Tracy Cole

To women, he was the "monster" on the radio. Long before anyone knew the name Howard Stern, the WREB airwaves were filled daily with the voice of the first shock jock in New England. People thought Joe Pine had an attitude, but in the afternoons in the 60's and 70's, Tracy Cole blasted anything and everything, not by yelling. He never sounded angry, but he was. He often spoke in a monotone voice saying unbeliveable things to unknown thousands of people and generally getting them angry.So who was this guy, and what was his problem?
A man by the name of Chuck Crouse first hired Cole somewhere in Vermont in the 60's, and he had migrated down to Holyoke to do a talk show in the afternoon. Sounds simple enough, but Tracy was a different sort of character. At a time when you couldn't say "poop" on the airwaves, he figured out a way to use no bad language, but manage to insult people on a daily basis, usually one on one on the airwaves, and he got away with it.
The first time I met him was on the steps of the Chicopee radio station, WACE.. My mother was a talk show junky, and she listened daily to the rantings of this man with a very distinguished voice, and decided one day she wanted to meet him and present him with a gift. We hopped in the car, and headed to Chicopee so she could personally hand this guy a happy face smile button. I have no idea what she was thinking or why something as inane as a smile button was so important to her, but she was Mother and she wanted to do it. At that time, Tracy had been fired from WREB for something...sacrificing a puppy on the air or something like that.
People who listen to the same voices on the air for a while tend to develop a mental image of what that person looks like. Several times over the years, folks were amazed when they met me, as they always seemed to have a different impression of who I was. I guess I sounded taller on the air. This was the case with the first meeting of Tracy Cole. My mother had an impression of this man to look like Robert Goulet or Tony Bennett .When we got there, we rang the bell, and were told to wait a minute. When Tracy Cole came to the door, my mother didn't think it was him.. Where was the Tony Bennett look alike? Standing there was her idol, the man she listened to every day, and never missed a word. He was bald, had a scraggly beard, cross eyed, coke bottle glasses, a pot belly and clothes from the Goodwill bin. She introduced us to him and gave him the button, then asked for a picture of him, I guess so she could show her friends and say, "You'll never believe who this is".
To say she was taken aback is an under statement. He was not a good looking guy. I face for radio never rang mre truthfully.
It seems to me that Tracy was fired or lured back to WREB because when he left for WACE, the entire listening audience went with him, so back he came to the 930 frequency and settled into his old habits.
Let me tell you a little bit about Joe Alfano. He owned WREB, and was a very well known character in Holyoke. He was about 5 foot 2, and a dapper dresser if there ever were one. If you saw Joe as a regular on the Sopranos, you'd think he was perfect for the part. His opinion of air talent was, "have fun, do a good show, and don't get me sued". Not a difficult set of rules to live by. He prayed daily that Tracy Cole would abide by those rules. So, it's a warm summer day in the early 70's, Joe tells his daughter Judy, the secretary, that he and a salesman are having lunch at the Yankee Peddlar on Northampton street, and if he is needed, that's where to get him.. He and the salesman go to the Peddlar, Tracy Cole starts his program, and all is right with the world. This was the day, Joe later told me, that he knew even God hated Tracy Cole. As he recalled that day, they had a window seat at the Inn, and it was sunny and clear. Tracy was starting some diatribe on the airwaves, and because he could never really figure out how to use the tape delay system in the studio, he was on every day absolutely live. What went out over the airwaves was heard as it happened, not 7 seconds later. Joe never knew this. So now on this brilliant summer day, Joe and the sales guy are having a meal, and Tracy is taking a call. At the moment of the call, a huge black cloud passes over the Inn, and torrid rain and lightning obliterate the sunshine, and for three minutes Armegeddon falls from the sky. The black cloud passes, the sunshine returns and a waitress comes to Joe's table. "Mr. Alfano, there's a call for you from the station". Joe takes the call, then departs the Inn immediatly.
