It was on the Bird

I was saddened to learn this week of the passing of Gary Bowers, the longtime owner and general manager of Radio Station WCLG in Morgantown, West Virginia.

Gary was one of the premiere radio operators in the State of West Virginia, an affable, outgoing , and generous gentleman. Gary was always just a phone call away to me as a young inexperienced radio guy.

He had also employed my younger brother as a copywriter at WCLG, while Clint was in Morgantown working on his degree. Many Journalism Professionals got their start at WCLG.

My fondest memory of Gary involved me involving him in one of my off the wall radio promotions.

In 1982 the West Virginia University Football Team's opening game was against the University of Oklahoma and the game was to be played in Norman, Oklahoma.

This was the third season for Coach Don Nehlen and the "new" Mountaineer field and the Program was evolving into a new level of National prominence under Nehlens's guidance. But still, scheduled as the Home opener for the Sooners was tantamount to a a lamb sacrifice to a National Championship calibre team coached by Barry Switzer. Though West Virginia was on an upward turn, Richmond and Temple were still on the schedule, and teams of that calibre felt a great deal more comfortable.

These were the days before the expansion of cable television, ESPN, and nearly every Division I game being televised. The WVU Athletic Department had made arrangements to have the game broadcast back to West Virginia via "closed circuit" rebroadcasting the game into the WVU Coliseum in Morgantown and the Charleston Civic Center and charging admission for WVU fans to see this historic meeting being played over 1500 miles from Morgantown.

Being the 29 year old owner of the radio station in New Martinsville, WV that carried the Mountaineer Sports Network and  foolish enough to constantly be thinking outside of the box for promotions to help my business, it occurred to me I could pull quite a coup if I could get that broadcast somehow in little old New Martinsville.

Mike Parsons, was then and continues to be, the go to guy in the Athletic Department at WVU and was responsible for producing this unique closed circuit broadcast from Norman. I called Mike and complimented him on his creativity in bringing the broadcast back to WVU fans and confirm, my suspicion that it would be broadcast live via the relatively new satellite technology, which he confirmed.

Learning that, I transitioned to my best persuasive plea that it was a shame that the folks in my part of the State were well over two hours from either of his chosen venues. I suggested to him that I doubted if the University would lose any potential revenue if he would share with me the satellite coordinates that the game would be broadcast on, so that I might be able to receive the satellite feed for the loyal yet often ignored Mountaineer fans in the Mid Ohio Valley. Miraculously, Mike agreed under the conditions that I would not sell tickets or share the satellite channels with anyone else, which I readily agreed.

Portable Satellite dish

Okay, I had done it. Now I just had to figure out how to get a satellite receiving dish, in this era they were about 10-12' in diameter and retailed for somewhere between 3 and 5 thousand dollars, quite cumbersome. I also had no idea where I would  have this big deal viewing party.

I sat down that afternoon with my crack sales guy, Spike Riel to share with him what I had wrought and enlist his help into making this a success. We had a customer who sold these residential satellite dishes which was a huge business in rural West Virginia in the mid 1980's, but were in their infancy at this time and this would be a great promotion for the Dealer, we decided. We checked with Mike Wilson, and fortuitously he had a satellite dish mounted on a trailer which he used to demonstrate the service to potential customers and he agreed to set it up for us to use wherever we decided the have the shindig.

We decided to rent the Magnolia Yacht Club Building on North Main Street in the Parlor City, right on the banks of the Ohio River. It had plenty of room for our 100 plus guest/ customers we had invited, had a nice yard with plenty of clearance for the satellite dish, and a large bar that spanned one end of the building conducive to necessary adult beverages to soothe the potential beating by one of the best college football programs in America.

All was set and the excitement was building for the opening day game party on 9/11/82. Then I read in the Charleston Gazette, WVU Assistant Athletic Director Mike Parsons had said that somehow the satellite channels for the game had gotten out and that the numbers that had originally been given to me in confidence had been changed. It seems that Parsons had given the information to others after I had asked for it and they had not been as protective of the information as had I and it was severely cutting into his already weak ticket sales to his closed circuit pay per view event.

I called Mike and plead with him to give me the numbers because I had not told a soul what they were, that I had my reputation on the line and several other angles of graveling for the information in order for me to save face on that Saturday. He wouldn't budge. It looked like I was going to have egg on my face.

I happened to be talking to Gary Bowers that same day, and knew that he was not the Mountaineer Sports Network franchise in the University City, in that it is a partnership with the West Virginia Radio/ Greer Corporations and WVU. West Virginia Radio was his competitor and he had an uphill battle making any inroads into WVU Sports. I shared with him the predicament I was in. He thought the idea I had was outstanding and decided he would like to do it for his clients also. He also was eager to get one up on Parsons.

He made the offer if he could use the idea he would do all he could to make it work for both of us. This was on Wednesday the 8th. Gary and I spoke 3 or 4 times a day Thursday and Friday on leads and angles; all failing.

I had not let the word out that the entire idea was in serious jeopardy to anyone in New Martinsville, always optimistic that something would save the day.

The game was to kickoff at Noon Central time Saturday, at 5 pm Friday the 10th, the 5th birthday of my oldest son, I still had no hope I was going to get the game's satellite feed.

