Norm Nathan's Vault of Silliness

The Vault of Silliness has produced a tape labeled July 20^th and 21^st , 1996, though it was ‘Friday night,’ Norm was on at midnight so it’s Saturday morning the 21^st.

Now that I’ve bored you with that info let’s move on.

I’ll call this episode, “Talk and Callers.” I found this a great example of a ‘regular’ Norm Show. No Dumb Birthday Game. Just talk and callers.

Tom Howie is producing.

We begin with Norm and I hanging out and talking about the 100^th Anniversary of Revere Beach – The Nation’s First Public Beach.

There are references to the first guest, Edward Maeder, who was the Director of the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto. The show comes full circle at the end when a caller talks about the guest as well.

Unfortunately, the interview was not included here. Darn it!

This is one of those times (and there’ll be many more) where I wish I had access to the WBZ logger tapes to comb through them and extract these interviews.

Somehow, talk of Revere Beach and shoes leads to stand-up comedy and particularly a comedian whom Norm really enjoyed, the late Richard Jeni.

Then we move on to water quality and back to Revere Beach where Norm recalls, with great detail, a life-changing experience he had there.

You won’t want to miss that.

Then we move on to Ruth (“Dave Maynard’s Ruth’). She and Norm discuss a variety of topics including the WBZ Farmstand, which was being held a week later than usual due to the party being planned for WBZ’s 75^th Anniversary.

And Norm discloses his secret energy booster he used in his boxing days that prepared him for 15 rounds of heavyweight battle.

We also learn that for all the traveling Dave Maynard would do and advertise Norm Nathan, that’s right – Norm Nathan was heading up a cruise to Bermuda! Stay tuned to hear the commercial promo for that later in the program.

Bob in Pennsylvania talks road construction history.

We have a caller who’s owned a barbershop for 32 years in downtown Boston. The tape then moves to side B and later in the morning.

The exuberant David from Weymouth with a great story.

Lisa who’s interested and frustrated by computers.

Norm tells a sweet story about visiting Italy.

Anne from Lowell sings a song.

Norm does some on-air editing of two news briefs.

And Norm’s new best friend, Tom, wraps up the night with fun call.

We close with a little news from Bill Lawrence on the ’96 Olympics.

Commercials featured:

WBZ Traffic on the 3’s Promo

Lippincott Dental with a weird offer