From along the banks of the Ohio River on the Kentucky-Ohio border, I came into the world. Since childhood I'd been fascinated by radio but didn't know I'd make a career out of it. I was going to be an attorney. Just think, today I could be on television reminding folks that they wouldn't have to pay me a penny until I settle their case. Well, while attending college I started listening to this really imaginative guy on the radio on a 50,000 watt powerhouse AM station in Louisville. He was incredibly creative and insane, interacting with several zany characters he invented and voiced. Listening to him, I was convinced that radio would be the path that I would follow in life. So I called him up and told him of his influence on me. To my complete surprise, he invited me to visit the studio while he was on the air. It was quite an exciting experience. Afterwards, I visited a few more times and we even had lunch together. From that point on it was radio for me. Thanks very much for the inspiration Gary Burbank. I remember as a small child holding the transistor radio to my ear, in the dark as I lay in bed listening to WLS in Chicago and WABC in New York. It was a special treat. Many a night I pulled the covers over my head, staying awake well past bedtime listening to Cawood Ledford calling the play-by-play of Kentucky Wildcat basketball games. And sometimes I went down to the banks of the Ohio River where the reception was good, so I could listen to the Big 8 CKLW, just across the Canadian border from Detroit. I still love scanning the dial late at night to see what gems I can find on the radio. I remember when I was starting out as a part-timer. It was my first time on the air at a commercial radio station, which is confusing enough. So I go in the studio, sit down and am getting ready to talk on the air for the first time. Well, the phone is ringing...it rings maybe six or seven times. I had been warned beforehand that the owner of the station had a problem with alcohol and also that he was approaching a mental state resembling senility. I answer the phone and it's him. He is drunk as a skunk and his mind is off in la la land...but he IS the owner. He starts SCREAMING at me..."Do you know who I am?...I OWN that *#*#*#*bleep bleep radio station. Why'd you let the phone ring that many times before answering it?" I said "Uh,...okay." He proceeds to give me my instructions for the evening. They are, and this is absolutely true....I am supposed to play a John Denver Christmas song EVERY OTHER SONG ...and I am to give the school closing report after EVERY song that I play all evening long. After much searching, I found the John Denver collection in a back room and I did it...one very odd show! About halfway through it, I began wondering exactly which concentric circle of Dante's Inferno I had entered into.
I spent my summers away from college on the shores of Lake Erie. I loved it there. I worked for the largest indoor model train facility in America. I was the guy who operated the buttons & switches to make the trains go...and go they did...I believe there were about 64 different trains running at once on different tracks...around little lakes, mountains, bridges and trestles. What a cool job! And people came to visit from all over the world. Once, the owner played a trick on me. A touring group from Russia came and I was up in the control area giving my ten minute introduction speech. They were all looking at me very intently as I spoke. After I finished, he told me that they didn't speak a word of English. Fun times.
After college I moved to the Ohio River city of Huntington, West Virginia and spent a good while there being a radio d.j. My most vivid memory from that time was working in a high-rise building downtown and inadvertently locking myself out of the studio when I was on the air on an overnight shift. Another memory lane moment is driving the radio station's old vintage winged pink cadillac down the interstate with Santa Claus in the passenger seat all dressed in his jolly red gear to visit children in a hospital. The looks we received from passing motorists was priceless. Most of my stories about that time period I really prefer to keep to myself, since I was a young buck and did a lot of things I would probably do differently now. There were a lot of good times in Huntington. When it was time to move on, the road led to the bluegrass and Lexington, Kentucky where I worked in radio. It was there I renewed my love of...and became obsessed with Kentucky Wildcat basketball. In Lexington, life is basketball and the rest is just details.
Well, let's pick up the story in Lexington. I was an air
personality on an oldies station there for over three years when the corporate
office decided to switch formats, automate the radio station and let us air
folks go our separate ways. This being done despite the fact that we were a very popular radio station and successful in the ratings. And a month before that held an event heavily covered by the local media proclaiming that the station would NEVER change formats despite rumors to the contrary and would be the same FOREVER. Listeners showed up at the event in droves...newspaper reporters were there...the general manager made all kinds of grand gestures on the air thanking the community and the staff for it's great support. It was all one huge lie as we found out about thirty days later. Absolutely unbelievable. Such is life in radio sometimes. Well, I quickly landed a job
on another station in town and was going to be on the air in the afternoon
timeslot. But on my way to the station to report for my first day, I started
thinking about the years slipping by and decided it was
time to take a shot at something larger...specifically Seattle, since my best
friend had just moved there. Upon arriving to work I told the morning jock, who
also landed a job there after being at the now-defunct oldies station with me,
that I had serious reservations about this whole deal. We talked it over and
discussed my options, which were: to either take this sure thing job or hit the
highway and take my chances on something unknown. My car wasn't in great shape
and my wallet wasn't exactly bulging. So, being the impulsive person I am, I
went into the manager's office, expressed my sincere apologies, loaded up the
car, got a very large bag of potato chips to munch on and started driving...
...through Kentucky, then through a violent nighttime thunderstorm in Indiana...on through
Illinois...and finally stopping for the night to rest in a Motel 6 in Columbia,
Missouri. The next day I arose at the crack of noon and went through the rest of
Missouri, getting lost momentarily in Kansas City...then came Iowa and the miles
and miles of cornfields.