This was the days before cell phones and around 6:30 pm I get a call at home from Bowers, he tells me he has just heard back from a former student / employee of his at WCLG, who is now working for Western Electric in New Jersey. The guy is in charge of the satellite uplink for the WVU-OU game the next morning. He has told Gary that the coordinates are the same as the original that I had been given. He also told Bowers that he would send us some kind of cryptic sign downline to let us know we were going to get the broadcast about 15 minutes before kickoff.

This was some relief, but I was still skeptical and concerned with the technology.

I was at the Yacht Club early the next morning and shared with Spike for the first time that there was a chance we would not have the video feed and that we needed to get all of the customers pretty well plied with alcohol early to sedate the possible trauma.

The Yacht Club

The Club was set up great. We had borrowed every big screen television in town, and had two bartenders behind a well stocked bar. The satellite was focused on the bird but all we were receiving was a snowy audio and video feed on all screens. We had the radio audio pre game broadcast blaring, and I was wearing a poker face fearing the worst and expecting the best. Careful to not let anyone know I was sweating.

About 10 minutes before the scheduled kickoff the snow momentarily ended on the screens and just for a few seconds a slide came up that said Hello Morgantown, Bon Appetite Gary! That was the sign, hallelujah.

It was a beautiful late summer Saturday on the River and the Mountaineers surprised all including Barry Switzer as Jeff Hostetler and team spanked the Sooners 41-27.

I had pulled it of with a little bit of help from my friend. All was good on the banks of the Ohio River and in our little corner of the Mountaineer Nation.

Travail bien fait, Gary

Easy as Pie

While growing up my father was regularly verbally abusive to me. Of course at the time, before I had any Psychology classes or other messages from today's society that has now taught us that we were all victimized some how, I just thought he was a jerk.

One of his favorite put downs was "you are too lazy to work in a pie factory" As most other things he said to me it went into one ear out the other. But occasionally I would try to analyze the statements as to severity, but I had no point of reference on a pie factory nor the level of difficulty to labor in one.

While going to college in Tulsa, Oklahoma one of the Football Boosters would hire off season players to work in his factory.  I checked with one of the assistant coaches on the possibility of working nights. He set me up an appointment and I went over and was hired to work at the Bama Pie Company.

I couldn't believe it, I was going to have the opportunity to prove my father wrong and actually work in a pie factory. How difficult could the work be if it had this well known illustration of indolence.

During the interview they were a little sketchy on what I would be doing, but them knowing I was a jock I didn't anticipate to be in an executive position, only heavy lifting. The job paid $2.60 hour, which was a $1.15 more than the $1.45 minimum wage and offered some over time at $3.90 per hour.

The Bama Pie Company, Tulsa, OK

I showed up for work the next afternoon and was directed to my workstation which was a very heavy steel 55 gallon barrel with a large colander setting on top. I was told to wait there and my supervisor would direct me what to do.

Shortly thereafter a fellow came up to me and told me to follow him as he walked back through the plant and to the rear of the building and the loading dock. there waiting was a tractor trailer loaded with 12 gallon tin cans filled with sliced apples in their own juice. I was told to unload a dozen of these cans onto a cart waiting there, which I did.

Then the supervisor held up a long handled sledge hammer for me to see and said "see this?", which I acknowledged with a nod. He proceeded to raise the hammer over his head and hit the lid on each individual can in the center at the top would fly off. Again he queried "can you do that?" which I affirmed. He then handed me the handle to the cart and said take this back to your barrel.

When we arrived back at my workstation he picks up one of the cans and pours it into the colander, looks at me and says "squeeze the juice out of them" I looked at him, like....okay...how? He says "put your hands in there and press the juice out" which I did. He pours another can in and I repeat. He instructed me once the colander was about full to walk it across the aisle to him, because he was the Slurryman.

Slurry is the mixture of the juice I was straining combined with sugar, water and cinnamon that was again blended into the strained apples. This mixture is poured into an automated piece of equipment that disburses measured equal amounts of the mixture onto a rectangular piece of uncooked dough on a trip down a conveyor built where it will shortly be topped with another piece of dough and crimped together just before a longer ride through a flash freezer machine. Once the freezing process was complete, a hardend apple pie was complete to be box and shipped.

Okay, I understood not only my job, but now the entire process used to produce what I found were all of the fried apple pies sold at every McDonald's around the World. With this information I felt I had a broader purpose in work, which helped in the horrible monotony of my process. Which I quickly realized could and should be automated for efficiency.

I had never realized that apple juice stains your skin. The juice stains your skin black, and in what I was having to do with my hands my fingers and under my nails were constantly black. The only way you could get the juice off from staining was using other apple juice and then quickly wash that with soap and water.

The repetitiveness of constantly doing the same thing for 8 hours everyday was excruciating and the apples were cumbersome and heavy. The only escape was the same plant made and baked the little pecan pies sold at Kentucky Fried Chicken and they were baked on my route to the loading dock for more apples. The smell of them permeated the work area and every trip through I would snatch a few warm ones and eat them in two bites.

Another great deviation surprise was four or five days during the semester I worked there.I came to work finding during the shift we would make cherry pies instead of apple. Sad, but true, I really found that as a relief.

I always played mind games and challenged myself to stay ahead of the Slurryman and the pie assembly line, I suppose in sort of John Henry kind of way.

It was an interesting experience and probably the greatest motivator I had that I had better get my degree because I could never do something that monotonous everyday of my life, I just wasn't cut that way. Nor, to this day I will not eat an apple pie at McDonald's.

