Which was sung to the tune of an old song which I'd never heard of either. Or sometimes he would play a really old jingle for the radio station:

W,W,W,W, somebody stop me (pop)
O, R!
W,W,W,W, if you can top me (pop)
O, R!
1440 Broadway, 710 on your dial
That powerful, powerful station
With the fifty-kilowatt smile!
Mutual, Mutual, Mutual, Mutual
Heard both near and far
This is W,W,W,W, somebody stop me (pop)
O, R!

You get the idea.

And then maybe there would be another idea, that seemed to have nothing to do with anything else up to that point. But what was amazing was that before his 45 minutes were over, Shepherd would be back to the beginning topic of his discourse, and suddenly, everything in between made perfect sense. Even to an eleven or twelve year old. OK, a precocious eleven or twelve year old.

And all too soon, those 45 minutes were over, and the theme song was again being heard. Sometimes he'd be all done with his monologue and you'd just hear the theme, and at the end he'd say "WOR New York" and you'd hear the beep announcing the top of the ten o'clock hour. Sometimes he'd be rushing the end of the tale and he'd barely get to the end as the final crescendo of the polka finished. But it didn't matter. What a story! What a storyteller! Sometimes I would be so wound up that I'd have to switch over to a hockey or basketball game on WNBC; or the Chuck Leonard show on WABC, since I wasn't really into Carlton Fredericks, who hosted a natural health show of some sort after Shepherd's show on WOR. And sometimes, I admit, I was lulled to sleep by Shepherd's voice, and I'd sleep right through wake up in the middle of What's Your Problem, hosted by Bernard Meltzer, your friend and advisor, or if I was really out for a while, Joe Franklin, the overnight staple on WOR.

Anyway, I thought Shepherd, or just Shep, as I later found out, was just the greatest thing. He sounded like he was talking just to me, or perhaps just to his "gang," and it was just so much fun. But I thought that was all it was, and I wasn't sure whether I could do anything except maybe be one of his youngest fans. That was until I started the seventh grade in grammar school, and the entire class received an assignment from our English teacher.

Write a journal.

Not just an ordinary journal, you know, "Dear Diary, today it was rainy so we stayed inside at lunchtime" (an actual quote from a journal I had to keep in the second grade, bleah). No, there were to be absolutely no restrictions on what we were to write. The only stipulation was that we were to hand in two pages each week, every week until further notice.

And absolute freedom, of course, meant absolute blank screen, absolute lack of ideas, absolute panic. How was I going to fill two pages in a notebook, every week, in my small handwriting yet, when I didn't have any guidance as to the subject matter?

Not more than a couple of days after that stress-building assignment was handed down, as I thought that perhaps the height of my English teacher, who was also the school basketball coach, was perhaps getting to him, I was listening to Shep on the radio. And I heard him tell a story about something or other. Maybe it was the time that one of his army buddies got left behind by the troop train, never to be heard from again, after he jumped off during a station stop to buy cigarettes, or beer, or something else. Another great story, that bobbed and weaved and flowed right around the spots for General Tire and Chock Full O'Nuts and TV Guide, and came back to the point that Shep had wanted to make in the first place, which was probably open to interpretation anyway so it wasn't really the point.

And I thought, "I could do that."

I could do that!

Why hadn't I thought of it before? I could put anything I wanted in my journal, so I could tell these stories, I could make up all kinds of stuff, I could comment on anything! I could be just like Shep!

Well, of course, I couldn't be just like Shep. But it didn't matter. I was inspired enough. Imagine the English teacher's look when I handed in my journal for the first time, and he was treated to a composition entitled, "Some Observations on Movie Trademarks." What did I think about Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean, being replaced by that silly little stylized sunburst? Why did I think that the MGM lion roared but the United Artists logo was silly? I doubt that my English teacher wanted to know, but he found out anyway. I followed that a couple of weeks later with "How to Get Lost in the Exotic Town of South Plainfield, New Jersey." Which, believe it or not, was not quite as offbeat.

