It's with Dan Ray Untell you Mazy Boston's news Radio.
Dan, We'll be back on Wednesday, I promise you. I'm Morgan. I'm filling in for the rest of the show tonight, which only has fifty three or so minutes left to it, and I'll be here tomorrow from eight until midnight. Dixie is here and I usually bring in Dixie on one of two subjects, baseball. He's the most knowledgeable person I know when it comes to baseball, both current and old school. And he used to be a park ranger for over thirty some odd years, so his experience about the National
Park Service is exemplary. So Dixie is there. I know you researched a lot of information because you were going to be on tonight. Is there anything we've yet to touch upon. No.
I think we've glanced on several things, the most important of which is the number of people who visit parks in this day and age, which is over three hundred million, anywhere from two ninety to three hundred and ten million, depending on the year, depending on the weather.
Only one for every American almost it is almost three hundred and fifty something on million people.
And the backlog and the backlog of things that the National Park needs to fix to welcome those three hundred million people in the fashion that they should be welcomed.
All right, Now, this is normally where I make you bring up the subject of the Castle Young. Yes, but you don't bring it up that often because you aren't volunteering on it anymore.
No, and at this time of year it is closed.
But briefly tell people about the castle and Young.
Well, for those of you who live in the Boston area or close enough by that you would drive into Boston for a historical tour of sorts. The Boston National Historical Park is at the Charlestown Navy Yard where all iron sides is all iron sides. The USS Constitution is not, I repeat, not part of the National Park Service. It is Department of Defense. It is a flagship of the entire United States Navy. It's the most fabulous ship afloat, But it is not part of the National Park Service.
It is docked in a national park, that is true, but it is not part of the Park Service. The park rangers who work at Boston National Historical Park protect it, they talk about it, they do several things with it, but they do not have any let's see what is the word. They do not have any instrumental thoughts or ideas about the ship. The ship is run by the Navy. But aside from the ship, about one hundred yards away is the US is Cast and Young, which is part
of the National Park Service. It is a World War two Fletcher class destroyer that served in the Pacific. During World War two, twenty three soldiers sailors sorry sailors were killed on board and two Kamikazi attacks. And that ship is available for you to walk on in season and to take tours on in season.
What is the beginning and end of quote unquote the season?
Well, you know, the weather is strange. Sometimes it is. You can get on it in March through October or even November if the weather stays good in November, and sometimes if there are on a weekend, if the volunteers are there and they and they feel that there are enough visitors that day to open the ship, they will open it. But it's something you have to call for before May. Usually the ship is opened by mid May.
Okay, and I am assuming a November closing, either the first or the thirtieth.
Well, except for veterans day. Yes, bye bye bye by the first except veterans state. He try and keep it open until then obviously for that reason.
Right, And why is it parked here?
Well, uh, there are There are a couple of different reasons, the most important being that in the Charlestown Navy are during World War Two, fourteen of the exact replicas of that ship were built Fletcher class destroyer. They were built all over the country because there were one hundred and seventy God I haven't done the tour in so long, I forget, but one hundred and seventy five Fletcher class destroyers were built around the country, and fourteen of them
were in fact built in Charlestown. So even though the cast in Young, which was built in California, was not built there, there were fourteen ships exactly like it built there,
and it just so happened that it became available. The park back in nineteen seventy eight was looking for a drawing card cass and Young became available because the Navy was going to scrap it, and the Park Service said, wait a minute, hold on a second, we'd like to have your ship, and so it was brought up here in tow by from Philadelphia and it's been here ever since. It opened up to the public after three years' worth of work on it so that we could invite people.
It was open to the public in nineteen eighty one.
Hold on there, we need that chip up here.
That's right.
Okay, where do you get all this knowledge? I mean you're not reading this. Oh you know how well?
If you know this stuff, if you do it long enough and say it enough times, you do remember it. Morgan, how do you remember all this stuff that you do in your club shows. Yeah, it's the same thing, and it's much less. It's much less work. If you talk about a ship every single day for fifteen years, you should remember what you're talking about.