I was told within a year after I left my job was replaced by automation, so the steam locomotive and progress won

At least I proved my father wrong, I would, could and did work in a pie factory.

It was a piece of cake, Dad.

Extra, Extra...

Growing up in the Mid-1960s in a small town in Southern West Virginia finding a part time job while in high school was not an easy task.

The options were few. You could be a lifeguard, though there were few of those coveted positions open, and our high school football coach believed football players should not be swimming because he felt it created long lean muscles rather than the bulky type he desired. Not having a winning season in many years I would have thought he would have accepted any type muscle. Some guys worked at Kroger, which paid well, but also prohibited you from about all extracurricular activities. In fact one of my classmates, John Bays, went from working there in  high school as a box boy to becoming the CEO of the Kroger owned 110 store grocery chain Dillon's located in the Midwest.

The most popular job among my friends and off season jocks was driving a delivery truck for Rosemont Floral. Rosemont was owned by, probably at the time, the town's only outed gay man. Though I don't believe there was any teenage homophobic feelings, the job just didn't appeal to me.

An older friend of mine, that had been the quarterback of the football team and President of the Student Government was preparing to graduate from high school and was looking for someone to take over his two daily paper routes delivering The Charleston Gazette. Mike Duda, who is now the Proprietor of Charleston, West Virginia's most popular political watering hole called The Red Carpet. Mike had inherited the route from his older brother John, when John graduated from high school and accepted an appointment to West Point. It seemed to me these guys had pretty good pedigrees and this might be a job that would make sense for me.

I went out on the route a few mornings to deliver with Mike. I realized this was going to require a great deal of discipline and responsibility. Waking up at 4am was a heck of a sacrifice for a high school kid. But I liked the idea of being independently in business for yourself, and actually have the opportunity to increase your income by selling more customers. So with Mike's reference and an interview with the local circulation guy. I was a Paperboy. This included all classes, football or basketball practice, any other extracurricular activity. Basically about an 18 hour working day. This is where my sons roll their eyes and say it was uphill walk to school both ways for me.

The Hotel Hill

The bundles of newspapers were dropped off at the door of the town's only hotel, the Hotel Hill, on Main Street between 3:30 and 4:00 am every morning. Every morning, seven days a week, twelve months a year, rain, snow, hail or high water. The 180 newspapers were bundled and secured by tightly bound wire. The number of bundles varied to the time of year and day of the week. Sundays may require five or six bundles, where a Monday in January may just be two, depended on the advertising pages. Though the revenue would increase for the Gazette the Paperboy only had more weight to carry at the same fixed rate. To this day when I read the editorials in this same newspaper of how the 1 percent are squeezing the poor, the hypocrisy is not lost on me. I wonder what those same people were doing at their prep school dorms and living off their trusts while I was doing this.

The walk to the Hotel

It was about a a 15 minute walk from my warm bed to the Hotel Hill where I would find the bundles waiting and always carried pliers to clip the wires. You were given white canvas shoulder bags to carry your papers. Some days and all Sundays it would take all three hung around your neck and shoulders. Once the bags were loaded the walk began on toward the first customers house about another 10 minutes then the route became fairly dense with the majority of the houses being customers. One of the first things you perfected is the fold. The ability to fold the newspaper tightly so that you can pitch it with accuracy onto a porch. Once you have perfected this talent the delivery process speeds up considerably plus it adds a level of sport to the job in sharpening your accuracy of your  throw to a porch. There is also a fold you can do when there are not too many pages, that is a small tight square that flies like a Frisbee, fun, but can take off and land on a roof or hit a storm door breaking a glass, which deeply cuts into your profit margin.



Several customers would have special requests of where they wanted their papers placed as the mailbox, behind their storm door, or not to fold. This usually accompanied a nicer weekly tip so well worth the time and another great lesson for business. I had one couple that rose early every morning and ask if I could always have their paper to them by 5:30am, which I did and was richly rewarded with a $50 Christmas tip. Also on my route was Lundale Farms, a huge farm owned by Herbert Jones, and was a multi millionaire coal baron of Amherst Coal. Everyday I had to walk 20 minutes longer to deliver to the side porch of his mansion where his chauffeur /manservant would retrieve the paper for Mr. Jones. with this level of service and relatively speaking of the comparable wealth and my level of additional service, I would most certainly receive no less than $100 for Christmas from him. When I went to the side porch of the mansion of Lundale Farms to do my weekly collection, Rastus invited me into the kitchen because he had something for me. That same sound that you hear from slot machines was running through my mind. Rastus returns to the kitchen and hands me an envelope and a gift wrapped box about the size of a shoe box. I thanked him and took them home to open and add to my Christmas tip fund which was over $175 at the time and was sure would loft me near $300. I opened the box and it was a white gift box from Frankenberger's, which was the best men's store in Charleston at the time. I opened it and it was a black shaving kit. A freaking shaving kit. So I was ready to open the envelope and cha ching. As I ripped open the envelope and slowly opened the card to see if it was cash or check, there was neither, simply a rather generic Christmas Card wishing me well from the Jones Family. My mother tried to, as only mothers can do, console my disappointment by saying it was better because it showed they had actually put thought into the gift. I said Ma," I don't even shave yet." Another great life lesson. It was that same feeling Ralphie had when he found out his decoder ring was a rip off.

