I went back, and moved into the house with the girls. It was supposed to be me,and three college students. It turns out one of the girls had a friend, who was a single mom,and she was living there too, with her baby. So there was 5 of us, two not in school. Eventually all the college students moved out, and a bunch of semi street freaks moved in. It was kind of a crazy scene, and I moved out, and lived in different housing situations, renting rooms with different households of people.
So then there was the issue of money. I had never had to support myself before. I had some money that I had saved that summer, but I needed to find a job. I had a real desire to help people. I had taken an internship in the VA hospital the year before working with a patient and had done very well. I decided I wanted to be a nurses aid. I went to the local hospital, and they said come back December 1, it was September. I wanted to do this so bad, that I waited anxiously for December to come. I went back, and went through the interview. It ended up with the woman telling me I was over qualified to go back to school. I didn't really know to tell her how much I wanted the job. I left disappointed and disheartened. I applied for other jobs, only to be told the same thing. I was over qualified, go back to school.
I was going downtown to look for work and was having a hard time. There were these guys on the street, on Friday, selling newspapers about the weekends coming events, editorials, that sort of thing. I asked them about selling the papers, since I couldn't get a real job. I ended up selling papers on the street. My rent was only $25 a month, and it actually supported me for a while. I eventually got a job at the college for the next two years. It was good paying and I got Holidays paid, and unemployment in the summer.
One time during this period, I actually tried to go back to school. While I was selling papers, we would have a break time, when there were no customers the street. There was an art museum downtown, and I would go to it. There was an exhibit done by prisoners, using art therapy to help them. I had taken psychology classes in college, had worked on the mental ward as a volunteer of the VA hospital. I felt I had a calling to help people. Since I had dropped, I was feeling more inclined towards art. i was taking a pottery class and sitting in on drawing classes. Suddenly, I finally knew what i wanted to do. What I could major in. All those long discussions with my father about my major. Now I knew. I wanted to be an Art Therapist. I decided to go back to the office at the University, and tell them my good news and readmit myself. I was directed to the office of a very old woman. I excitedly told her my news. She looked at me blankly and said "There is no such thing". That was it. End of conversation. my bubble was popped. I was back to colege is no good, and left. I never tried again to go back.
If I was more experienced in life, I might have known to pursue this more, maybe talk to someone else. or tell my father. But instead I just reacted by leaving and blowing off college, once and for all.
Besides all this, I was still friends with my radical crowd. We called ourselves revolutionaries and freaks. We weren't hippies. At least we didn't call ourselves that.
One interesting thing I did during this time was I started a Woman's Radio Show, at the university. This was 1973-1974. Woman's Liberation was starting up. I had a friend who told me he was going to do a radio show about the workers and unions. He was all into Woodie Guthrie and that sort of thing. I said I would do a show too, playing just woman. I somehow managed to get the show, Sat morning 10-2. I played all kinds of music, the theme was just woman. It didn't have to be political. Sometimes I did interviews that were political in nature. I had regular American Press News with a man broadcasting it though. My girlfriend came up with an idea. That she would write a woman's newscast from woman's newspapers and do that instead. I don't know if we ever asked permission and were turned down, or just didn't bother. I just remember that she went into the news booth, and we didn't let the guy in somehow, and she read the news. She started being on there regularly, and everything seemed good.
Well, everything wasn't good. One day I was notified that my show was off the air. they said it was because of technical reasons. I didn't know how to run a show and I didn't announce good. I knew this was not the truth, because I was so much better at it, than my friend with the workers show. I was just way more controversial and outspoken. My friend, with the other show, decided it was his turn to speak out. he decided to have me on his show, and the theme of that day was freedom of speech, and how they shut down my show. That really caused a stir. The engineers on duty, came into the studio and told us I wasn't allowed on the air. My friend said I am just interviewing her, you said she couldn't have her own show. They said if she doesn't stop talking, we are shutting the station down. We didn't stop talking. We started saying they are going to shut us down. And then the needles went dead. they pulled us off the air. I guess that is against FCC regulations to turn a radio station off like that. we looked at each other and said, i guess it is time to go home. But it wasn't. We walked out of the studio and we were greeted with reporters, taking our pictures and asking us questions. I was very surprised. Then suddenly we were met by very official people from the university, and told we had to come with them. We were escorted way down into some room, in a far deep basement, with no windows. There these very official like men interrogated us for an hour to see how radical we really were. They asked us questions like were we associated with SDS, things like that. I wondered if they were going to let us leave. One of out friends had secretly followed us down there, and he was by the door, so I knew at least one person knew where we were. Finally, I guess we convinced them we really weren't that dangerous, which we weren't, and they let us go home.
By this time I was getting a little famous. I also didn't know that alot of woman out there knew about me and my show. I guess I had more listeners than I realized, from all walks of life. Somehow a protest meeting was arranged, with the school's radio administration. All kinds of woman showed up, not only from my little radical group. Woman from NOW and other woman's organizations came. They insisted I go back on the air. The school came up with all these technical reasons why I couldn't, that wasn't technically capable, which wasn't true. Then the woman insisted that my Saturday morning time slot, at least be preserved as a woman's slot. They had the university beat there. But then the issue of who would do it came up. They had no one but me. This is how it got resolved. They decided I was not competent enough to run a radio show. They decided I should train other woman, on the air, to do a show. It was ridiculous. If I wasn't competent to do it alone, why was I competent enough to train others right on the air?? There was no reason behind it. Take it or leave it. I accepted.
For the next year, I would plan the show, and then they would send woman to me from the Communications Department that were going to school, and I would teach them cold turkey how to do a show, right live on the air. They did my content, did the announcing, and I was their teacher. It was good and bad. Of course with these other woman announcing, they didn't have my radical perspective, and the show got watered down politically. That was the bad. The good, is I helped alot of woman get ready for a career in broadcasting in this special slot, designed for woman.
After about a year of doing this, it seemed kind of ridiculous that I still wasn't able to do my own show. Somebody contacted the university to try to get me back on the air. They couldn't really protest that much, but still said I had to do an audition. Of course I passed with flying colors. I started my show again, but the college had suceeded in watering me down. Now, I just did a request show. It was fun, but no where as political. I did that until I went out west June of 1974. I have no idea what happened to the time slot.
copyright 2010 © Stacey Bander. Please contact for any reuse.
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