There were several dozen calls to the station going on as Joe raced back to the "scene of the crime". It seems there was a heated argument transpiring over the airwaves between Tracy and some woman. After a few minutes, about 3 minutes to be exact, the caller posed the following question to Mr. Cole. "Is it true you f### dead dogs", to which Tracy answered, " Yes, better than f###### you". That's it, lights out, game over.
That was the second time Joe had to go on the air to apologize to Western Massachusetts, and the first time he found out that Tracy never used the delay system. Tracy not using the delay was like Russian Roulette, and the gun finally went off. It wasn't bad enough that the caller used the word, but he did too, and that's what freaked out Joe. Tracy kept his job somehow and never did another program without the delay.
A few years later during a commercial break, Tracy went to the mens room and with dead air being broadcast, Judy alerted her father that Tracy disappeared. Joe found him, unconscious wih his head in the toilet. He had a stroke. A bad one. They sent him to the hospital, and a week later, I was doing his afternoon slot on the air. It was not an easy transition.
About a year later, Tracy was seen zipping all over Holyoke in his motorized wheelchair, somewhat of a rare device in those times. You could always see him coming because he had this triangular orange flag on a 10 foot pole flapping in the breeze. His voice was affected by the stroke, so he never spoke very much. Ironic how someone who made a living with his voice didn't want to speak any longer.
I ran into him on High Street one day and introduced myself. I'm not sure to this day if he even knew who I was. I begged him to do a show with me, and for some reason, he said he would.
The day he came into the studio, he rolled up to the consol and just stared down, spoke very little. It was the first time he had been back since the day of the stroke. I opened up the show, told the audience he was there, and the phone lines lit up. What was I getting myself into? What if people started to rag on this guy, saying things like it couldn't have happened to a nicer person? The calls started, and everybody was nice. I was stunned. A community that was driven insane by the tirades of this guy was honestly concerned for him.. What I didn't expect was Tracy's stroke had altered his reasoning and thought patterns. He gave strange answers to questions. "Do you miss the radio, Tracy?" "I think I went to the races that day" he would reply.
He barely used more than ten words, and what I had expected did not happen. He wasn't even sure why he was there.
That was the last time I talked with Tracy. He continued to fly around the streets of Holyoke in his chair, most likely coming from nowhere and headed to nowhere. He died in the summer of 1989 with little fanfare, I didn't even know he was gone till weeks later. I still have a tape of one of his shows. A slow deliberate banter, a sort of kettle you were just waiting to see boil, but it never did. He left that to the audience.
Joe Alfano had an illness also. Started with a lactose intolerance thing, but became something else. Shortly before he died, I went to see him at his house, but for some reason I could not physically see him. I never found out why. I sat in the hallway of Joe's home and talked with him through a partially opened bedroom door.. His voice was weak and scratchy, he was very ill. Tracy Cole came up in the conversation, and I asked Joe why, perhaps, he thought Tracy seemed so very miserable all of the time. Joe told me a story that might have been the beginning of Tracy's anger.
It seems that Tracy was a sort of gypsy in life for a long while. His youth was average, and after High School, he went on to college to study whatever it was he was pursuing at the time. Tracy had a roommate who was a go getter, and this roommate in the 1950's wanted to start a new magazine. He was sure this mag would work, told Tracy all about it, but said there was one problem.. He needed 600 dollars, and he wanted Tracy to loan him that amount, in return for a percentage of the magazine. Tracy told him it was a foolish idea, but the roomie said, " I'm going to do this. If you won't lend me the money, I'll get it from somebody, or I'll sell my furniture, or something". Tracy laughed at him, and told him someday he'd thank him for not lending the money.
Tracy never got his thanks, and his roommate did raise the money. Not lending that 600 dollars, in hindsight, was a big mistake for Tracy Cole, but for his roommate it was the start of a magazine empire that goes on to this day, and it is still headed up by Tracy's old college friend, Hugh Hefner.