The route started here on Jones Avenue

At that time of the morning in a small town you are one of few people awake and probably the only person out. It would be so quiet you could hear the town's two stop lights noise when they changed from red to green. There was never any traffic, when there was snow there was no traffic to break it, so I would wade down the middle of the streets a couple of times I remember nearly up to my knees and I was over six foot. I would dress in layers, including two pair of socks and gloves and still be numb with cold. All for about $20 a week.

At that time you not only had to deliver the papers 52/7, but you would have to spend your weekend evenings going door to door to collect the 60 cent weekly cost from your customer and pay your bill every Saturday afternoon, regardless of what you collected you paid your bill and what was left was your profit.

Collecting, though time consuming was usually enjoyable because you got to talk with most of your customers, get your tips, and hear compliment and complaints. You also learned people will stiff you and not pay their bills even though you have to pay yours.

Many people like W. Clement Stone, T. Boone Pickens, Walt Disney, Ross Perot, Harry Truman, Bob Hope, Dwight Eisenhower, and Norman Vincent Peale to name just a few were paperboys. In reading Boone Pickens biography last year he attributed most of his business success to the experience. I unfortunately have no where reached the level of success of these folks but can say it is a hard experience, but a good one in retrospect.

Kids don't deliver newspapers any longer and you rarely see or directly pay whoever delivers your paper, if in fact you still get one. A shame.

Deliverance Redux

Most that were around in 1972 recall the film Deliverance, originally a novel by Southern writer James Dickey.


 In the movie four Atlanta businessmen decide to canoe down the Cahulawassee River in the remote Georgia wilderness in a canoe. The film was a huge success starring Burt Reynolds, Jon Voight, Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox.


Though the film was a thriller with some horribly gruesome happenings to the Adventurers. It had one memorable scene and musical piece where the Ronny Cox character has a banjo duel with one of the local inbred boys. 


Still there was something irresistible to men of that age at the time to do their own Deliverance survival adventure. 


I was living in Parkersburg, West Virginia at the time and in the advertising business. My two closest friends there were also Advertising Guys; Tim Archer, who published a shopper called the Vienna Advertiser and Bob Fitzpatrick, who was an Account Executive  at the Fahlgren Advertising Agency. 


Many evenings the three of us, Parkersburg's answer to the men in the grey flannel suit and Madison Avenue, would spend evenings and weekends in our sunroom watching sports on television. As happens when young men get together the conversations rarely have much worthwhile substance and ours were no exception. But one recurring theme we had was with our mutual fascination with the Deliverance adventure and how we should reenact the weekend.


Now would be the time to point out that the three of us were all graduates of West Virginia University with Advertising majors and "roughing it" for us was walking on the grass in Woodburn Circle rather than the sidewalk.


About this same time that I was often wearing my first L.L. Bean insulated vest and bought and specially ordered a white Chevrolet Blazer. A four wheel drive bad boy with raised white letter tires and white spokes. The vest, flannel shirts, white jeans and this, how could one person be more manly? This vehicle was to be the perfect vessel to take us on our Deliverance adventure, cue the banjos.


A law partner of my father in law at the time was also a partner in a hunting and fishing camp in Hardy County, West Virginia, on the North Fork of the South Branch of the Potomac. Peru Hollow; or the West Virginia pronunciation PEE' ru Holler. Peeru Holler, the Big Chevy Blazer and three willing participants in the West Virginia sequel to Deliverance.


Never mind that we were wusses, we had no idea how to hunt, fish or live in the wild. I had been pier fishing twice as a child, I believe Tim did know how to bait a hook, and Bob's biggest adventure was a week in Miami, Florida to scout for neighborhoods that looked like Parkersburg to film a United Bank television commercial. 


The trip was planned we had received all of our directions to the camp, including that we would have to pass through the property and gate with the permission of a gentleman known only as The Pig Man.


The trip was on. We were to depart Parkersburg a Friday evening after work and drive East across the State to Peru Hollow, a part of West Virginia we had never been. We were well equipped with the finest outdoor clothing and equipment. The Blazer was well stocked with what we felt was outdoorsy food; beef jerky, summer sausage eggs, bread, beer, cigars and Jack Daniels.


It seemed we drove forever into a god forsaken part of the State where for miles and miles with nothing but a curvy road and trees. We finally realized we were not going to arrive at our destination that night and therefore stop and slept to rise at sunrise to complete our journey to the North Fork of the South Branch of the Potomac.
In the olden days before GPS, Tim was excellent with directions and was kind of cocky in the whole adventure in that he had some Boy Scout experience in his past. He got us to exactly where we needed to be and driving slowly driving through the ruts on this farm, we come upon the Pig Man. An older gentleman who certainly could have been cast in the film we were emulating. He had a walking stick and hogs of various sizes at his side and heel. He kind of looked like a Biblical shepherd in bib overalls and pigs instead of sheep This is what we were talking about, up with those dueling banjos. 


We had arrived to sort of a shell of a modular house with one big room with bunk beds and a kitchen and a porch  that overlooked why I assumed was the North Fork of the South Branch of the Potomac. I was still exhausted after the drive as was Fitz, the two of us decided to have beer for breakfast while the Boy Scout was eager to get to the stream to catch our dinner.

 While relaxing from the drive on the porch it was eerily quite there in the woods. Only the sound of the stream and a rare jet overhead going or coming from Dulles, which air miles was not that far away. I had brought a portable radio and could only receive one station on AM or FM.  WELD in the metropolis of Fisher, WV, real old time radio, there was no television at the place. This whole wilderness thing was starting to wear on me.


