I was out walking the dog Sunday morning and was looking for something to listen to, when I landed on, of all stations, CHIN-AM. The Zelda Young Show, which has run there for decades, was in progress but the host - who can be a crazy insecure egomaniac - wasn't on for some reason. 

Instead, her producer, known only as "Martin" who never gives his last name, was taking her place. I wasn't going to listen long but then I suddenly found myself unable to turn it off. "Martin," who clearly isn't comfortable on air, was interviewing a regular from Israel, a normally voluble guest who's on every week. But he clearly didn't like the new guy. 

As the interview began, the guest started giving one word answers to every question posed. "No," he'd say, leaving a ton of dead air. "Yes," was his only response to a second question. Some of the queries would be answered with "right" and then he refused to add anything else. 

As the silences got longer from the guest, the questions got longer from the host. And the one word replies just kept coming. I was going to tune out, but as this went on, it was like a bad traffic accident - you simply couldn't look away. Finally, after an interminable 15 minutes, he thanked the guest for his insights and hung up.  

I was alternately laughing and commiserating with the guy. That never happened to me except once. Most of the interviews I did in my radio days were pre-taped, so we could edit them for time and just leave the best stuff in. But one night, we had on a guest who did almost the exact same thing. It was Lorne Greene, of all people - yes, the former Ben Cartwright - live on the phone from his home in L.A. 

He responded to all our questions with one word replies or one sentence answers. I called it the "dentist appointment" because it was like pulling teeth. 

At one point, I pulled out a quote that I'd found in my research that had been printed in the Toronto Star a few years back, and asked him what he meant by it. An annoyed silence, if there is such a thing, followed, after which he insisted, "I never said that." That may have been the longest answer of the entire interview. When I pointed out the day, date and newspaper it appeared in, he got even more irritated and denied it again. 

Finally, we cut the scheduled half hour chat short and said goodnight. But as a former radio guy, Greene must have known exactly what he was doing. Why he did it, I don't know. For some reason I still can't figure out decades later, he agreed to the interview but clearly didn't want to do it. So why say yes in the first place?

In any event, it was that incident in my own past I was reliving as I listened to this poor producer try to wring more than a single word out of his expert. And as cringeworthy as it was, I couldn't help but laugh. 

I'm not sure if anyone else has had this experience, but it's as painful as a knife wound while it's going on. And I'm thankful it only happened to me once. Because when it comes to my live Lorne Greene interview, it wasn't exactly a Bonanza!