Sales
I'm waiting for an epiphany, and I'm waiting for understanding...
 | |
| Series | |
|---|---|
| WBAI And NPR Playhouse | |
| Original Broadcast Date | |
| 04/01/1983 | |
| Cast | |
| Joe Frank | |
| Format | |
| Serious Monologue, 24 minutes | |
| Preceded by: | Lies |
| Followed by: | The Queen Of Puerto Rico |
Sales is a program Joe Frank produced as part of the series WBAI And NPR Playhouse. It was originally broadcast in 1983.
Synopsis
"Show Me The Way To Go Home" (Al Hirt)
0:10: Joe lists what he's waiting for: an epiphany, understanding, purification, exaltation, the second coming, the revolution, the Spiegel catalogue, a refund from Sears, an unemployment check, a call from his mother.
1:10: Joe tells of George who works as a sheet music salesman for a firm in NYC. His colleagues are a depressing lot. George hates his job.
4:10: He falls for one of his customers, a woman manager of a music store in St Louis, Carol. He begins calling her at home. She tells him all about herself. He begins calling nightly; they grow closer. His calls are the only thing they enjoyed. They decide they have to meet, but have no opportunity.
7:20: George's company fails; its employees have mishaps, some fatal.
8:50: Carol travels to NYC for a long weekend in mid-October.
9:10: George chaperones his son's 6th-grade class on a trip to Restoration Village, a replica of a colonial town.
10:10: Restoration Village looks like motel cottages. The kids aren't interested. After a trip to the gift shop and lunch, they go to a nearby pond and skip rocks. After returning his son to his (the son's) mother George feels terribly lonely.
14:30: Carol flies to NYC, 1.5 years after they first began talking. She arrives at 3 AM. George is apprehensive. She's pretty and petite, seems overwhelmed. They try to make love, but fail. They spend the day awkwardly. The next day they decide their weekend is over; she spends the rest of the weekend with old college chums from Queens. She stays in town for another few days - a really long weekend. He sees her twice more, once for dinner, another day for window-shopping.
23:50: George calls Carol in St Louis; they talk for hours. She was sick with an undiagnosed endocrine condition the whole time. George doesn't know whether to believe her. His calls tailed off.
24:50: A year later she tells George about her boyfriend, a trumpet player in a Dixieland band, beating and raping her. She tells George she was excited by it. George is disgusted with her.
25:40: "Show Me The Way To Go Home" (Al Hirt)
26: Joe lists what he's waiting for again.
26:40: Children singing the song they sang on the way to Restoration Village.
"I'm waiting" monologue. A lonely sheet-music salesman based in New York strikes up a connection to a long-distance customer. After a year and a half of phone calls, the customer visits the salesman, and the romance unravels.
Music
- "Show Me The Way To Go Home" - Al Hirt (from Al Hirt At The Mardi Gras, 1962) | YouTube [Intro]
- "Walking" - Steve Tibbetts (from Northern Song, 1982) | YouTube [4:18]
Additional credits
The original broadcast credits state: "Recorded at Polima Studios in Camarillo and mixed at Sonic Images in Washington."