It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but I really didn't want to make the effort to walk through the woods down a very steep bank just to see water.


By noon, Tim the Angler had returned from his fishing empty handed and a little despondent of that fact, so we suggested he join in our beer brunch and since it was noon and to raise his spirt to add bourbon to the bill of fare.


As Tim accepted our suggestion, Fitz and I felt that we should find something outdoorsy to do, that wasn't that strenuous or involve briars, snakes, or breaking a sweat.


Tim, our Navigator informed us we were in the George Washington National Forest and there was a fire road that ran through it and perhaps a drive in the Blazer would get us the correct closeness to nature.


Since Tim had done his fishing, he felt that his outdoor commitment was met and it would be better that he extend his beer and bourbon brunch and take a nap.


So in the days before GPS and with only some sketchy map that Tim had provided Fitz and I hopped in the truck and headed deeper into the woods.


We got on the narrow dirt road that went through the forrest. We drove and drove and drove. It was like we were on a treadmill. It all looked the same dirt road and dense timber. Finally we came upon a sign of life, which was literally a sign informing us we were now in the Commonwealth of Virginia. This wasn't good.


We found a wide enough space to turn around the vehicle and head back into what we felt was the direction back to the camp. we had been gone for hours, seen no wildlife except trees. It was beginning to get dark and the four wheel drive was getting dangerously low on fuel. No compass, before cell phones, it looked like we could be in real trouble. We of course knew Tim was back at the cabin and was aware we probably didn't want to have been gone that long. But he had no communication either.


After dark and with very little gasoline left we were able to find our way back to the camp, somewhat traumatized with our adventure and with no fish, we were left with the choice of dinner that night or breakfast the next morning. There was no electricity in the building only gas and kerosene lamps, so there was really nothing to do but get to sleep early.


Sunday morning we woke to Tim the Boy Scout preparing eggs and fried summer sausage which we ate on the porch and as most food tastes better outdoors, we were sure this was probably the best breakfast we had ever eaten and certainly compensated  for the previous days lack of a catch.


We also after 24 hours there started discussing what the first thing we wanted to do as soon as we got back into civilization. I had noticed rural delivery boxes for the Washington Post nearby, the Sunday issue was what I first wanted, and knew it wouldn't take long to get one where a wish for almost anything else was going to require reaching Elkins, which was going to be at least three hours away.


We packed up and headed out of the hollow long before noon and headed west toward Parkersburg. I stole a Sunday Washington Post out of one of the boxes and we stopped in Elkins and took in the civilization.


From then on we only had the recollections of our Deliverance trip, not the desire to do it again.

Signing Off

Realizing the Magic was not going to cure all ills of this poor sick little radio station we decided to explore, what is called in the radio business "The Greater Fool Theory" That is find somebody with a bigger ego than ours to come in and buy the Station.

We talked to several radio station brokers, but there seemed little encouragement. We had a eureka moment and realized the best salesman in the World, Bob Coker could sell anything, could spread a little Magic and sell this puppy.

 I put in a telephone call to the Century 21 Office and asked the receptionist to speak with him, she in a disturbed tone ask me to hold, which I did, and seemed to be an extended period of time. Then another female voice picks up and says "you want to speak with Mr. Coker?" I say "yes, just for a moment, I have a listing for him" she says in a very sedate voice" Mr. Coker passed away six months ago, instantly, with a massive heart attack." He was 39.

We had decided to change the format of the Station from News/Talk to Oldies and Beach Music in that no other Station was doing that exclusively, still nobody listened.

Then we changer the format to Nostalgia/Big Band known as "Music of Your Life" at the time, but also called by anyone under 40 as "Music of your Death" The programming was exclusively targeted at folks 55 and older back then, which meant it was music from the 30s, 40s, and very early 50's. We were also able to receive all of the programming from satellite, which saved us considerably on payroll. We also changed the call letters from the Heritage WMYB to WCSE "Classy 1450"

The first Arbitron Rating Book had come in after the change and for the first time in more years than anyone could remember the Station had received ratings, about 2 points. which isn't much, and all of the listeners had come from WJYR, the beautiful music station, yet they were still number one. So what we had effectively done was peel off the older, less attractive audience to advertisers, from them.

Though this was some satisfaction that someone was listening, it was not near enough traction to build any momentum and we had tired of "chasing bad money"

We retained an auction Company to come in and auction off the property, the Company advertised it well Nationally in all of the Trade publications and the Wall Street Journal. No bidders showed.

We received an offer to buy the Station from some guy based in the Mountains of Colorado. He had some sort of cultish religion that he broadcast over satellite to his flock and felt the Station and Myrtle Beach would be a good base. He offered us one million shares in his broadcasting corporation for our assets.

The two of us discussed the offer and decided one million of anything was more valuable than what we had and would stop our financial bleeding. We took his stock which never appreciated, though he took control of the station, I do not think he ever broadcast from it. The Station went dark which means he just turned it off.

Our experience with the Station had involved a total of five deaths, including the double murder of the previous operators, Coker, a suicide, the tragic death of Bill Allman's college age son in a car accident, I paid the funeral costs for his funeral. Three divorces, and thousands of lost dollars in investment. It was well past time to fold.

