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Raymond's Recollections

HAVE YOU EVER HEARD "ARE YOU LONESOME TONIGHT" BACKWARDS?

If you knew who Professor Selrach Selarom was and if you don't... no sweat, you would understand why my interest was also in radio.
At an early age I became acquainted with the fact that once you turned the knob of the radio it actually meant that there was somebody else on the other side.
What you probably did not know was that this "Professor", had been a DJ for "donkey ages" (excuse the expression!) First on the Voice of Aruba, presenting a programme of The American Legion and later on on Radio Antilliana.
So actually brought up in this "atmosphere" I spent many hours at radio stations.

On one of these enjoyable visits I was sitting there, admiring the skills of the operator, when out of nowhere he (and I can't remember his name) asked me to stand in for him because he had to go to the John's. Well he didn't actually put it like that but then again I promised my sister not to use any foul language!

I felt great, sat down behind all of those hundreds of switches and probably never even heard him leave the room and all I had to do was flip the switch so that the next record would spin.

AND GEE THIS WAS THE ONCE IN A LIFETIME THING!!

The first record was coming to and end and I saw this done so often.... you put on the headphones, turn the record back with your finger till the exact beginning of the music and flip the switch at the right moment.... or was it visa versa?

Being at that age a perfectionist, I turned this record several times backwards with my finger to get the exact moment and was going to give one more shot when he barged right into the room, trousers hanging around his knees and good thing they invented drawers...

Well the phone never stopped ringing that Saturday afternoon and while leaving the premisses I heard him explain this little technical problem to his boss.
It was then that I decided not to become a DJ.

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