And I am able to instantly regurgitate. And I'm sticking to that word information about Dobie Gillis because I watched it. I loved that show that used to be on five days a week, and I watched it when it was still in network viewing. It used to be It's ironic and I just pulled that example out of thin air. But I'm gonna give this point. Dobie Gillis was a show that was able to say one of its contributing actors had that show and the next show on CBS. It was The CBS Show. It was on from eight
thirty to nine on Wednesday nights. The next show that was on from nine to nine thirty, The Beverly Hillbillies, had this same actor. So he could see himself if he were home on a Wednesday once playing the dean at Spter Pryor Junior College, Raymond Bailey, and then see himself playing the banker Melbourne Drivesdale on the Beverly Hillbillies. Now, all that just proves I have a mind for minutia.
That's right.
Nobody cares about any of those details, nobody, but I remember those details. And that's just the way I do what I do. And now I'm going to take a break. When we come back, we've got a phone call from Michigan. So I've got a lot of things to accomplish. And let me accomplish the first part by saying time and temperature here on night Side eleven fifteen nineteen degrees.
Now back to Dan Ray Window World, Nightside Studios on w b Z News Radio.
All right, let's go to Michigan and speak to Jeff. Jeff, thank you for calling, good evening and welcome to night's side.
Yeah, you were talking about national parks, yes, and who are the persons that contributed, especially presidents, Supreme Court.
Justices, etc.
Fdr Not surprisingly because if you look at his Wikipedia page it goes on for pages. He began the CCC,
the Civilian Conservation Corps. We're in during the Great Depression, so many families had nobody working that the federal government had a program called the CCC, which still exists in Michigan, where if you do not have a male working in a family, and you have males that are over eighteen years of age, that the government hired one of the males who were over eighteen, if there were more than one, would hire at least one, and those people would be
put on detail in our national parks. If you go into a national park, you'll find all kinds of trails that it would have stairs and so forth, their railings, bridges, et cetera. That's what the CCC did. And he has part of an anti poverty program. So he killed two birds with one stone by hiring those people.
Dixie. Were you aware of the CCC, Oh.
Yes, very much.
So it's called the CCC. You can look it up Civilian Conservation Corps. It's probably it may be the most impactful of all the contributions with any president to the National park system. And we shouldn't be surprised because, as I say, if you go to Wikipedia and look up what FDR accomplished. As people said at the time, but if you elected as long as he lives and that's what.
Happened, that all of that is true. And not only is all of that true, but some of the things that those people built back in the thirties and early forties they still exist, and that's right, they still exist, but they're a little rundown and they need to be replaced in some places. So that's some of the backlog work that needs to be done. We really should, after this amount of time and that amount of youth, is to rebuild some of the stuff that the CCC did.
Absolutely, Jeff, I have a question, wait, don't hang up yet.
Yeah, about your.
Family affected by the CCC. Did an uncle or father or grandfather get work because.
Of the.
Well, I don't recall that, but I just urge people because see I grew up in Republican neighborhoods. FDR was never mentioned. FDR was never mentioned. They didn't want to bring him up.
Well, he was a Democrat, and.
That's right, and so they didn't want to hear about him because if you got as I say, look, he created social security. That's Medicare is is modeled on social Security. The money that you contribute to social Security is not just a piece of paper, it's a T bond. And that's why these people on Wall Street I call them the criminals of Raw Street. The investment bankers, the equity funds, the hedge funders, they all want that money and they can't get it as long as it's in T bonds.
So they're going to convince us all so you're not going to get anything, So you'll get you'll you'll give up everything to get something right. And so I'm just suggesting that people review the history of FDR because it goes on.
For pages as well.
It should and that's why he would and it should, and that's why he was elected as long as he lived, and it wasn't the wealthy that elected him.
He was the last president to serve. After he was elected four times, he just didn't serve, that's right.
The fourth term, No, I think he worked himself to death. To tell you the truth, he was working on the UN when he died. He was in Warren Springs, Georgia, and at that time he was down there for his polio treatment and he was sitting working on the United Nations, the only institution that we have to end all wars.