Numerous lessons learned, there are bad radio stations, in real estate it is location, location, location. In radio it is signal, signal, signal. regardless of format or management. To paraphrase the Gatlin Brothers song, "all the gold n Myrtle Beach is in Bank in somebody else's name" most of it at that time was a Company known as Myrtle Beach Farms, now called Burroughs and Chapin, the last name of the two original land owners of the area. They were the radio stations landlord at the tower-transmitter site, and required the tower be moved so they could build their Broadway at the Beach which now occupies the huge lot where the tower sat.

It was many years before either one of us went back to Myrtle Beach, even for a visit. That has now passed and my youngest son, who was not yet born at the time of this misadventure, has lived there for three years, ironically working in management for an oceanfront hotel.

Myrtle Beach Magic Part III

The above photograph of the offices and studios of WMYB is after the exterior was repainted, when we closed on the place the lawn was nearly knee high, the inside was dreary and reeked with the stench of stale cigarette smoke. Palmetto bugs big enough to saddle ran rampant throughout.

As you can see we cleaned up the outside, but also freshened the inside with new paint, carpeting and resort furniture. The building is always the easy part. The difficult part is the personnel.

WMYB was no different than any other neglected radio station I had been in, structurally or the type of people. Though there was one exception in the WMYB case. The office manager-traffic manager-receptionist was a winner. Carolyn Neyrey was a sharp and sassy blonde that got with the program of what we needed to do to make things better. She had a great smile and attitude plus God had gifted her in a way that allowed me to make an exception to my hard and fast "no jeans" in the office rule. Carolyn was a native, so knew many of the ins and outs that outsiders like us might not be aware.

The rest of the staff that we had inherited was the usual motley crew that probably should not even be allowed to listen to radio, what else be on the air. But these were the days before satellite and computer hard drive programming, so you had to deal with them until you could find talented and qualified replacements, which we eventually did.

During my first year in the radio business in New Martinsville, WV, I had a high school student who had worked on the air part time and presented newscasts. Jim Forbes. Jim had a desire to have a career in broadcasting and later attended Marshall University with that goal in mind. Jim was about to get out of school, he had talent and I knew him well. I could trust him, though while working at the station in New Martinsville, if he were the only one at the station and was hungry. He would put Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin which ran over eight minutes in playing time on the turntable and drive quickly through the McDonalds Drive Thru, often not making it back before the record timed out. This of course did not set well with me, plus it was against FCC Regulations which forbid you to leave a station unattended, neither of which seemed as important to Jim as feeding his high school hunger pangs.

We saw Jim as an ideal and affordable if not experienced person to bring in as our News Director and "eyes" at the Station. Jim, never shy of having a good time accepted the opportunity at Myrtle Beach.

Jim and my first work assignment was attending a National Association of Broadcasters Seminar on AM Radio that was held in Charlotte, NC. One night there after an expensive steak dinner for us both and three martinis for me. I suggested Jim be my designated driver and we make a visit to nearby Heritage Village, the elaborate amusement park built by Jim and Tammy Baker of the religious PTL television fame. I had never been there and was curious to see it in person. Once we arrived in the Park, I recalled that Pastor Jim had solicited money to build a home for unwed mothers at the Park. Jim Forbes being single at the time, and me being somewhat gin and vermouth infused, insisted we might want to find the facility and do a panty raid. Jim's judgement was, that was probably not the best idea I had ever had. Which lead me to abandon the suggestion and affirmed he had suitable management skills for the job that was ahead of him at WMYB.

Bill Allman, that had served as General Manager during the interim of the FCC approval left shortly after the closing, which is most often the case when a radio station changes hands. We were to begin with Jim, Carolyn, and a capable young woman I hired, Helen Hancock. Helen was smart, attractive and professional. My father in law at the time, who was a lawyer, suggested one of his female divorce clients that had experience in media sales in West Virginia might want to start anew in Myrtle Beach.        
Kathy Taylor, was experienced, personable and attractive, Kathy was perfect for the Market as she could have been easily cast in the television show Designing Women with her looks and Southern charm we had the core of solid and talented people to get us to where we wanted to be.

Embracing my over confident manor following the "no such thing as a bad radio station" mantra and because of the Myrtle Beach Magic. I had failed to do the most simple of due diligence on the radio station. I knew it was a Daytime AM, which means you have to sign off everyday at local sunset, and where the tower and transmitter were located. All other details I was confident would be overcome by the improved management and often aforementioned Magic.

Being the original radio station in Myrtle Beach the signal of the station covered the town of Myrtle Beach well, but the signal did not cover what Myrtle Beach had by then become which is the Grand Strand. The Grand Strand consisted of the area from Little River, SC to the North, to below Murrell's Inlet to the South, a distance of over 30 miles. WMYB's was lucky on a clear day to cover a third of that area. Not a good thing. I rationalized though that with our target being that of the The City of Myrtle Beach's community station this coverage would be enough.

With all of our programming and people being in place. WMYB now had good people and good morale to follow a clearly defined programming niche. We were on our way to success.

The Station sounded good and was serving the community as hoped, it was just there was such a small signal and a smaller number of listeners which meant no new advertisers. Without advertisers there was no revenue to pay back the other people's money we had used to buy the place.