The radio sure was a fine companion. Being in the broadcast business, I got a kick out of tuning around on the dial both AM and FM. Along the way I listened to some of the most intriguing radio imaginable. The most valuable lesson I learned on the journey (and this is something I should have already been fully aware of at this point in my life) is that the radio can be a real friend to a lonely person ...whether they're on a cross-country trip, lying in bed or perhaps sitting at their computer terminal. Every effort should be made to make them feel comfortable, give them the information they may be searching for...like how the road conditions are in the mountain passes, whether the rain is going to turn to snow, if there's going to be something entertaining going on in their neighborhood today or a variety of other things. But most importantly that you care about them and want them to feel as though they have a personal friend. Invaluable stuff. The radio can be a true companion.
Onward I go, briefly drifting into Nebraska and I got to see Omaha...it was on from there into South Dakota and I found another Motel 6 in Sioux Falls to watch some HBO and grab some sleep. It was at this point I finally called my friend in Seattle to inform her that I was on my way. Guys can be so thoughtful sometimes. This was getting to be quite an adventure and I really don't enjoy driving all that much. So the next morning it was on the road again...hours and hours of driving through South Dakota with signs every 500 yards along the highway telling you to stop and see all kinds of wierd things. I stopped once to see a town built around a huge drugstore...I really don't know why. By nightfall I ended up in Gillette, Wyoming and they said there was a wicked snowstorm on the way...oh joy! I went out that night and watched a band playing heavy metal for a little while, then checked in a really nice motel of which I can't remember the name. I watched the weather channel a little bit and fell asleep. The weather channel is better than counting sheep. I arose the next day and travelled on through the rest of Wyoming and into Montana.
Yes, Montana is the state I will never forget. Things had been going pretty smoothly until then. My little quest to see America was all fine and dandy.........until Montana. The winds were whipping 90 miles an hour...semis were actually getting blown off the road...it was snowing...the mountains were overwhelming...and I was really beginning to question my sanity. It was extremely hard to keep the car from getting whooshed off the highway. I decided to keep on going anyway. I crossed the Continental Divide and stopped briefly in Butte. There I bought something to snack on and kept driving into the night. Around 11pm the car was making hideous noises like it was going to explode. I figured now would be a good time to stop. I was starting to run out of money since I'd been foolishly spending left and right...plus I wasn't getting very good gas mileage. So there I was, the car was crippled and the signs indicated I was in Missoula, Montana. It was freezing there that night. I checked in a motel and waited til morning to get the car looked at. The guy at the garage quoted me a price that staggered me...and it would take a few days before they could get to it cause it was the weekend. Same story at the other garages. They all said the car probably wouldn't make it another 20 miles. All I kept thinking was that I was going to end up dying in Missoula, Montana...broke, desolate and cold. I didn't have that kind of money to get the car fixed and I really don't know why I started this trip in the first place except that I had become momentarily insane. I sat around for three days in a really, really bottom of the barrel motel room, which I shared with a psychotic cockroach, contemplating life. I ended up calling my friend in Seattle and said I was going to take my chances with a car that was ready to explode and roll the dice hopefully all the way to the Puget Sound...
Wow, 500 some miles left to Seattle...I had to keep stopping for about fifteen minutes at a time every thirty miles or so to let the car cool off...it was insane...but slowly and surely the vehicle somehow sputtered along. There were times I was driving up the sides of huge mountains in the middle of nowhere going about ten miles an hour talking to the car and pleading with it to keep going. Believe it or not the gamble I took paid off. I arrived in Seattle after midnight, frazzled and freaked out from the ordeal, gave my friend a call and gratefully came to the end of my journey at her place. I immediately put together some tapes of my radio shows from back when I was employed...before I had decided to quit a decent job and go tearing across America with a bag of potato chips. So anyway, I dropped off my tapes at some of the Seattle radio stations and shortly thereafter, the first one I had applied at called...my most excellent friend answered the phone and said "it's for you and it sounds like a radio voice," which I got a chuckle out of...what exactly is a radio voice? So I went on the air at a great radio station in Seattle. During my time there I was either on the air during afternoon drive or middays...and when the wake-up team was off I was the one who filled in for them during morning drive. I also began voicing promotions & commercials for an ad agency which aired during National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball games all over the western United States...My goodness, that trip story wore me out just reliving it in print...let's condense time from now on, what do ya say?
As time passed by, for family reasons I headed back across the country to Lexington, Kentucky. Spent about two more years in the area programming an adult contemporary station and hosting the morning drive show before moving up the interstate to just outside Indianapolis to host the morning show for a big signal oldies station that people could listen to in three large markets...Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Louisville. For some reason, the Indiana terrain is completely flat and the people there hate the Kentucky basketball team. Both unacceptable conditions. I fit in there about as well as a mouse in a cheese factory. Personally, I think most of the cheesemakers there are a touch strange.
I decided to pack it up and move westward to the biggest little city in the world and take my chances. Reno can be addicting. It is an absolutely incredible place. Everyday in Reno is like going to the circus. Nearby Lake Tahoe is breathtaking with it's alpine setting and the mountains are great, especially during the months they are snow-capped. The weather is sunny most of the time with very low humidity. Pretty much everything you'd care to get into you can find in Reno. The future? As the venerable Master Yoda said, impossible to see...the future is.