And what eventually became known as Irwin's Journal was on its way. It would last in the notebook form from 1975 until well into college. I would eventually write more than 3,000 pages, all in longhand and all in pencil in spiral bound notebooks. If you're ever in town, ask to see them. It also led to a column in the high school newspaper by the same name (and with a header in the same font as the logo on the website) that ran for almost three years, and to several modest you've-never-heard-of-them creative writing awards given to students, and to entrée into the consciousness of several relatively young ladies on whom I had crushes. "You write the way you talk" has been one of the greatest complements I have ever been paid, because it means that in my own way, I have become like Shep, in the sense that I have also become a storyteller.

But I digress, not unlike the guy who told stories from 9:15 to 10 weeknights on WOR Radio 710.

It did not take me very long to discover that Shep was not only a Radio Personality, but also an author of short stories and essays. I was tickled pink with this news, and immediately pestered for a chance to purchase the volumes In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash and Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories... and other disasters. I found out some time after that that many of the pieces of these books were originally written for Playboy magazine. I kid you not! There was really something else to do besides look at the pictures.

Soon after that, tragedy befell my young life. Shepherd's show on WOR ended. I don't recall the exact reason why, I had first heard that he had grown tired of it—he had actually been on the radio since the 1950's, and had time slots longer than 45 minutes, which must have been incredible. Much later I learned of alternate explanations, including that WOR was trying to change with the times, which did not include the intellectual musings of a Radio Personality. I was there, listening in to Shep's final WOR show, on April Fool's Day, 1977, and it was just like any other one, except for the void that was left when the final note of what I had discovered to be "Clear Track Polka" reached its crescendo. I cried inconsolably that night. I felt that I had lost a best friend. Well, I still had the books, and if my faulty memory serves me correctly, I read a fair amount of Wanda Hickey that night before fitfully falling asleep. Shepherd resurfaced with very short commentaries, maybe two minutes tops, on, of all things, WCBS NewsRadio 88, but it wasn't the same, and it didn't last.

But the books did last. I don't know if I was typical of Shep's fans in this regard, but I always found his stories in print to be comforting in a way. When something I was experiencing was getting me down, I would pick up one of the two prized volumes and get lost for a while in the childhood and adolescence of the main character, Ralph Wesley Parker. The story of the gravy boat riot at the Orpheum Theatre, or the night of Ralph's Senior Prom, to which he took Wanda Hickey, the class bookworm, were funny, to be sure, but they were also very human, very tangible. And I always felt better after reading about that or one of the "other disasters." In fact, I often took up my pencil and wrote about one of my own disasters after that.

And then, while I was in high school, in a dusty bin in the far corner of an outlet of a record distributor, when I thought I had hit paydirt by coming up with a copy of Chicago's Greatest Hits for only $3.99, I really hit the mother lode: an LP called The Declassified Jean Shepherd. Shep, live in concert! And it was only a buck! A single dollar! OK, $1.05 with the tax. What a find… I could listen to Shep anytime I wanted! And I still remember some of the dialogue exactly. "What if Hamlet had worked at the Esso station? Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him well, he always used 10W-40." Or "I know people who read the Reader's Digest… and quote it!" As a lead in to one of his greatest stories about the Army... the dreaded VD film. "Charles, what is VD?" he said in a faux aside to his live audience, and they rolled in the aisles. Or how about this: "I know a guy who has a friend in Mishawalka, Indiana, who has a buddy that knows someone... who invented a pill, that you put it in your gas tank with a gallon of water, and, and... you get 200 miles to the gallon of water! They wouldn't let that out!"

Within the recorded monologue is one line with which you may, in fact, be familiar: "Randy… how do the piggies go?" I promise that I will get back to this one, and it will all make sense.

But first, we have to go to the television. As more and more of the body of work of Jean Shepherd became known to me, I found out about a TV series he did in 1971 called Jean Shepherd's America, in which Shep travelled to various places and made various commentaries. (In 1985 he made more Jean Shepherd's America shows.) In 1976, even before the radio program ended, he did a movie for PBS called The Phantom of the Open Hearth which featured Matt Dillon as his book's main character, Ralph, and several of his misadventures. (A number of years later, in my Freshman Year of college, I saw a pretty beat up paperback copy of the script in a book store in the Port Authority Bus Terminal. I passed on it. I wish I hadn't. The next time I would see it, it would be on eBay, and it would sell for more than seventy dollars.)

