I came to Rhode Island in 1978, so I missed the early career
of Salty Brine. He was a
radio / TV personality with a deep jolly voice, who hosted a children’s show
called “Salty’s Shack.” (He portrayed a sea captain, naturally.) By the time I
got to Rhode Island, he was best known for reading the school closures on the radio when it
snowed. There’s a small region in northwestern Rhode Island, the
Foster/Glocester area (pronounced "Fosta/Glosta"), very underpopulated, a bit more elevated than the rest
of the state, which gets more snow than the rest of the state; they close
school when no one else does.
And Salty would boom: “NO SCHOOL FOSTA GLOSTA!”
And children throughout Rhode Island (even those who didn’t
live in the Foster / Glocester school districts) would cheer.
Does that tell you something?
We had local celebrities when and where I was growing up. I
remember Rusty Nails the
clown, who was on Portland television in the 1960s; if you watch “The
Simpsons,” you’ll see a version of him as Krusty the Clown (Matt Groening, the
creator of the show, grew up in the area at the same time as me).
But I do believe that nowhere are those local celebrities as beloved as Salty
Brine is beloved here.
Why?
Rhode Island is small. We treasure our own. And if they’re
successful (and known beyond the borders of this small state), we treasure them
even more.
And I am told by people of my age from Massachusetts that
they used to love Salty Brine, beamed
in from Providence, back in the 1960s and 1970s.
So Salty Brine is a legend, in Rhode Island, and even
outside its borders.
You see? You don’t need to reach far in life. You just need
to be well-known in your little neighborhood. If you manage that, all kinds of things can happen.
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