The song remains the same

I grew up one town over from Teterboro, N.J., which was essentially then and probably now a couple of residential homes and a private airport, the second busiest in the state behind Newark Airport. 

When our Cub Scout pack got a tour of the airport, it included a ride in a plane that taxied down the runway and a look at Arthur Godfrey’s private plane. That was a bigger deal to some of the adults than us kids; he was of another generation, and one of those celebrities, like Art Linkletter or Danny Thomas, that you couldn’t quite put your finger on just why they were famous. 

Turns out one thing Godfrey was well-known for was Teterboro Airport. A longtime amateur pilot, in January 1954 he buzzed the Teterboro control tower, which got him a suspended pilot’s license for six months. According to Wikipedia, while he claimed that windy conditions forced him to turn back immediately after takeoff, in truth he was angry that the tower had not given him clearance on the runway he requested. 

Obviously used to having things go his way, he was still peeved seven years later when he recorded Teterboro Tower, a novelty song about the incident that portrayed the Teterboro flight controllers as a bunch of rubes placing our blameless hero in jeopardy. Apparently, that kind of bitterness was a Godfrey trademark. He was a true prick, someone who fired more than twenty cast and crew members of his national radio show during a two-year reign of terror, including singer Julius La Rosa right on the air. 

Godfrey was also a public champion of vasectomies as a way to control overpopulation, and he creeped me out as a teenager with a TV Guide quote about his sex life following his own vasectomy. “It’s never been better,” he cooed, or something to that effect. Jesus. I still shudder thinking about it. 

Given its proximity to downtown Manhattan (you could be on 33^rd Street by Madison Square Garden in 15 minutes if there’s no traffic), Teterboro was a popular arrival and departure site for rock bands. If none of my fellow Cub Scouts were moved by the sight of Arthur Godfrey’s parked plane, how might we have felt nine years later if we’d witnessed this July 24, 1973 photo of Led Zeppelin outside their private Boeing 720 at Teterboro Airport? 

Thank God Arthur Godfrey never posed in front of his plane looking like this: