Chapter Nine--Fun Radio and Other Stuff

The calendar said it was 1977, barely. It was December and the weather was cold. We had packed up our things and put most of it in a storage warehouse back in Arlington. For the second time, we imposed upon my parents, who were then living on my dad’s old home place in Upshur County. We stayed in a travel trailer in the back yard for just two weeks until we could find some place to light in Marshall. None of us shall forget the marvelous ride through Dallas, on I-20 to Hawkins and then on narrow oil-topped roads to a rural community called Shady Grove.

We were down to our last dollar and the Chevy pickup we were driving was missing a cylinder or two due what the mechanics call burnt valves. Richard and Randall were both in the Navy and Nancy was somewhere at that time. So, Russell and Amy rode the whole way in the back of the truck in the snow cone stand. I had constructed the stand out of 2 x 4s and plywood in Mexia for the kids’ snow cone business. Anyway, the stand made a rather nice camper shell/topper, if one can imagine it going down the road. Carolyn, had the promise of a job with the local mental health agency and I was supposed to have something as well, but it didn’t work out.

Details as to exact times and events get a little out of focus about here, but somehow we got the truck fixed, found a house, moved to Marshall and Carolyn went to work for MHMR and I went to work looking for work, in a few days returning to my old standby, radio. This time, I became directly involved with time sales as well as an air shift and writing and producing my own commercials. This was, if you don’t dwell on the money made, a very enjoyable experience. It was a time when I met some real good friends who are still friends to this day even though we each have long ago gone our own ways, ways away from the radio scene. It was during this time that I became acquainted with the business community of this little town and made contacts that have proved invaluable to this day.

I have a vivid memory of February of 1978. The weather was miserable for Texas, but not unusual. There was ice everywhere and here I was driving around calling on merchants and trying to sell them what I called at the time, “hot air.” Or perhaps it was a sort of dubious notoriety, the hearing about oneself and one’s business coming out of a radio speaker.

One of my favorite ploys was to come back to them when they said that radio did not work for them, that I would be glad to dial up the station right then and go on the air and tell whoever was listening that so and so store was giving away free kittens this very afternoon. They then proved that that they thought it might work enough to clog up their phone lines with potential cat takers so that I was told not to do that—they were really afraid that it would work. Sometimes that was all it took to get them on a contract.

One time, I had a meat market on my list and I had been by almost once a week for a month or more and they always said they did not need any more advertising. Well, this particular morning I was determined that this was going to be the day. So I scribbled down a few lines from his yellow page ad and went to the store. He was busy cutting up meat, and I said that I wanted him to hear something that I wrote for him. He agreed to listen. So I read the standard stuff about name and address and product and concluded the 30-second spot (Note: in small market radio we were not as strict about 5 or 10 seconds one way or another) with so and so’s “got the best meat in town and that’s no bull.” Well, he slapped his knee and laughed so hard I was afraid he would kick over the butcher block, and then he asked me how much that was going to cost him. Well, we made a deal and he stayed with me a long time, and in fact, even after he had retired, I got this call one day from another city. It was his daughter. She informed me that his wife had died and that she had wanted me to preach her funeral. I did recall that years before, in the store when I would visit, we would sometimes talk about spiritual things and she had made me promise. I had long forgotten the thing, but I took care of my obligation. It seems that I have been able to make friends and relationships, even as I have done business with folks. And, even get a little ministry in from time to time.

One guy here in town, and its been twenty five years, still insist that I not pay for tomato plants when I visit his nursery, because he remembers that I helped him get the business started with the humorous radio ads I produced for him back when he was just struggling to get it going, It was pretty simple. When the guy talked, you just naturally laughed because he had a kind of corn-pone, down-home funny way of expressing himself. I just took notes and told about his plants in his own words. It must have worked because he is still doing good and had greatly expanded over the years.

Actual time working in radio was probably about three years, maximum. But the residual effects far surpassed that. In between, we started a successful free paper, a shopper, but the local power structure did not like competition for their daily. They won, but we did have some fun in the process. Later, I tried it again, alone. The first one was called the East Texas Shopper. I would write little editorials and Carolyn had a column called “Dear Susie.” The Shopper died in December 1979.

The second paper was called the Country Catalog. I put out the Catalog with a Radio Shack TRS 80. It printed justified type off a print wheel and carbon ribbon at 10 characters a second. I used a strip-printer for the big letters. The little door for the diskette on the TRS 80 had a broken hinge and I put a stick of wood in it to keep the limit switch closed so it would think it was OK to run. I took a photo of the computer with the stick of wood sticking out and labeled it the world’s first wood-burning computer. That kind of got some folks to raising their eyebrows. I put the Catalog to sleep sometime in 1988. It probably was a viable operation, but I was just tired.

If you were keeping up, you will notice I skipped a few years and a few stories. There was the one about the adventures of a vocational high school teacher. There was the one about going back to school to get some additional credentials for teaching. There was the one about forming our own social service agency. There was the transition from the Christian Church to the Baptist Church. And the list goes on, so don’t miss the next exciting episode of My Snow Story Here!