And that was occurring at the end of the Second World War, when we could have beat our chest and said anybody else, and instead he was working on an institution hoping to end all war, not to make more war.
That was way off base. That was April twelfth, nineteen forty five. And the reason I know that speaking of the Cast and Young is because on that date the Cast and Young was hit by a Japanese kamakazi and one of the sailors was killed. On that date, the day that Roosevelt died.
Wow, that's interesting. And boy, I tell you, if you go and look at the film of his case on coming back from Warren Springs, Georgia, it's so moving because there are people black and white crying on the tracks all the way.
Well, as I said, he was elected four times, did not finish out his fourth term. And let's let's pick a number, let's say, thirteen years, thirteen plus years. Under his watch, he had a depression and a World war that is enough.
To gray any film.
And the fact that ye, he survived both the depression and within a couple of weeks the end.
Of World War two, and and he suffered from polio.
And he suffered from polio. That lot on his plate, a lot on his plate.
Well at Hyde Park, you see his wife. People asked why his FDR so different from the way he appeared when he went to Harvard with people that were classmates. They said didn't recognize him, not physically, but because of his behavior and his wife. His wife and a guy named Rexford Tugwell who was in his cabinet, his first cabinet, they both thought that the reason that he had changed so much was because of the polio and when because they didn't know what it was when it first hit,
and for years they didn't know. And he was urged to get exercise with when his legs didn't work. So he used to be in uh in bed and hide Hyde Park and get on his crutches and go all the way down the road, just their road, to that house and back on his crutches.
When work.
And he was an avid swimmer.
That's right, he was.
He was constantly and obviously his legs didn't function as they should have, but his upper body strains.
Well.
Yeah, he became quite quite other.
Than the average because he had to do most of the work of swimming with his arms.
If I might, I'll just add one more thing that's I think is amazing. Ok Uh, there's a converse. Yeah, there's a conversation. I think it might have been Tugwell who brought this up. He wrote a wrote a very good book on Roosevelt called The Democratic.
Wrote that.
Democratic Roosevelt as opposed to his cousin Teddy. And he said that at one time, while he was meeting with Roosevelt in the Oval office, Franklin had shown him how he used to get a book from the bookshelf across across the room, and he got down off his chair and crawled to the bookshelf and put the book in his teeth and crawled back.
Necessity is the mother of invention, as the old saying goes, you find a way, but.
He humiliates a man. And you see, so his wife and tug Will both said they thought that Polio had changed him. Yes, well, thank you very much for allowing me that. Because I didn't know much about Roosevelt, I had to I read several books on him many and because I was so amazed we ever had a president like this, I couldn't It's hard to fathom because, in my opinion, there are very few presidents that have more
than one or two things to recall about them. And we are still living with Social Security, which is one of the two best programs in this country. The other one is Medicare, and Medicare is being destroyed by Medicare advantage because every Medicare advantage program must be subsidized by
real Medicare and your private insurers. If you get into those programs or you're one of the members, you may get silver sneakers, but you won't get your basic services because you have to go through a primary party to get approval for your and that always takes months. It takes weeks and months to get that approval, and then you have to sign up with whoever it is in the group that allows you that service, and that will take you weeks or months.
And so.
This is working the wrong way because now Medicare advantage because of their advertising and because they use the word medicare in their name. They shouldn't be they shouldn't have been allowed to do that.
But I've got news.
Thank you, Thank you for your call.
Excellent program, Thank you, goodbye.
All right, if you want to call in, maybe not take as much time as Jeff did just then ten thirty. Well he started on topic.
Yeah he didn't. He didn't quite get there.
Eight eight, nine to nine, ten thirty. We're talking about the National park system. Now I could switch to baseball right now is the reason I'll switch to baseball because of tomorrow. But I'm not going to switch to baseball. Damn the torpedoes full speed over there you go. So I'm about to take my break. This time it will it will not be adjacent to ABC News. We did all that earlier in the eighth hour and the nine
hour and then the ten hour. Right now at eleven thirty, I'm just going to say time here on night Side again. Eleven thirty, temperature nineteen.
