Wing ding wisenheimer

The Minnesota Daily Advertising department had many things but it boasted of only one team of siblings -- Jim and John Gross. Both sales reps, Jim (bearing a resemblance to Letterman's flame-haired announcer Alan Coulter) was a nice enough guy but it was his younger brother John that proved memorable. Though he had the same red hair, John wore it in bangs complimented by a catapillar moustache to boot. He was the first guy (I knew) to have a Sony Walkman and he boogied around the offices grooving to music only he could hear (the concept!) and at one time or another John labeled each of us in Creative as a "wing ding wisenheimer" -- a term not of malice but good humored inredulity.. This picure reflects John pretty well and it also shows the feeble seven foot tall partitions that separated our "offices". Why he's being carried away by a giant fly, I have no idea.


CRAIG ADDS: I'm thinking that Jeff has mixed up Jim and John; can anyone provide the definitive answer? My best Jim (?) Gross memory: Jim walks into our office and invites Jeff V. and I over to his house for a party, promising "a good time, a few drinks, a little grass..." After he left, Jeff confessed to the same confusion I had: "I thought he was talking about having a nice lawn..." (We're so cool...)

TO WHICH JEFF REBUTTS: John was the younger brother. Absolutely. In rereading the above paragraph how is that not clear? (And as I recall, Gross the Younger was an avid gardener and his lawn was the envy of many a putting green). Oh, Jesus... as I write this I'm starting to think Craig is right -- that the Alan Coulter Gross was John and the wing-ding etc. Gross was Jim. And to think I've been sending Christmas cards to the wrong guys all these years...

BRUCE ADDS: John the older. Jim the younger (and more impetuous).