Then along came a show that Shep did for New Jersey Pubic Television, called Shepherd's Pie. This was, to put it mildly, difficult to describe. It was divided into segments, some of which were more on the serious side, some of which were, well, on the obtuse side, and a couple of which that I distinctly recall were on the side-splitting side. He produced a piece that was nothing but a time lapse film taken out the front window of a car while driving down US Route 1 through the heart of New Jersey. That distance is about 60 miles but the film was speeded up so that the journey from the Pulaski Skyway to Trenton took less than a minute, and for some reason I found this intensely hilarious. There was one even better than that... a study of how Jersey drivers navigate traffic circles. (That's "rotaries" in Massachusetts.) He even gave the various manuevers names... the Vineland Veer, the Hackensack Hesitation, the Lodi Lurch. There was even someone sitting in a director's chair, perhaps Shep himself, in the center of the traffic circle, applauding particularly spectacular moves. It was absurdity at its pinnacle to me, and yet so true to life. I still find myself clapping in recognition of outrageous moves on the highways, and I'll probably be doing it until they take away my driver's license. It makes a great stress reliever. How I wished I'd had his gift. How I wished I'd had a VCR!

There was still one stone unturned, however. I had not actually seen Jean Shepherd. Shep lived in New Jersey at the time, and appeared at least once a year in Clinton, at an open-air venue near the Old Red Mill that is the small town's trademark. Somehow I managed to sufficiently prod my family into going to one of these appearances. Or maybe I should say "attempting to go". The episode turned out to be a disaster that was perhaps worthy of a Shepherd tale; when I wrote about it in the notebook version of Irwin's Journal, I titled it "Getting the Mill at Clinton" and I never did see him that day. Finally, though, I did get to see him, in, of all things, a stadium setting, at something called a "Family Day" at Rutgers University. It seemed ironic, given that most families were putting their young ones to bed during the time Shep usually broadcast; and given that many of his short stories appeared in a magazine that was "Entertainment for Men," but then, irony was often Shep's stock in trade.

OK, so I actually got to see Shep, but I realized that there was in fact, yet another stone unturned. I wanted to meet Shep. Well, that wouldn't happen, I surmised. Anything at which he would appear would be too packed for me to be able to get a personal audience of any length. Right?

Enter the usually cruel, but occassionally kind, Twists of Fate. I was stuck home with my brother, and told not to go anywhere even though I was in possession of a driver's license and had the '67 Dodge in the driveway. The weekend section of My Local Paper had the smallest of citations in the listing of events for the day. Think of the odds that I never would have gotten to see this:

"Humorist Jean Shepherd will be appearing in a one man show tonight at 8PM at the Old Red Mill in Clinton. Admission is $, and guests are asked to arrive early and bring lawn chairs."

I excitedly read this out loud to my brother, and then thought about how early I would have to get there to get a place up close. My brother unexcitedly responded, "Sorry, but I think we're out of lawn chairs." He had a Mets doubleheader on the tube on his agenda.

There was one more sentence, though.

"This afternoon at 2PM, Shepherd will be at the Clinton Book Store to autograph copies of his book A Fistful of Fig Newtons,."

Being that I had been newspaper editor at my high school, and knew all about the Inverted Pyramid, and seeing that the article, wedged as it was between "Bowling Alleys" and "Golf Courses" obviously did not rank high on My Local Paper's priority list, I was amazed that the last sentence a one-sentence paragraph, no less, even made it into the paper. But it did, and that meant: The jackpot! I read it out loud, as if to test that it was real.

"We're going! We have to go! This could be my only chance!"

"Uh, Mom and Dad?"

I did not yet know the exact cliché, but I was about to choose "Beg For Forgiveness" over "Ask For Permission." I left a piece of paper reading "Guess where we went?" with an arrow pointing at the item in My Local Paper.

