Over the years, Connecting Point's Brian Sullivan has explored different facets of the American dining experience. Whether it's the enduring legacy of the roadside diner, the disappearing family-owned doughnut shop, or the multi-generational pizza place that helps keep the community together, each locale offers up an experience that is just as memorable as the food. In this next story, Brian visits Jack’s Hot Dog Stand, a small joint in North Ada

Over the years, Connecting Point's Brian Sullivan has explored different facets of the American dining experience. Whether it's the enduring legacy of the roadside diner, the disappearing family-owned doughnut shop, or the multi-generational pizza place that helps keep the community together, each locale offers up an experience that is just as memorable as the food. 

In this next story, Brian visits Jack’s Hot Dog Stand, a small joint in North Adams that was there long before any of today's diners, doughnut shops or pizza places, and shows no signs of slowing down!  

Read the full transcript:

Zydalis Bauer, Connecting Point: Over the years Connecting Point's Brian Sullivan has explored different facets of the American dining experience. Whether it's the enduring legacy of the roadside diner, the disappearing family-owned donut shop, or the multi-generational pizza place that helps keep the community together, each locale offers up an experience that is just as memorable as the food.

In this next story, Brian visits a hot dog stand in North Adams that was there long before any of today's diners, donut shops, or pizza places -- and shows no signs of slowing down.

Brian Sullivan: Eagle Street in North Adams has only one way in, with an entrance that looks like something we might see in a history book of what people thought the modern American street would look like heading into the 20th century.

There's also one business on this historic road that appears as though it's been here since shovels first hit the ground in this section of downtown. And since 1917, it's managed to outlive nearly every other local business that's popped up here, from World War I to present day.

So, how did something as simple as a place that sells hot dogs and hamburgers survive over a century's worth of economic downturns and catastrophes? Well, the answer is actually quite simple.

Jeff Levanos: We put out our food as cheaply and as efficiently. It's always fresh, it's inexpensive, and people we have -- we rely on repeat customers. It's a very simple process.

Brian Sullivan: Twelve seats, a couple of grills, fryolators, lots of dogs, lots of burgers, steamed buns, and lots of locals coming in. That's been the recipe for success here.

And even though North Adams has trended more artsy and touristy since the late 1990s, Jack's has always been the townie spot for generations of working class folks raising their families here, whether they're working at the hospital, the bank, hanging sheetrock, pounding nails, or doing whatever they have to do to maintain a bottom line, this has been their lunch counter.

Jeff Levanos: This is the people you need to take care of. This is the people we cater to. It's like the cherry on the sundae to have tourists come in.

But, I know January, February, and March...you need your regular customers in here. And those regular customers are your contractors, you know, and everybody you just mentioned

Brian Sullivan: That philosophy of taking care of locals was preached by Jeff's grandfather, the first generation of this Greek family enterprise. Now, in its fourth generation with Jeff's son, Joe, in the mix manning the grill.

Apparently, the philosophy works because there are still customers coming in who've been here for all four generations.

Gene Kemp, Jack's Customer: I've been coming here for seventy four years. Can you imagine that?

I sat in there, I sat there, and my mother sat next to me. Seventy four years.

Brian Sullivan: And is not just for the townies. If memory serves, they used to let college creeps like me in here, too.

Back when I was in college out here, none of us had cars, so we almost never ventured out beyond our one block radius of campus. But on those rare occasions when we had an extra couple of bucks in our pockets, we would walk a few more blocks to come down here to Jack's.

It turns out that the couple of bucks I had back in 1995 could still serve me well now, all these years later. In that case, I'll have a chili Cheeseburger and a double cheese with onions, mustard, and relish.

I did have to wonder, though, for a place that does zero advertising and, aside from the giant hot dog up front, no marketing either, how is it possible to stay afloat with prices that really don't reflect the current day and age?

Jeff Levanos: Owning the property I'm in, I mean, I don't have a mortgage. I can keep my prices down. That's that's another thing my grandfather always said, you know, if you if you own the property you're in, you don't have to pay rent. You don't have to pay mortgage. You know, you can keep your prices down. He was adamant on keeping the prices down as low as you can.

Make your profit, make your...and he always told me, you're never going to get rich owning Jack's, but if you take care of it, it will take care of you.

