AHEAD OF THEIR TIME

YESTERDAY For twenty years, downtown visitors have puzzled over a fading sign painted on a dilapidated building between Commerce and Jackson just west of Central. If you’ve wondered why the unlikely trio of Arthur Godfrey, Pierre Salinger, and B.R. McLendon once joined together for the purpose of “presenting Gordon McLen-don’s Car Teach,” read on.

By the mid-Sixties, cassette decks, then called “cartridge tape players,” were appearing in some American cars, and in 1966, Ford announced that these musical playthings would henceforth be available options on all Ford autos. The younger McLendon, a promotional genius who pioneered Top 40 radio, sensed a vast marketing opportunity hovering on the horizon. In 1967, backed by his father B.R., he founded Car Teach, a producer of educational and motivational tapes for automobile use.

Alas, the visionary’s vision was just a few years Too early. In 1967, motorists were not yet willing to cruise along listening to Up the Organization and Winning Through intimidation or to memorize the One Minute Manager at traffic lights. America was into Jefferson Airplane, the Who. and (shudder) Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billy Joe.” The venture went nowhere.

KVIL radio personality RON CHAPMAN, who was a KLIF deejay in the early Sixties, recalls McLendon’s abortive attempt at behind-the-wheel education. “As usual, he was way ahead of his time,” says Chapman.

But what did Arthur Godfrey and Pierre Salinger have to do with all of this? “Nothing,” says Chapman. “He just cut them in on the deal for the right to use their names” And he may not have gotten his money’s worth. At the time, Godfrey, the ukelele-plucking star who was one of television’s pioneers, had not appeared regularly on television for eight years. Salinger. JFK’s press secretary until the fall of Camelot in 1963, was not on the list of America’s most admired people in 1967. Car Teach folded in 1969. but the monument remains, at least until the real estate marke im-proves.