A saddle-stitched book requires inserts of four pages each. When the MNI sales force failed to sell at least four ads per insertion, the company would fill the empty page or pages with public service ads. Until a man named Peter Bovis, who looked a lot like Kojack and smoked like a chimney, came along and suggested that unsold pages be atomized into restaurant ads for a given geographical area. I was hired to do phone sales and support and write copy for local restaurants for the "Dining Page" that would appear in local editions of Time, U.S. News, Newsweek, and Sports Illustrated.

Not a bad gig until the recession of '74 hit, and I was laid off--two days after moving from a West 73rd Street apartment to a Nassau Street apartment in Princeton.