Does Small Town Experience Matter?

My career in broadcasting began at a radio station in a very small town. It was so soon after the end of World War II that the broadcast equipment manufacturers had not yet developed the slick gear that eventually became the norm in the broadcasting industry.

That is my way of explaining that our station had no recording equipment for recording commercials. No tape recorder. No disk recorder. All commercials were read live. In fact, many of them were not "read" at all. In my first week or so on the job, our continuity writer came into the control room, handed me a proof sheet of a grocery store ad that would appear in that week's edition of the local weekly newspaper and said, "Ad-lib a commercial for this store."

There were only two grocery stores in our town, and it evolved that every week I had to ad-lib a commercial for the grocery store where I shopped. Talk about instant feedback! When I finished my shift at the station and headed home, I stopped at the store for whatever food items I needed. The grocer pulled me aside and quickly explained the correct terminology for something I had mischaracterized in his ad-libbed commercial. Most housewives can read newspaper grocery ad shorthand. As a 20-year-old bachelor, I was treading foreign soil.

Once I ad-libbed a commercial for Dairy Queen and literally drooled over ice cream goodies. I hardly cleared the station premises when I was accosted by a dairy man telling me in no uncertain terms that Dairy Queen treats are NOT ice cream!

The thing about small town life is that you are never insulated from your critics. How about being stopped on the street by an indignant matron who demanded that I learn the difference between a fryer and a broiler. Once I spoke of seeing "your doctor or your dentist" and caught a burning critique from my dentist who explained that a dentist is also a doctor. I shall never forget to say "your physician or dentist."

Another time I played a record by Arthur Godfrey who, in his usual comedy mode, had butchered the English language. I made fun of Godfrey. The next day I received a card from a local high school English teacher listing every instance of my own bad grammar that day.

Small town experience is the best possible training ground. It means little on your resumé. What counts today is the name of the school you attended. There, in all probability your class was taught by an instructor teaching a textbook written by some "expert" who learned their craft from textbooks written by earlier "experts".

In the small town, whether it is broadcasting, police work, politics or most any other endeavor, you experience immediate results of your actions. You may well forget an admonition from a boring professor, but you will not soon forget that confrontation with an angry neighbor.

So, when a news reporter today makes light of the experience of Sarah Palin as mayor of a small town, I have to smile as I imagine all the hard lessons that job surely hammered into her brain!