Less than forty minutes later we were headed down U.S. Route 22, one of the premier car-crunchers of New Jersey. It was fitting, as Shep referred to 22 as one of the worst things about New Jersey— what other highway can you think of that has businesses jammed into the center median strip for miles? It was a hot day, so I had left my LP of "The Declassified Jean Shepherd" home, lest it melt, but I had both the Wanda Hickey and the In God We Trust book, and just enough money to add the third book to my collection. And about an hour after that, an hour that seemed to take far longer, as hours do when in Uncontrollable Anticipation, we eased off of 22 and onto Old Route 22, which became the main street of Clinton, New Jersey. I parked as close to The Clinton Book Store as I could, and just about skipped my way inside, dragging my brother behind me.

"You're prepared," one of the saleswomen said, noticing my already well-worn copies of In God We Trust and Wanda Hickey.

"So are you," I replied, observing a tall stack of the new book.

"Yes, we are. We expect fans from all over."

I explained where we were from, and how I'd literally come to hear of him. "He inspired me to write, that's for sure. He's even in a couple of my stories." I talked about how we'd tried to see Shepherd before, and the disasterous results of that attempt. A couple of other fans heard me, and laughed, and said that I should tell him that story when I meet him.

"He'll get a big charge out of that," someone assured me.

But I wasn't quite as confident. Some people find a pedestal mighty uncomfortable. There are any number among the famous and semi-famous who resent it outright. We, the unknown, resent this resentment. We put you up there, we complain, why don't you stay put? I briefly considered the point but threw it out. I tended to think, or at least hope, that Shepherd wouldn't mind the idea of serving as the inspiration for other writers. As long as we didn't steal his material. Had I known that Shep often credited Mark Twain and George Ade as inspiration; and in fact edited and introduced the compilation called The America of George Ade,, I'd have been a lot less uptight. But I was, after all, a nervous fan about to meet an idol.

Around one o'clock, an hour before the scheduled start of the book signing, the place was really starting to get packed. That once-formidable pile of copies of A Fistful of Fig Newtons wasn't looking so plentiful, and so I made my purchase before it was too late. It cost me more than both of the other books and the Shepherd LP—combined—but no matter, not much longer after that it would be priceless. While there was a crowd, I swapped stories with many fellow fans, who were, I must admit, quite surprised at my early interest in Shepherd. I retold my story of "Getting the Mill at Clinton" and again, it was suggested that I tell Shep.

Two o'clock came, but instead of the author, there was an announcement. "I'm sorry, folks, but he's running a little late. But he will be here."

Panic ensued in my heart. What if he couldn't get to everyone? What if my copy remained un-autographed? What if I didn't get to say hello? It had happened before, in cases of long-forgotten second-tier sports stars and B-movie bit players who'd appeared at Jersey malls—they did their thirty minutes and they left, regardless of the line that remained. That wasn't going to happen, was it?

I seemed to be the only one who minded the delay. The rest of the assembly seemed to merge comfortably into the "gang" to which Shep once spoke every weeknight on WOR. Another half hour went by. Then a few more minutes after that.

Finally, the manager was asked to step to the back door of the shop and word spread like wildfire: "He's here!"

And, amid cheers and applause from the gathering, Shep appeared, late but cheerful, accompanied by what I figured to be his producer, confidante, friend and spouse, Leigh Brown. (I was right.) Shep made his way to the book signing table, recognizing a few faces and saying hello. He positioned himself in the center of a rectangle respectfully formed by the crowd, and opened with "Hi, gang!"

"HI!" we all replied. No need for that silly "I can't hear you!"

"I know I'm a little late, and I'm sure you're waiting for your autograph, but we have some time and I know you probably have some questions you'd like to ask too. So before I get into signing whatever you want, and I will get to everyone, don't worry, I'd thought I'd just talk for a while."

This was even better than I had ever imagined it would be! After a brief plug for the night's show, Shep really got into it. He talked about his childhood, growing up in Chicagoland, his stories, his many fans, what he was up to lately, and anything else that came to mind. And one of the things he related was certainly a surprise. I had always assumed that the stories that he told on the radio and wrote in his books were based on reality. The title piece of the volume Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories was about Shep's character Ralph Wesley Parker taking Wanda to the Senior Prom. It was enough of a story for me to decide to attend my high school's Senior Dinner Dance. That is, when no one else could convince me to go, Shep did. But Shep told us that his high school never had a prom, so he couldn't have gone! This was really wild because in my own notebook journal I had written a piece comparing Shep's experience to my own—as if both had actually happened. Well, maybe they did. I could tell that there were fans in the bookstore that didn't believe his story that "Wanda Hickey" was just a story. It wasn't really important, as it turned out; it didn't cheapen the effect on me by one iota.

