Cruisin’ With Crosno

  I’ve lost a friend.  We used to hang out for a few hours every Sunday, usually as I ran errands around town.  He did most of the talking; I listened, as friends do, and laughed.  When I got his jokes, I laughed with him.  When I didn’t, I lovingly laughed at him.  We never met face-to-face, and that’s a regret I’ll carry with me for a long time, but his nasally, animated voice will echo through the streets of the Southwest for generations. 

  Today, it’s hard to speak the word “Crosno;” it hangs behind a lump in my throat.  The opening syllable catches, and hits the air sounding weak.  The short “o” almost disappears, fades into a sigh.  But over time, it will get easier and easier, as the sense of loss subsides.  And it will be easier to tell younger generations of disc jockeys about the man who made a career of swimming against the current. 

  Steve Crosno lived his life entrenched in a furrow of mystique; myths were created by the wake he left behind him. In that regard, he was like a Kennedy.  In others, like a court jester.  I once heard that he lived in a house, divided by a curtain from its front wall to its rear.  According to rumor, he lived in one half and rented out the other.  I’ve also heard that his parents were wealthy, and when they died he inherited their large home in Mesilla.  In this telling, Crosno rented out its many unused rooms to college students.  Certainly, it would be easy enough to find out the truth.  But to do so would begin to slice away at his air of mystery, and I like the Crosno that I’ve created in my head to match the voice on the radio.

  Crosno found his passion early, when in 1956, on his 16^th birthday, he turned on the microphone for the first time at KGRT, then a Top 40 station.  For the next 50 years, he would work at stations in Las Cruces, El Paso and San Diego.  In 1961, he began hosting “Crosno’s Hop,” a teen dance TV show that aired Saturday afternoons on channel 7 in El Paso.  It ran for 9 years during rock-n-roll’s developmental decade, and is still remembered fondly by a generation who grew up watching, and listening to, Crosno.

  I found out about Crosno’s death on Sunday, when I turned on “Cruisin’ With Crosno” on 101 Gold.  Everything seemed normal, until Program Director Mike McKay announced that Crosno had passed away on Saturday, and encouraged listeners to call in their memories of the man who had become their friend over the years.  One lady said, and I’m paraphrasing, “He was like our Dick Clark, only better, because he knew us. He knew the music we liked.  And he was ours.”

  As he signed off on Sunday, with Tavares’ version of “Goodnight, My Love,” it really hit me.  I was probably hearing my friend’s voice for the last time. Our Sunday afternoons would never be the same.  No one can fill the hole created by the loss of the irreplaceable, inimitable and eccentric Steve Crosno.

 -From Pulse
   August 10, 2006