Degrees, It's night Side with Boston's News Radio.
You know what, Dixie, this is the first time I've had you on talking about National parks where someone didn't call in and say they're planning a trip in a day, a week, a month or so, and can well give them details on this National park.
Well, we have a half an hour left. Let's see what happens. But first of all, let me say hello to Jennie and Lawrence and Susan in Brookline.
You're on your computer talking to these people while you're on the air with me, aren't you.
No, I'm looking at the National Park Service thing here online, Okay, so that I don't forget to say a couple of things I wanted to say, and that is at the National Park Service. We have discussed how there are four one hundred and thirty three parks, but they take up eighty five million acres of land, which if you squished it all into one place to be a state, it would be the fifth largest state after Alaska, Montana, California, and Texas. It would be number.
Five, bigger than Texas.
Yes, no, less than Texas because the next the next state is New Mexico, and the National Park Service is a few million acres larger than New Mexico, so it would be number five.
Now, speaking of New Mexico, I heard this today, Donald Trump wants to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. Yes, and I forget the woman who was President of Mexico said, then what we should do is rename those places that were hours to begin with back in the eighteen hundreds, and that would include New Mexico, Texas, Arizona,
and call them whatever names those territories had back then. Now, I think this is politicians licking their finger, holding it up in the air to see which way the wind blows. But I doubt any of that is going to happen.
Well I doubted too, But let me give you a prediction. Okay, prediction I get fifty bucks that says, if you're correct about El Trumpo wanting to rename Denali as mout McKinley, that is not what's really behind this. What's really behind this is for him to find some political hack senator or maybe his new Secretary of the Interior to say, why don't we name this mountain after El Trumpo? It's the biggest in North America. Why wouldn't we name it El Trumpo.
I don't think he is that egotistical.
You're wrong. You are wrong, Morgan. I'm sorry, but you're wrong on this part.
I don't think he would name a mountain after himself.
No, he'll get someone else to do it and say, oh, yeah, it's about time we did that.
Nancy has tapping me on my hand with a look of disbelief that I let these words come out of my mouth.
And she is correct also.
Because she reminded me he wanted his face added to Mount Rushmore.
That's correct. So just remember everything that happens. And by the way, by the way, I am going to give out a grand round of applause that at the Mercenary Minor League football season has now ended and we can go on with our lives.
Oh you meaning are the fact that Notre Dame lost tonight.
Ah, well, that's too bad, what a shame.
All I heard was scoring updates and it sounds like they acquitted themselves as well as they could.
Well they were. They were being beaten senseless for a first three quarters, so.
So uh, Oklahoma let their foot off the accelerator in the last quarter.
Well, my my, my distaste for Ohio State is only beaten by my distaste for Notre Dame. So I don't care.
What about your distaste for the New York Yankees.
Oh that goes without saying.
Yeah, but which is number one in Dixie?
Distaste the Yankees for sure. The New York frauds. You got the name wrong, New York Frauds.
As you can tell people, we have no calls. So if you want to end this silliness. Well, he didn't call about medicare I think.
He might have the question. The question I wanted to ask him was has he ever had the opportunity to visit Hyde Park in New York and visit the Roosevelt House.
Well, he was from Michigan, so flip a coin on that one.
And also the Eleanor Roosevelt House, which is down the road a piece from the Franklin or Roosevelt family house.
They have a separate house for respect paid to Eleanor versus respect paid to Franklin.
Yeah, well that the Hyde Park the family residence is the is the Hyde Park one that the Roosevelt family was along with Eleanor. But she later had her own house down the road for various relationship purposes and for recreation purposes as a pool and everything. And I was actually at the opening of it back in the eighties. Okay, it's very nice very small, but it is another house in that area that you can visit as part of the National Park Service.
Where do you see the National Park Service going? I'm not looking at the next four years. I'm going to say all inclusive, at least a decade from now, what can we expect?
