By Ron Flatter

NEW YORK

The anniversary sneaked up on me today. I was getting ready for work around 5:40 a.m. Wednesday, trying not to wake up my wife as I scrolled through Google News on my cell phone to see what would greet me when I rolled into Fox News Radio.

Up it popped somewhere between Mitt Romney and the melting Antarctic. “L.A. Riots, 20 years later.” The headline from the Los Angeles Times continued. “Rodney King still gripped by past.”

Immediately the flashes ran through my mind. How I was just starting work at a new radio station. How I felt helpless as the news built like a tidal wave. How I fled Los Angeles to fly to Northern California. Yeah, that last one looks pretty bad. It feels even worse.

I had to look it up again, but April 29, 1992, was a Wednesday. That would make it I believe the fourth day KMPC Radio was in its all-sports format on which I was working as a part-time producer. That was in addition to my full-time work as the assistant sports editor at the Star-News of Pasadena, Calif.

My job at the station was basically to book guests and screen calls for the midday show hosted by Joe McDonnell and Todd Christensen. Todd had not yet joined the show; that was a whole other mess that was yet to begin. So it was just Joe, board operator Lew Stowers and me – the latter two of us being frustrated, on-air performers who were mostly without microphones.

I don’t remember one thing about that day’s show, but I do remember vividly something that was said right after.

Host Jim Lampley, working with “Wonder Boy Producer” Todd Fritz, was told early on that the jury was in with a verdict in the case against the four police officers charged with beating the living hell out of Rodney King. (For the uninitiated, Google “Rodney King” or go back about whatever else it was you were reading.)

As Jim was also the news anchor at KCBS Channel 2, he felt compelled to allow calls about the King case as much as those about the Lakers and Angels and Dodgers and whomever (that would be the Clippers and Kings). Those calls came to overwhelm the sports calls, and eventually the show simply turned into Rodney King talk.

Along the way Jim was asked if he felt there would be any abhorrent turn of events should the jury, God forbid, came in with verdicts of not guilty.

Jim followed with a response from which two remarks are seared in my memory. “I think the black community has bigger fish to fry,” he said. “I don’t think there will be any violence in the streets.”

Hoping Jim was right I was expecting to enjoy an evening off from work at the Star-News that evening. That proved fateful.

Once the jury came back with the not-guilty verdicts, it was not long before hell broke loose. (Again, Google “Rodney King” to see what happened next; I’m sure YouTube will fill in the gaps.)

Because I had had my own brush with the law not so long before – namely a drunken-driving conviction – I was without a driver’s license and therefore a car. So I was not going anywhere. A woman “just friend” whom I had been seeing in hopes of being more than “just friends” was not about to drive from her apartment in Santa Monica to mine in Glendale just so I could get away from the mounting chaos.

As I was channel surfing to follow what was going on via analog TV, I was also on the phone. At least one or two conversations were with one local TV sportscaster with whom I shared my darkening mood and the feeling I might be in the wrong place at the wrong time. This was a sportscaster with whom I felt a simpatico. After all, I was among other things the TV-radio sports critic for the Star-News. And sometimes I felt like I was the only critic who understood this guy – although in reality Tom Hoffarth at the Daily News and Bob Keisser at the Press-Telegram did, too. The guy had actually left L.A. some months earlier to go to work for ESPN. Amazing to know that I was once had that kind of kinship with Keith Olbermann.

Some time that Wednesday night the report came that the anger and the burning and the rioting were working their way from Hollywood toward Brand Boulevard and in the general direction of Glendale.

Now I felt trapped. Panicking – yes, panicking – I called a friend in Northern California and begged him to let me stay with him when I flew up there. Mind you, I had no flight booked. No car to get to the airport. No way of knowing if there would even be a way to the airport. I just had to flee.

I notified my bosses – Randy Hill at the Star-News and Len Weiner at KMPC – and said I was calling in sick and freaked-out for the next few days. For whatever reason they accepted this, even though they could have insisted I show up during this emergency.

There were no more flights out that night, so I booked myself on the first one the following morning to get to San Francisco or Oakland or San José or whatever Bay Area airport would land me and get me close to someone willing to give me a ride.

I stayed up all night – waiting for the riots to creep up my street. Riots that never got close to Glendale. Not that I knew that at the time. So the SuperShuttle got me to the airport hours early. The flight got out on time. While my friend was out of town on some sort of holiday I chilled at his house in his guest room and in his hot tub and called for delivery food and little else.

By the time I returned to L.A. the following Monday the city had calmed down. My apartment was still standing. I still had jobs waiting for me. And life returned to about as normal as could be expected under the circumstances.

My first day back at the newspaper I remember seeing one of my colleagues – André – as I walked into our newsroom on Colorado Boulevard. We caught each other’s eyes in a way that spoke volumes about our long conversations over beers and rides and whatever else. Long conversations about race.

“’Dré,” I said, “I’ve never been so ashamed to be white.”

“Ron,” he said, “I’ve never been so ashamed to be black.”

My shame was in part from the jury verdict but also the manifestation of my fear Wednesday night. How I fled town. How I was not there when others had to shoulder more than their share of the work at the station and at the newspaper.

I am pretty sure I did not feel the same shame as André, since I cannot put myself in his place. He said he was disgusted by the violent reaction to the jury verdict that was delivered two hours away in Simi Valley. I am sure Google got you to the fact the court case was moved out of L.A. because of all the pre-trial publicity.

Twenty years later I am not entirely sure where André is. I remember contacting him on Facebook, but since I abandoned Facebook I have lost track. Randy is writing in Arizona for FoxSports.com. After he and I worked for a few years together at ESPN Radio in the ’90s and early ’00s  I believe Len wound up programming a radio station in Florida. Todd also went through ESPN on his way to “The Dan Patrick Show.”

And I am pretty sure you are aware of what happened with Keith, who was actually instrumental in my winding up at ESPN Radio. About two or three weeks after the riots he called me and asked, “Do you still want to get out of L.A.?”

“That might be a bit strong,” I said, “but what do you have in mind?”

“I have been asked if I could identify candidates for a producer job in radio, and I have him your name. Are you interested?”

Long story endless I wound up at ESPN. For that I have Keith to thank, although I am also certain I lost his respect during my time there since we realized we were not as simpatico as our arm’s-length, critic-performer relationship allowed in L.A. He warned me he wore out producers. I can vouch for that.

I did, however, present him with a gift of sorts upon my arrival in Connecticut. It was a cassette tape of some old KMPC moments, including bloopers and other sundry curiosities. Among other excerpts on it was Lampley, shall we say a rival of Keith, with that “fish to fry” line and the incorrect prediction about the streets of L.A. that March night in 1992.

Finally, one thing about Rodney King that goes back to the Star-News. This story had probably become apocryphal within days of the riots, so 20 years brings it a grain of salt the size of what’s out in Bonneville, Utah, but it started out supposedly the Sunday morning that King was beaten 1991.

The tale goes that someone called the Star-News shortly after sunrise that day to say he had videotape of a guy getting the crap beaten out of him by some over-zealous cops. Whether it was the cameraman – George Holliday – or someone close to him I never heard for sure. Supposedly, whomever answered the phone told whomever called that the paper was not interested.

I am not sure if this inspires a prequel to “Sliding Doors,” but for me it has remained the punctuation mark to the Rodney King riots of 1992. For all the others, well, there’s Google.