Shep had told us at any time that we could interrupt with questions, but his talk was so complete that no one else said a word for close to an hour. It was like our own private radio show, except we knew we really were the "gang."

"Well, I think it's time to give my mouth a rest and give my writing hand a workout, what do you say, gang?"

We all agreed, although I don't think anyone in the room would have minded if he'd talked for a couple more days. Just send out for meals, bring in some cots and blankets, and we'll have our own seminar, I mused. Even my brother was impressed and after that day, he'd spout the ocassional Shepherdism.

The crowd cordially rearranged itself into a line, and Shep reassured everyone that they'd have a chance to get an autograph. It was already five minutes past the time that he was supposed to have left! I had my spanking new copy of A Fistful of Fig Newtons in my hand while my brother carried the other two volumes from my collection. Many of the other fans had much more exotic artifacts, and Shep was pause every so often to point them out to the gang. He really enjoyed seeing an old drawing that he had done while he was living in Greenwich Village. Maybe I should have brought the record, I thought.

As I got closer and closer to the front of the line, I became more and more nervous. Noticably so. As in, shaking.

"I'm so excited," I said to my brother.

"So I see."

And then we were in from of the line, and I was standing right in front of the Voice in the Night, the chef of Shepherd's Pie, the person I most wanted to meet.

What was I going to say?

Then, I thought. Why not tell it like it was?

I stepped up and said, "This is an historic occasion."

Shep smiled broadly. "Well, then, we can't let it get by!" he replied, and warmly shook my hand. "What's your name?"

I told him, and introduced my kid brother. Shep shook his hand as well.

As he started to sign A Fistful of Fig Newtons, I blurted out, "I'm a writer too!"

"You are? That's great!"

My mind went into autopilot. I certainly wasn't thinking consciously for myself, I was far too euphoric.

"As a matter of fact... you're in one of my stories!"

He appeared quite surprised. "I am? That's great. I play a part," he said in his classic Shepherd Radio Voice.

I asked him to sign the other two volumes as well, one to me and one to my brother, and he did. He even checked to make sure that he spelled my brother's name in the correct variation. What a touch of class. We exchanged a few dozen words. I don't remember what I said, but I do remember that I made him laugh. And that was the best part of all. Meeting the person who had been so much of a source of laughter and comfort, and giving a little back.

The next year, much more of the world came to know Shep, and in the manner that I've been building up to. It was, gang, through a little motion picture about Ralphie, and his holiday wish—to have a real Red Ryder BB Gun for Christmas. And other incidents within Ralphie's family—- the Bumpus hounds, the soap in the mouth, the visit to Santa, and the kid brother who won't eat, which led to the question, "How do the piggies go?" And of course, the response to Ralphie's holiday gift request: "You'll shoot your eye out!" It is the film A Christmas Story, which was not a blockbuster right out of the chute when it premiered in 1983, but has taken a rightful position as an all-time classic since then. Some put it just behind It's A Wonderful Life as the best Christmas picture ever. I can't tell you how many times I've seen it. Seen it? I practically have it memorized!

Fast forward to October 16, 1999, the day that Shep passed on. I was inconsolable again. This time he had really left us, after a time of seclusion and failing health. I tearfully picked up one my autographed books, and read silently.

And not much longer after that, I started to laugh, and felt better again. Maybe he hadn't really left. I still had the memories, and the thoughts of the radio shows. Not long after that, I'd have the actual shows, on tape, through those who work to keep them preserved for us to enjoy.

And then fast forward one more time, but also rewind to a time in the past before I was born. I happened across a compact disc reprint of a Shep record album I didn't own, called Will Failure Spoil Jean Shepherd? Listening to the recording, which was made in 1960, the material had lost very little if any of its relevance, the social commentary still applied, the humor still came through. I was, in a word, impressed.

And that, gang, is what timeless is all about.

Even for someone who was just a kid.