Alvin McClure

Alvin and I were fellow DJs on the University of Michigan's radio station, WCBN, back in the early '70s. There were half a dozen of us who palled around together off the air — Greg Bowman, Tavi Fulkerson, Ron Huminey, Jan Spiegel, Alvin and me — and we were a very tightly knit group. One weekend I particularly remember, I'd been bragging about the Tiro a Segno, a private dining club in New York City which had a grand total of one Jewish member — my father — and Alvin, Tavi and I jumped in my car on Friday morning and drove 14 hours from Ann Arbor (via Cincinnati, where we paused long enough to catch Alvin's mother singing with the Cincinnati May Festive Chorus) to 77 McDougal Street in Greenwich Village to eat there ... arriving a couple of minutes after the kitchen had closed for the evening! Bartender Larry greeted us warmly and took us to an open-to-the-public restaurant next door, told the maitre d' there to feed us well and not give us a check. We ate one of the best meals I've ever had, weren't even permitted to leave a tip, ate an even better meal the next night at the Tiro, caught Loggins & Messina in concert at Avery Fischer Hall that evening and a Jets game Sunday afternoon, then schlepped all the way back to Michigan in time for Monday classes! (Those were the days, my friend....)

With the passage of time, our group moved off in different directions and drifted apart. In 1997, though, CBN held a big party to celebrate the 25th anniversary of its receiving an FM broadcast license, and Greg, Tavi, Alvin and I were there for the festivities. Alvin and I have stayed in touch since, although he lives way the hell out in Minnesota now, so we haven't yet been able to work out a time and place to get together. (I was actually at the Minnesota airport in March 2003, changing planes on my way out to California, but the post-9/11 tightened security measures and the briefness of my layover made it impossible for us to link up then. Damn!)

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