Village hipster. That is not the FBI of today.  They are the best of the best.  They are the example that police departments emulate.  Many of them as kids admired Matt Dillon and would appreciate the comparison today.

So, this was not such a light subject after all.  I just wanted to talk about how radio, a somewhat overlooked art form, is worth a fresh look today.  Donald Trump and his crowd put all the rest of this in my mind.  I want to write about ideas about overpopulation, environmental degradation, the beautiful messages of Christ and Bob Dylan.  I want to flush Donald Trump right out of my head.