Morgan, that's like asking me how the Red Sox are going to do. I don't know who's on the team. I don't know what the budget's going to be. I don't know who's who they're going to get, who they're going to lose. It's impossible to tell what's going to happen. All I know is we cannot allow the continuing demise of the properties which we are now allowing.
He was mentioning he the previous call was mentioning all the things that were done. You know CCC related there in Michigan, as far as the Roosevelt National Park and your point that you've heard of that you knew all about that, and there again it's proven that disrepair has the need of being addressed across the National park system.
Well, we're still walking on bridges that the CCC created, and you can't do that after fifty sixty years. You just you have to replace them, especially with the crowds, the use that they get by the two hundred and seventy five to three hundred and ten million people that visit these parks every year, they get worn out.
And once again, I'm going to have you repeat something I made you tell me last hour. Tell me these three things again that people can do everyday. Citizens. Right now I'm being heard in thirty eight states and parts of Canada. Let's just stay with the thirty eight states. Canada worry about their own national.
They have a wonderful national park system of their own, so yes, they should tend to it.
Is there national park system better run than hours in Canada?
Well, I don't know that for sure, but I know that they have fewer parks, so it is a little bit easier to handle fewer parts.
Okay, well we've got four hundred and twenty four hundred and thirty three. Yes, what can Joe and Jane citizen?
Do?
You gave us an answer? And what the same three examples for anybody who didn't hear what you said last hour? Repeat that now please.
Well, you can keep on visiting the parks that you like or the parks that you're near try every once in a while ago to a park that's not near you. You can volunteer to help out the park in some way, and you can join organizations like the National Parks and Foundation, the National Parks and Conservation Association because they are they back up the parks as best they can. And you can also donate money to them and in turn, they help parks out.
And a donation can be a couple of bucks. Yeah, it doesn't have to be one hundred dollars bill in an ovelo. It can be a couple of bucks because all donations will add up.
And when you when you go to any national park, there is usually some kind of fee box, not a feed box. Well, some parts have fees, most of them don't, so there are donation boxes and you just drop a dollar or five dollars in and that's fine.
Okay. I'm going to take a break on this point. If somebody wants to call in with the last ten minutes of show, you can, or just keep listening. Dixie and I will try to be entertaining for the end of this Monday version of night Side time and temperature eleven nineteen degrees.
Now back to Dan Ray Live from the Window World Nightside Studios on WBZ News Radio.
Dixie, guess what we got a call? Yes we do, and it's a person you've spoken to before. David and San Francisco, welcome to night Side.
Hello Morgan, Hello Dixie, Hello Nancy, Hello Gray, Elo, Toni in Ohio and Glenn and Brighton and Martin's Exchange's birthday to everybody, it's same to you. And my question is this is to Morgan and Dixie. Why do they call the twenty one gun salute?
You know, Dixie? Do you know?
Not off hand?
No? I do?
Good God, this is the kind of thing that you would know.
Yeah, Morgan would know. Okay, Morgan, what is it?
Because seventeen seventy six the Elaga Jacky of the birth of the United States dates. Add those numbers together, one plus seven plus seven plus six equals twenty one. I don't know why it's it's three volleys of seven. I don't know.
Yeah, well, it's a patriotic gesture.
Okay, is what it is.
And more you're so good.
Well, and Charlie Brown's father was a barber, because Schultz's father was a barber. Yeah, that was the last question there.
Yeah, and one more just on why Luther Kange's birthdays. He was actually born of Michael King Jr.
I know that, yes, you know that.
And why how do you get the name Martin Luther?
I know his father decided to not that change.
But what was it?
Well, when Martin, when junior was a child, his father went to Germany to actually enhance because he was a pastor too, and he went there to actually enhance his abilities as a pastor, and he ran into the teachings and uh and uh of readings of Martin Luther and was very enhanced and decided to take his name. Okay, to change his name because Martin Luther was a radical,
actually yes he was. Yeah, Actually the pope was going to have him summoned to Rome and to burn at the stake is a heretic, but you know.