I had received the most recent of the dismal monthly financial statements of the Station and booked a flight to Myrtle to figure out how to make adjustments to get the Station to where we needed to be.
When I walked into the Station I received my usual warm reception from all including Jim. With Allman gone Jim's duties had expanded to include driving sales. I said "Jim, buddy sales suck here! What is going on?"  Jim pulled up his shirt and slightly folded down the waistband of his slacks and said "look at what a great tan line I have!" Which really did speak volumes to many of the issues going on at the Station.

I had made the decision that I was going to stay in Myrtle Beach to see if the problems could be repaired or figure out an acceptable exit strategy.

As part of out community programming we did a weekly radio show for the Myrtle Beach Chamber of Commerce that was hosted by Ashby Ward the Director of the Chamber, and another West Virginia native.

When you heard Ashby's voice you knew he had been in radio at one time. He had been an announcer for WMYB in the early years and had an affection for the Station and supported its revival. After he did his show that week he stopped by my office to say hello and ask how things were going. I was honest with him and told him not well. I told him that my idea was to do a radio station for the people of the community and offer them news and information that they had not been able to receive before. Ashby listened with interest and then said,"you should have stopped by and seen me before you made that decision" Him obviously not realizing that though I was only 34 years old at the time, I had all of the answers one could possibly need to embark on this venture. Even with this I thought hear him out, so I asked what he would have told me? He said "the full time residents here do not give a damn about this community or its government, all they care about is one thing, tourists." I responded that he was the Leader of the Chamber of Commerce and surely that could not be the case. He said the Chamber there was basically a tourism group, that is all they wanted, so that is all they were.

The Magic was waning and the financial statements were bleeding red ink and the green of other peoples money was burning fast, something had to change. Had we indeed found a bad radio station?

Stay tuned...

Myrtle Beach Magic Part Deux

While waiting for a hotel opportunity, Ocean Properties Management entered into an Agreement to purchase radio station WMYB in Myrtle Beach, SC from a prominent FCC Lawyer in Raleigh,NC and his partners. Wade Hargrove and a couple of other guys had invested in a radio station in Myrtle Beach to support two former radio newsmen from the Raleigh Market. The senior of the two was a long time, popular and well known newscaster in North Carolina's capital city. Wade and the other investors felt they were getting a known and experienced radio person in an attractive market that would be successful and it would allow them a legitimate business expense to go to the beach. Also the guy they were backing was bringing with him an able and experienced assistant of his from the well known Raleigh station.

 Just a few months after the Partnership took over the station they became disturbed by the dwindling sales and huge monthly losses. The investors took a trip to the station to have a heart to heart with the fellow they had invested in and find out the problem.

They found the truth to be that the prominent newsman they had placed their faith and money in was in fact the gay lover of the younger assistant and with the WMYB investment these guys had been funding a tropical love nest for these two.

With our shrewd entreprenuerial instincts we had found motivated sellers and a property that had a clear management problem that could be turned around easily, and of course we had the benefit of my successful turn around experience. This would be like shooting fish in a barrel and indeed we had the Myrtle Beach Magic on our side too. There was no such thing as a bad radio station, just bad management.

We agreed to pay them them $250,000 cash at closing signed the deal and eagerly waited the 120 days for the FCC transfer of license approval to allow us to take over the Station before its condition deterioated more. We were assured that the two guys would maintain the place during that period and this would not be a concern.

Instead what happened was the younger of the two Newsmen/Operators fell in love with a woman, infuriating the senior of the two. The younger man and his new female lover went on the lam leaving Myrtle Beach in fear of their lives. After learning this the senior of the two also left the Beach in pursuit of the lover who had scorned him. The radio station was left with nobody in charge.

I get a call from Wade informing me of the Love Triangle issue and the void it had created. The Federal Communications Commission rules do not allow an applicant for a license to have any input into the management of a station until they have given their final approval, so we were helpless. The sellers were able to rehire a former General Manager of the Station to take over until the closing. A Clarksburg, West Virginia native named Bill Allman. This seemed like a reasonable solution and we eagerly looked forward to the closing before anything else negative could possibly happen.

We weren't that fortunate. A week before the scheduled closing the Myrtle Beach Sun Times had a front page story detailing how the two gay lovers of WMYB had traveled around the Country just missing each other until the previous day the senior of the two found his former lover in a motel room in Salem, Virginia. Senior broke down the door to the room with pistol in hand, his estranged lover was also armed and they simultaneously shot and killed each other.

I was pretty certain from my college Public Relations classes that this incident called for what is known as "crisis management"

In this bizarre case though we decided to ignore the recent history and portray ourselves as the "White Knights" that were there to save Myrtle Beach's original radio station. The station had previously had an FM companion which had been sold off prior and now operated in a different facility. The station was WJYR, Beautiful "elevator" Music, but with the predominance of retirees in Myrtle Beach it was the number one ranked station in the Market. The other popular station was Myrtle Beach's Heritage Rock Station WKZQ, which I had always enjoyed when at the Beach. Also at about the same time a 100,000 watt sleepy FM station licensed to Conway,SC had been purchased and changed to a "flame throwing" pop format that they were calling "The Wave" WMYB did not even show up in the Arbitron Ratings. We were fearless, remember.

After a non scientific analysis of the Market, as to needs and voids in programming and knowing the station was the only stand alone AM in Myrtle Beach, which is tantamount to being an orphan at a family reunion. I brilliantly decided that WMYB would be Myrtle Beach's Community and News Station.

