“Ode to Jersey City”
by John Lee Krasnow
It was 1964 or maybe ‘65, I spent time at night listening to WOR's Jean Shepherd on my vacuum tube Motorola, sometimes wondering if the people inside those tubes were really inside my Motorola. My high school friend John Krasnow had written a poem, “Ode to Jersey City” and now I was hearing Jean Shepherd reading it on the radio! Apparently Norman Kelson had sent the poem into Jean Shepherd and by chance Shepherd read it on the radio. I missed the beginning but as soon as I could I turned on my Tandberg and recorded what was left.