If you know, that's why the pope wants to see you don't go.
Yeah.
Well, Luther was actually excommunicated and because he reallysed it up against what was called indulgences, which where you had to pay for your sins. I was making all the priests and the bishop's rich, and he didn't like that. So that's what happened.
But it is topical because today we celebrated Martin Luther King's birthday. Now, do you want to talk about national parks on any level?
No, I had my question for you about seventeen seventy six.
That was.
I thought Pixie might know because they do do to anyone gun salutes off of ships and stuff, and he might have known that. So thank you, Morrian.
Well, that's kind of what I've built my career upon, stupid facts.
Yeah, you are the ringtail Rounder.
Yeah, there you go.
Where does that line come from?
Then?
I don't know where'd that line come from?
House of Games?
Oh?
Yes, remember that one we talked about that movie.
Mike, you are the ringtail router. There you go, the hesitated maunt of line. Okay, well, thanks for taking my call, buddy.
And uh please please, there may have another. That's what he said. Was that was why he said that, just to be a smart ass to the end.
No, he was in the Marines, remember.
I remember that. But somebody has just shot you and out of your last dying breath, do you give a smart bet answer like police? There may have another?
Yeah, that that's a line that you give when you're in the Marines, after you have you Uh, you are either shot or you have to do too many push ups? Please, sir, may I have another?
Then? I didn't know? Well, thank you.
Yes, remember Mike was in the Marines.
Yes, his character was anyway.
Well the character you remember he had when he was at the union, uh, the telegraph station. He ran into the William Macy character and he said, here, take my money, you must take my money.
Yeah, and he did that just to show Louise Fletcher's character that he was a car artist and he could get this guy to give him money.
Yes, he was showing off to uh, to bargain.
Yeah, there you go, very.
Good, right, very good? All right, David, take care okay, Saturday, okay, buddy, you do that.
Okay, And Dixie, we have no callers left, so let's kill four minutes. Shall we go?
Right ahead? What do you got?
Well again, you never really answered. You answered by saying, you don't know what. Ten years down the road the national parks would look like. I'm gonna pick one. Now to the park Yellowstone.
Okay, you must have the King of the Mountain, the King.
Of the Mountain. You must have an opinion about Yellowstone and what the government will do for it, or is the super duper volcano going to happen within the next decade. I'm probably They say it could happen within the next five to ten years, or it could be one hundred.
Years, but more like a thousand years.
And it's coming, it's coming.
Well, I don't know if they're that sure that it's coming. We're not going to be around what it does, true, because it does, we won't be around anyway.
I plan on being in Vegas. That might be a bit too close, yes, a bit a bit. Now, do you have a website with people who can communicate with you?
Just my personal one? I don't think I give that out, all right, I.
Didn't know if you wanted to give it out. Nope, no, all right, We'll fine.
They can they could, They could contact you somehow and you could give it out.
No no, no, no, no no no no. And that reminds me just to do my own personal plug. People, you want to come see me do trivia not tomorrow but any other Tuesday, two sixty nine Washington Street, the Midway Restaurant. I'm there from six to seven point thirty. And I want to thank Dan for filling in for Rob for tonight. Hooray for Dan Jacob, whycoth Gary King and you, sir, and I see Christian the cape is
called back, but not enough time to take him. And he already came on once tonight, So Dan, you can tell him he won't make it tonight. We apologize. I want to thank Nanty, Nancy and Gray sitting next to me and the listeners.
And remember, if someone doesn't call in tomorrow, I'm available to talk Baseball Hall of Fame inductees.
A subjected, A subjected, possible subject if if one of my other guests don't show. I don't think that's going to happen.
Yes, but in the past it has oh done.
I've I've had guests not show up where they were confirmed. But what are you going to do? But as I was about to say, for all the people who listen tonight and as well called in, thank you. We do radio for you, and I appreciate your participation. And that's basically about it. So it's time for these two words that I use is my personal salutation by Boston