I haven’t thought about Jean Shepherd for a long time. But there was a time – I think it was when I was in junior high school – when, like many adolescent boys in metro New York, I couldn’t get enough of him.

You may know Shephard are the voiceover of and inspiration for the movie “The Christmas Story” (which I’ve never seen). But I remember him as a man who had a must-listen radio show on WOR in New York City and who was the author of several books of stories that I remember devouring, most notably “In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash” and, I think “Wanda Hickey’s Night of Golden Memories and Other Disasters.”

Shephard, who was raised in Hammond, Indiana, came to mind as I was ruminating about today’s #stampoftheday, a 5-cent stamp (issued in April 1966) that marked that 150th anniversary of Indiana’s admission to the Union as the nation’s 19th state on December 11, 1816.

The stamp features a special sesquicentennial logo created by Paul Adam Wehr, an Indiana native who a talented watercolorist, accomplished illustrator and commercial artist. The National Gallery of Art has one of his paintings and during the middle of the 20th century he did many illustrations for the shrinking number of magazines that were still using illustrations. The bulk of his work was commercial art done for a variety of clients, which included Braniff Airlines, Coca-Cola, Ford, International Harvester, Libby, Parker Pens, Standard Oil, Swift, the U.S. Air Force, and he once observed, “practically every brand of beer made.”

Thinking about the stamp, I began to ruminate on the portrayals of Indiana in popular culture. “Gary, Indiana,” the wonderful song from The Music Man came to mind. I could hear Harold Hill singing, “If you’d like to have a logical explanation, How I happened on this elegant syncopation, I will say without a moment of hesitation, There is just one place, That can light my face. Gary, Indiana. Gary Indiana, not Louisiana, Paris, France, New York, or Rome. But–Gary, Indiana, Gary, Indiana, Gary Indiana, My home sweet home.”

I also thought a bit about two movies set in Indiana that I particularly like: “Hoosiers” and “Breaking Away.” (I’ve always loved the way the main character pretended to be Italian). And that somehow led me to read something about “The Christmas Story.” And then there I was thinking about Jean Shephard and how important he was at one point in my life.

I don’t remember much about Shephard but I remember loving his rambling way of telling stories and his willingness to call out phoniness and pompousness and the faux cheer that seemed so common when I was younger. I remember feeling or believing that there was something revolutionary or liberating that came from knowing about him, listening to him, and reading his works.

I wasn’t alone. Several years ago, Donald Fagan, co-founder of Steely Dan (who also grew up in New Jersey, wrote that Shephard’s show “enthralled a generation of alienated young people within range of the station’s powerful transmitter. Including me.”

“Listening to Shep,” Fagan added, “I learned about social observation and human types: how to parse modern rituals (like dating and sports); the omnipresence of hierarchy; joy in struggle; “slobism”; “creeping meatballism”; 19th-century panoramic painting; the primitive, violent nature of man;…the nature of the soul; the codes inherent in “trivia,” bliss in art; fishing for crappies; and the transience of desire. He told you what to expect from life (loss and betrayal) and made you feel that you were not alone.”

Fagan wasn’t alone. Jerry Seinfeld was such a fan that he named one of his kids Shephard. Harry Shearer who, among other things, wrote the script for “This is Spinal Tap,” also was a fan., So was Bill Griffin, who created Zippy the Pinhead. And so were many others.

As Fagan explained, “He was definitely a grown-up but he was talking to me-I mean straight to me, with my 12-year-old sensibility, as if some version of myself with 25 more years’ worth of life experience had magically crawled into the radio, sat down, and loosened his tie. I was hooked. From then on, like legions of other sorry-ass misfits throughout the Northeast, I tuned in every weeknight at 11:15 and let Shep put me under his spell.”

In his later years, Shephard got too full of himself, and perhaps became too bitter, but at his best he had a way of finding and telling the truths found in small details. His most well-known tale, which was incorporated into “A Christmas Story,” was nominally about finding an empty Ovaltine can with the silver inner seal still left inside of it, which he sent in to get a secret decoder pin.

I’m told the film focuses on the anticipation of finally being able to join the in-group that could decode secret messages sent during a radio show Ovaltine sponsored, and the disappointment of the secret message he’d been missing out on, which turned out to be just an ad for Ovaltine. However, when he told the story, he focused on the anticipation and the moment of triumph, as in this verson taken from a 1962 TV special.

“All of a sudden,” he recalled, “one day, the mailman comes up and says, for you. There it was, this beautiful fat lumpy envelope. Even to this day I break out into a rash when I see an envelope and it’s lumpy. And it said MISTER Jean Shepherd. There it was: MISTER. And I opened it up and there it is from Little Orphan Annie, on the checkerboard square….30 seconds later I’m sitting in front of the radio.

The show comes on 2 hours later. I’ve got my secret decoder pin with simulated gold plastic knob, and an official membership card. ‘Be it understood to all who read this enclosed inscription, that forever in eternity, Jean Parker Shepherd Jr. shall be accorded all the rights and privileges of a full member of the Little Orphan Annie Secret Society, signed Pierre Andre,’ in ink.

I am official. I’m the best kind official. The most American kind of official.

I’m a phony Ovaltine drinker.”

And that’s what I have to say about Indiana today.

Be well, stay safe, be a phony Ovaltine drinker, fight for justice and work for peace.