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WRSI first went on the air in 1981 as a small, locally owned radio station in Greenfield, Massachusetts. The station has experienced many changes over the years, including a move to Northampton in 2001, but through all the ups and downs one thing hasn’t changed: the music they play and their commitment to the community they serve. To celebrate 40 years of WRSI, Producer Dave Fraser talked with some of the people responsible for the western Mass r

WRSI first went on the air in 1981 as a small, locally owned radio station in Greenfield, Massachusetts. The station has experienced many changes over the years, including a move to Northampton in 2001, but through all the ups and downs one thing hasn’t changed: the music they play and their commitment to the community they serve. 

To celebrate 40 years of WRSI, Producer Dave Fraser talked with some of the people responsible for the western Mass radio station’s success over the years. 

Read the full transcript:

Zydalis Bauer, Connecting Point: WRSI first went on the air in 1981 as a small, locally-owned radio station in Greenfield, Massachusetts.

The station has experienced many changes over the years, including a move to Northampton in 2001. But, through all the ups and downs, one thing hasn't changed: the music they play and their commitment to the community they serve.

To celebrate 40 years of WRSI, producer Dave Fraser talked with some of the people responsible for the Western Mass radio station's success over the years.

Joan Holliday, WRSI Host: That's the Felice Brothers on the River. I'm Joan Holliday.

I came here 11 years ago.

Monte Belmonte, WRSI Host: Coming up in 10 minutes, we'll play Get the Connection…

I started here in 2002, I was basically a glorified intern and sometimes lucky sidekick to the Morning Show host at the time, who happened to be Rachel Maddow.

Jim Olsen, Former WRSI Program/Music Director: I was mostly, as I recall, the midday host and I was the music and program director.

John Reily, Former WRSI Host: My name is John Reily and I'm known as Johnny Memphis, because that's the radio name I took when I started working at WRSI in 1986.

Ed Skutnik: It was a loan for $60,000 to build the tower, $20,000 for operating costs. And I said, "What's operating costs?"

And the guy at the bank says, "That's so you could operate for at least three months until your cash starts coming in." "Oh, that's a great idea."

So, there it was. Got on the air at noon, July 26, 1981, and our first disc, jockey Phil Drumheller, Phil D did the first broadcast.

Jim Olsen: Ed started the station, literally himself, built the equipment in the studio himself. When I got there, the music that was programed was Ed's record collection, literally.

Ed Skutnik: We're running reel-to-reel tape machines, because there was no digital back then. We ran records and tapes.

John Reily: This goes out to Dennis down in Hadley. He wanted to hear some Fats Waller.

We played like jazz, blues, reggae, pop, country, folk, singer-songwriter. It was really quite a wide mix.

I had a lot of shows, but I did eventually really end up in the afternoon. Which was really the best place for me because for one thing, I got to interview all these amazing musicians who were coming to the area who would play live in the studio.

We've got Joe Ely and John Hyatt in the studio. Joe, what you have for breakfast this morning?

Joe Ely: Quiche and caviar.

People like Taj Mahal, who of course, is from Springfield, and Dan Hicks, and, you know, B.B. King. I interviewed B.B. King on his road bus, actually, next to the Calvin. You know, hundreds of people that I got a chance to meet and have fun with.

Jim Olsen: Radio was so different back then, because this is the pre-internet era, even pre digital music era. We were playing LPs to start with. CDs were just coming in at that point.

Back then, we all worked a lot of hours and we had fun. You know, it was really a fun kind of Wild West Place back then.

Monte Belmonte: I was in the periphery of the Buddy Rubbish era, too, and he's one of the big legends of WRSI.

There was a legendary story where the beaches at Puffers Pond were going to be closed, because they couldn't afford to keep them clean or something. And Buddy was like, "I'm not going to have it!"

So he said, "I'm going to broadcast from a raft in the middle of Puffers Pond until we raise enough money to open the beaches up again."

And so, a lot of the dumb things that I've done over the years, are based on that kind of notion. So, like being stranded in the middle of downtown Northampton, in the campsite, in the cold to raise money for the Cancer Connection is a direct analog to that Buddy Rubbish on a raft in the middle of Puffers Pond.

Joan Holliday: Coming up, we'll have Bird Songs today, we'll talk....

 Oh, I do bird songs with Dan Zomick, because everybody loves Bird Songs. It's sort of a it's a hallmark of my show now, which I never thought would happen. But if I miss a day, people freak out.

Announcer: Different is Good. Mornings with Monte on the River.

 Monte Belmonte: This was another Facebook sing along Thursday...

Ed Skutnik: It's unique, it's live, and I think there's more diversity in this area. Then you're going to find in the big cities.

John Reily: It was allowed to kind of flourish in this way, in this soil of the Pioneer Valley, and become this thing that's very unique, like the Pioneer Valley is unique, in a way that's not so predetermined that you know, you can flow with it a little bit, flow with the river, as it were.

