In The Attic Of My Mind

As a boy growing up in Brooklyn in the 1950s there is a television show that scares the bejesus out of me.

Being only four years old, I don't know the name of the show. But it's "Zacherley At Large." The show is on WABC-TV, Channel 7. We live in the attic apartment of a two-story house in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn. It has charcoal gray walls. And to get to it, you have to climb these stairs which to my little legs seem to go on forever.

The world can be a scary place. I find my pet turtle squashed on the steps to the apartment and can't figure out how in the world, he got out and who would be so mean to squish him to death.

My home is down the block from Flatbush Avenue, a busy commercial district with lots of stores and shops. My grandma has a small shop where she makes window blinds.

The Soviet Union is kicking our ass in the space race. Those Commie Russians have already launched Sputnik, the world's first satellite into orbit. The Cold War is going on between America and Russia. A slice of pizza costs 10 cents. Ike is president. Cars are made in America with big fins.

But I don't know about any of this. What I do know is when the promo comes on TV for "Zacherley At Large," my day is ruined. I run into the kitchen screaming.

"Mommy, mommy. Zacherley is on the TV. Make him go away."

Zacherley horrifies me. He looks like a ghoul and hosts horror movies on Friday and Saturday nights. His show is enormously popular.

"Zacherley isn't real honey," Mommy tells me. "Don't be scared Al."

In his white makeup, Zacherley's skin has the pallor of death. He wears a black undertaker's jacket. He has what looks like circles of blood under his nose. His hair is parted in the middle at a time when every man parts his hair on the side. Only a scary person would part his hair in the middle.

It is the era of the man in the gray flannel suit. The world is a gray place. All the shows on TV are in black and white. No one has color television.

If it's raining outside, the skies in New York are gun metal gray. Into every young life, marches a little fright. No matter how fast I run to my mother I can't get away from Zacherley. I know for a fact he is stalking me through our TV.

After a while, I don't see him on Channel 7. Just when I think I have finally escaped him, Zacherley shows up on WOR-TV, Channel 9, hosting an equally horrifying show. I know beyond a reasonable doubt this ghoul is out to snatch my soul. I don't know exactly what a ghoul is. But I hear grownups say Zacherley is a ghoul.

Zacherley's show is revolutionary. He interrupts whatever horror flick he's showing to talk to the monster and comment. Then the movie resumes. No one has ever done this before, that I know of. I am too young to appreciate the cringe-worthy, cornball jokes.

I am having a nightmare. Zacherley is stepping out of the TV set and taking me back to the crypt on his show where he keeps a coffin.

Now they never show Zacherley's wife in the coffin. But I know she's in there, because Zacherley talks to her during the show.

What sort of person would keep his wife, the mother of his children in a coffin, if he wasn't a ghoul. I know who. Zacherley that's who.

"My Dear."

That's what Zacherley calls his wife.

"I'm going to drive a stake through My Dear's heart just to make her happy," Zacherley says from the TV set.

When he switches television stations Zacherley has "My Dear" delivered from his old station in a packing crate. It's right there happening on TV.

I wake up in my bed screaming. Mommy comes running into my room. I am damp with sweat. Mommy can smell the fear on me.

"What is it Al," Mommy asks me. "You were having a bad dream. What was it."

"It was Zacherley mommy."

"Zacherley isn't here. See," Mommy says as she turns on the light to reassure me.

I go back to sleep.

Zacherley has a son named Gasport. Now that's a creepy name. Feel free to key in some werewolf howls and a whole bunch of horror movie music right here.

Zacherley keeps Gasport in a burlap sack hanging from a rope. I can see the sack and the rope and hear Zacherley talking to his son. He Is absolutely fiendish. Probably sneaks into graveyards looking for corpses to eat after the show.

When Zacherley appears, I know ghouls, zombies and monsters must be near.

At the end of his show, he signs off saying, "Goodbye. Whatever you are."

I know, just know this is his way of saying so long to all the vampires, werewolves and monsters that lurk in the dark shadows.

My dad knows all about Zacherley too, He talks to me about him. But I don't believe a lot of what Daddy tells me.

"Zacherley's show is make believe Al," Dad tells me. "It's not real son."

"No daddy it is real. He has heads on his wall. They're smeared with blood."

"Those are fake decapitated heads. And the show is in black and white. They use Hershey's chocolate syrup. On TV it looks like blood."

"How do you know," I say. "Have you tasted it. I don't believe you. No it's real blood. No one could fake that. You said the heads are decapitated. What's decapitated."

"You know son, chopped off. Decapitated means chopped off."

"See Dad. I told you Zacherley was evil."

"Evil all the way to the bank," Dad says.

My Dad and I are looking at the TV.

"And look at that dad. Zacherley has a pet amoeba wrapped in that stuff. Her name is Thelma. Dad what's an amoeba."

"Well Al, an amoeba is a living organism. It's this thing."

"Thing?"

"Yeah thing. And that stuff the amoeba is wrapped in is called cheesecloth."

"Cheesecloth?"

"Yeah cheesecloth. And Al, the amoeba isn't real. It's just some gelatin."

"What's gel-a-tin?," I ask slowly sounding out the word.

"You know like jello."

"Like Mommy makes."

"Yeah like Mommy makes."

Daddy and I look back at the TV. Zacherley has a needle and is going to inject Thelma with something. This is another of Zacherley's mad experiments. It's terrible.

Thelma doesn't want to let Zacherley do it. She's scared.

"Heel Thelma. Heel, Zacherley shouts."

"Ha-ha-ha," Zacherley howls in his diabolical Zacherley laugh.

"Daddy this is awful. Zacherley is yelling at Thelma like she's a dog."

Zacherley injects Thelma with the needle. The experiment is done.

"The experiment is fake," Daddy tells me.

"The needle is real. Look at it."

Daddy leaves the room. I go to bed too scared to watch any more Zacherley alone.

It's 1960 now. Nixon's running against Kennedy for president and in a publicity stunt, Zacherley announces he's running for president too. He has about as much chance as Transylvania does of becoming the 51st state. Transylvania is where all the vampires live. I know this from watching too many Dracula movies.

By the time I'm 8 years old, Zacherley is hosting "Chiller Theater," on WPIX, Channel 11, and he no longer scares me.

In my teen-age years, Zacherley transforms himself. But not into a werewolf, a vampire, or some other creature of the night, but into a cool, smooth talking DJ on WPLJ-FM, a progressive rock station. This is the era of prog rock. Bands like Yes, Genesis, King Crimson, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Zacherley talks about the music.

I recognize the voice from when I was four years old. I wonder how someone can go from being a ghoul to being DJ cool. It is a time when DJs on FM stations pick what music they play. There are no playlists. FM radio and especially WPLJ are front and center in my life. And Zacherley, who used to scare the bejeebers out of me as a child, now speaks to my soul.

Zacherley is so cool, he even gets to introduce the Grateful Dead when they play the Fillmore East in New York City in February 1970. You have to be cool to get a chance to do that, because The Fillmore is the center of the counterculture.

In October 2016 at the age of 98, Zacherley dies not at the hands of some demon, but peacefully in bed. There is a huge writeup in the New York Times.

Zacherley and I went through a lot together though we didn't personally know one another. The world changed and we changed with it.

Without Zacherley, there never would have been an Elvira - Mistress Of The Dark, or Mystery Science Theater 3000 and who would have told me about bands like the Grateful Dead. And I too probably would have been different.

And now that I am old and somewhat monstrous in my appearance, I wonder if I frighten little children when I look at them. Looking back now on all those years, I can safely say Zacherley you were one of the highlights of my youth, whatever you are.