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Last Summary Update: 11-09-2026

Eighter From Decatur Story
Airdate: Thursday - December 12, 1963

WOR Show
Original Airing

audio

(NOTE ABOUT TIME REFERENCES: Since there are many different copies of shows out there from different sources, all time references are from the beginning of one single recorded copy, since various copies, depending on when the recordee started recording, had news at the beginning or shortened themes. The times would vary from copy to copy.)

First Spoken Line After Theme Ends

I'm just lonely people. . . (singing)
Opening of show is missing - these are first words of the available recording.

Show Description

[ Courtesy: GROK Summary - - ]   
  This is a classic Jean Shepherd free-form broadcast centered on a long, vivid World War II army anecdote about boredom, first passes, and getting fleeced in a Joplin, Missouri crap game, with various digressions on money, gambling, and the gap between war fiction and reality.

### Opening and Digressions
Shepherd frames himself as the "little man" singing the "lonely sensitive walking people blues" against an uncaring world. He touches on the Christmas season as worship of purchasing power and money. At the bank he hears about the "new money gambit" - people wanting only crisp, unused bills as gifts because old, worn currency feels contaminated by previous owners and hard living. This leads into reflections on the history carried by dollar bills and his own youthful experiences with gambling, from penny-candy machines to a disastrous alley crap game.

### Camp Crowder Life and the Arkansas River Flood
He returns to his time at Camp Crowder in the Ozarks. Endless rain, mold, repetitive rifle-nomenclature lectures, salt-pork meals, and general physical misery dominate the days. One major diversion was being trucked to the Arkansas River to sandbag a levee during a massive flood. The river was enormous and muddy; their sandbag dike dissolved like sugar in coffee. The unit barely escaped, but one truck was lost and eighteen soldiers drowned. Back in the barracks, the same dull training continued. The only bright spot mentioned is the arrival of a tiny shipment of Milky Ways that went almost entirely to higher ranks.

### The First Pass and Joplin
After weeks of this, the men finally receive their first pass. Shepherd and his friend Zinsmeister (paired only because their last names start with S and Z) head to Joplin, Missouri - an overloaded "oasis" drawing soldiers from multiple nearby camps. The town is jammed, filled with clip joints, fistfights, and inflated prices. At the only hotel they pay $6.50 each (a large sum on roughly $18 monthly pay) for a supposed double room, only to find it packed with seven army cots and more than twenty other soldiers who had paid the same. The clerk insists it is still a "double."

### The Crap Game
Depressed and broke for entertainment, they wander the streets until a friendly-seeming soldier invites them into an alley for cards or dice. Under a fire escape, with a flickering streetlight, they are quickly taught a simplified version of craps. They win at first, then more men appear (many of them the operator's confederates). The tide turns; the short sergeant gets "hot," and Shepherd, Zinsmeister, and another soldier named Gasser lose everything. The winners melt into the darkness. Later they meet the same sergeant in the elevator; he gives them three dollars for the bus with a gloating grin. The night ends in a overcrowded, chaotic hotel room full of drunks and noise. At dawn they stand at the window looking out at Joplin and realize, for the first time, that "this is the army."

Shepherd notes how war novels and movies almost never capture this side of army life. The monologue closes with a brief commercial for Mandarin House restaurants, a plug for a Christmas toy fund, and a quick, unfinished sketch of an even more extreme craps game he once saw in the Everglades under blankets amid mosquitoes and alligators.      
  

WOR ID

Time	Station ID (All times approximate)
15:13	speaking of slogging this is WOR AM and FM New York. . .

Commercials (All times approximate)

Time	Sponsor	Notes
41:27	Mandarin House
42:25	WOR Christmas Fund

Music (All times approximate)

Time	Music Title	Notes
11:20	Unknown - Piano 4

Engineers, Staff, and Guests in Booth

Time	Engineer, Staff or Guest
41:20	Ed Beaty

Instruments and Special Effects Played During the Show

Instruments Played

Guitar

Related Plots / Story Lines and Other References Used

Time	Category	Date	Title	Comments
08:53	People		Zinsmeister, Carl
08:53	Short Stories and Columns by Shep		Zinsmeister And The Treacherous Eighter From Decatur

Airdate History ' - Original' date is earliest known broadcast)

This Show

		Date	Title
		December 12, 1963	Eighter From Decatur Story	Original Airing

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"Imagine 4,000 years passing, and you're no longer a memory - Does it seem possible to you?
You better believe it's possible, not only possible but certainty." - Jean Shepherd - October 7, 1971