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Author Bill Harley’s latest novel weaves a fictional tale about a young girl, her on-the-spectrum brother, and their monumental cross-country journey after the death of their mother. Harley joined us to share an excerpt from that novel, “Now You Say Yes,” where protagonist Mari contemplates her future as a foster kid while watching a solar eclipse during her journey across the U.S. Read the full transcript:Zydalis Bauer, Connecting Point: Author

Author Bill Harley’s latest novel weaves a fictional tale about a young girl, her on-the-spectrum brother, and their monumental cross-country journey after the death of their mother. 

Harley joined us to share an excerpt from that novel, “Now You Say Yes,” where protagonist Mari contemplates her future as a foster kid while watching a solar eclipse during her journey across the U.S. 

Read the full transcript:

Zydalis Bauer, Connecting Point: Author Bill Harley's latest novel weaves a fictional tale about a young girl, her on-the-spectrum brother and their monumental cross-country journey after the death of their mother.

Harley joins us to share an excerpt from that novel, "Now You Say Yes," where protagonist Mari contemplates her future as a foster kid while watching a solar eclipse during her journey across the U.S.

Bill Harley, Author: So, briefly, to get the context of this passage, Mari and her nine-year-old adoptive brother Connor, are driving across the country. And she gets Connor to go,he doesn't want to go, he wants to stay in Los Angeles, even though there's nothing there for him. But he loves astronomy and she -- it's the week of the Solar Eclipse in 2017, in August. And she says, "If you get in the car, we'll go to the eclipse." And that's all Connor wants. So he gets in the car.

And they get to Missouri the day of the eclipse, and they come -- they park in a rest area on Route 40 -- Route 44-- and they're there with a couple of hundred other people watching the eclipse.

And so, this passage is really, in some ways at the heart of -- Mari's afraid of going into the foster care system, she's lost, she doesn't know what happened to her. She doesn't know if their grandmother, in Lynn, Massachusetts, is going to take them in. And here's the eclipse.

She's with -- they're with a family, a family has is sitting with them, a family from Texas.

A sudden and brilliant explosion of light makes Mari jump. Through her dark glasses, she sees a small speck of sun, the tiniest sliver, peek out from behind the dark moon. It bursts across the heavens, showering everyone there in its shining. A bright, gleaming light that promises something beyond all promising.

"Oh my god!" Marco whispers.

Mari feels a giant intake of breath. Everyone, not just this family, but the entire planet, or at least everyone along the path of totality, gasps.

Then she hears a collective sigh, a breathing in and out like one being. She lowers her head and takes off her glasses, and what she sees around her is as astonishing as what is happening above.

She sees everyone looking up, their mouths open. But she sees beyond that. She sees their pudgy knees and their wheelchairs and their skinniness and their grasping and their wanting and their desperation to fit in.

She sees the group of teenage girls peering upward, their neediness and cliquishness forgotten for the moment. She sees that everyone is broken, not all broken in the same way, but in myriad different ways.

They may try to hide it, but they are. Mari is broken, too. She has lost her mom. She gets mad too easily. She has a bad mouth. Some people look at her funny because she's a foster kid or because she's adopted or just because she is who she is.

She's not alone. It's the hiding of the brokenness that keeps everyone alone. She belongs to all of this. It's being broken. That makes her part of it, part of being alive.

People laugh and hug one another. Disregarding differences and seeing sameness. Birds start calling like it's morning. A breeze ripples across the grass and through the crowd. Connor stands there, staring at the vanishing eclipse.

Mari puts her glasses on again and watches the sun come back. The moon passes on by, inching ahead of her brighter sibling.

"Goodbye," Mari whispers to herself.

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Don’t touch that dial! We’re looking back at 40 years of unique music and community-focused radio at WRSI the River. Erika Wainwright Vélez previews the food, music, and dancing you’ll find at the 25th annual Festival Latino of the Berkshires. Bite into one of the best hot dogs in the state at Jack’s Hot Dogs in North Adams. Learn how the New Music Alliance fosters the careers of talented musicians in western Mass. 

Don’t touch that dial! We’re looking back at 40 years of unique music and community-focused radio at WRSI the River. Erika Wainwright Vélez previews the food, music, and dancing you’ll find at the 25th annual Festival Latino of the Berkshires. Bite into one of the best hot dogs in the state at Jack’s Hot Dogs in North Adams. Learn how the New Music Alliance fosters the careers of talented musicians in western Mass. 

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