By Clint McElroy
HQ 114 | SUMMER 2021
I got my first job in radio when I was hired by Gordie Hall to be a part-time member of the news department at WKEE. Gordie was a terrific news guy and had worked with my dad years earlier. One extremely slow news day I was doing what the part-timers do — filing — and came across a file marked “Credip.” I asked Gordie what Credip meant and he replied, “Credip is Credip. You’ll know it when you see it.”
The items in the Credip file offered up no clue to its purpose. Actually, that’s not true. They offered too many clues — an Associated Press wire story about a UFO sighting, a postcard with a giant plaster cowboy grinning, a recipe for something called “Tuna Puffs,” a newspaper clipping with an engagement announcement on one side and on the other side a movie ad for Our Man Flint. And oh, so much more.
I could detect no discernable pattern to reveal the purpose of the Credip file, and Gordie would never tell me. To this day, I still do not know.
That said, even after Gordie left the radio station I maintained the Credip file, adding whatever I thought felt, well, right. I included things that were odd or mundane, happy or sad, normal or nonsense. Before you ask, yes, I have searched “Credip” on every web browser in existence. The only thing I got was some kind of sauce or chip dip from Crete.
In time I included documentation of the broadcast stunts I was involved in: being frozen in a block of ice for 48 hours, broadcasting live from a haunted dentist’s office, becoming diver certified so I could do an entire morning radio show underwater in an effort to save Huntington’s Olympic Pool. It all went into the Credip file.
I actually have a Credip file of my own at home and still maintain it. I have this fantasy of my three sons going through my papers after I’m gone and wondering, “What the hell is this?”
I think it’s beneficial and maybe even a bit therapeutic to have a Credip file, full of things you can’t quite wrap your head around, but maybe, just maybe, with future study and consideration, you might figure out. There’s no law that says we must solve everything, find every answer. I encourage you to start a similar file of your own.
When I left WKEE to take a job at a radio station in Florida, I left the Credip file behind. When I started the new gig, I started a new Credip file. I did that at every stop in my career. When I left one behind, nestled safely in a filing cabinet, I saw it as a sort of starter kit, like the sourdough bread dough you gift to people. My intent was that someone would investigate the file, be mystified and yet be intrigued enough to continue to feed it. The only clue I offered on each file I left behind was a small note attached to the file. It was a quote from Gordie Hall: “Credip is Credip.”
Who knows, maybe this very column will end up in someone’s Credip file. Pretty likely, I think.