The only programming the Station had made any revenue with was Myrtle Beach High School
Football broadcasts. I felt we could build upon that with heavy localism and news and the natives and full time residents would love us.

The Voice of Myrtle Beach was launched with great fanfare. we had an affiliation with NBC Radio News and local news support. We were on our way to a huge success, what I felt would be a groundswell of community support, and perhaps even a key to the city.

With this quick turnaround and contribution to the community we knew the task of raising more money from investors to further exploit the Myrtle Beach Magic would be a breeze.

In the next episode we'll discover more about the characters involved in this fun filled adventure... 




Photo of WMYB courtesy of Tom Myslinski of New Martinsville, WV, who was a member of a party of golfers that visited the Beach during this time. During their visit I hosted a pig roast in their honor and offered other tourist tips to several in the group. Though well over 25 years have passed, I am pretty sure I could raise some "hush money" from them to not do a blog on that week's antics.

A Few Good Men

I recently read an article directed toward a phenomena of Boomers, such as myself, that as we are reaching our sixties it seems we are beginning to reexamine the quality of our lives.

In that I find myself doing just that and also the next day having a telephone conversation with a good friend who is going through a bombardment of friends and family urging his salvation.

Before total self examination, I thought about the great men I have known in my life.

For a guy from a small town in Southern West Virginia I have been very fortunate in my life to meet and even know many, what most, consider great men. From politics, sports, and business. I won't drop names now, instead I would contrast that experience with three men I have known and been fortunate to call friends in the past six decades.

For a guy that for most of his life has most often been labeled as ornery, I have known three guys I could  describe as really, really good men. This is not to say that all the rest of my friends are some how inferior, because that is just not the case. They are fine and in most all cases exceptional folks. In fact most would make the Special Honorable Mention list.

So what are the criteria I chose to be on this short list? After considerable thought on the matter I realized all three guys had almost identical traits, habits, and lifestyles. Here is what I discovered. First and foremost they all have great senses of humor, and yet they have a strong sense of self discipline, that sense is so strong and natural it is not something that is not in the least bit overbearing. I have never seen any of them have too much alcohol and they do not use tobacco, though one did chew in his younger years. They were outstanding athletes and all three are still in great physical shape, are sharp dressers, and have a particular sparkle in their eyes. The three are still married to their first wives and openly and obviously deeply in love with them. Not only have I never heard them, even jokingly, say a disparaging word about their wives, but in fact speak of them with loving respect. They are kind, caring, masculine gentlemen in the purist sense.

One is retired, one is partially retired, the other is still running his companies. All were forces in their respective fields earning well deserved honors and making their professions better and improving the quality of life in their communities.

They constantly strive to help people, to make the World a better place and aim for excellence.

Two of the three have made marked differences and guidance in my life, the third an inspiration and someone I choose to model myself. Unfortunately  I didn't take it all advice given. What I did has been important to me and now I now realize the advice I shunned was even more important. Live and learn.

You may read this and think these guys aren't that unique. I am nothing, if not a student of people and they are quite rare among men.

I feel blessed to have these guys in my life and now as I reexamine my life find their lives more remarkable and never too late to emulate for myself and hopefully my sons.

One of my favorite quotes is "A father is a man who expects his children to be the man he meant to be" 

I think that thought sums up the rush to reexamination and I believe and advised my good friend the best way to his salvation may be to strive to live his life in the manner of these three friends of mine.

I would not trade one of the Good Men I know, for all of the Great Men I have met.

Why I never really loved Raymond

The other day I had the pleasure of driving on the country roads outside of Charlottesville, Virginia in the area of Walton's Mountain. The setting for The Waltons television show, that was a ratings hit on CBS from 1972 to 1981.

 For those that don't recall, it was the show's creator,Earl Hammer Jr.'s recollection of growing up in the Blue Ridge Mountains during the Depression and  World War II. A poor, but proud and loving family. Featuring two generations of Patriarchs and Matriarchs strong physically and in their faith in God and their own family of seven children's destiny.

It is generally accepted that the Baby Boomer generation was given a false impression of American family life by the sitcoms of the Fifties and Sixties.

There is really no need here to describe the lifestyles of Ward and June Cleaver, The Donna Reed Show's Donna and Dr. Alex Stone and most definitely Jim and Margaret Anderson's roles in the certainly politically incorrect Father Knows Best. All the moms were in beautiful dresses and as casual as a dad got was a cardigan sweater with his necktie.

They never ate in the kitchen, did alcohol or other drugs, what else have any financial concerns though they were all one income households. In fact, in most cases it was unclear what the father's actual employment was . Television network standards would not even permit them to be in the same bed together.

Growing up I assumed there were regions in this Country that people actually lived that way and certainly when I grew up that is what my life would model.

The 1980s brought a new world order of sitcoms with Everybody Loves Raymond its copycat King of Queens that earned it's laughs with the Dagwood and Blondie formula of dumb males that were incapable of heading a household, handling their boss, or changing a light bulb. Their wives were by contrast not only much more physically attractive than their husbands but far superior in all practical and intellectual ways to their comic foil nincampoop husbands.

Then in the 90's the generation of our kids sitcoms they got The Simpsons, Family Guy, and King of the Hill, where with the use of animation the male role was effectively reduced to an even lower intellect basically unable to survive a mental hygiene hearing to be saved only by a barely intellectually superior wife, but the man is consistent butt of all the laughs.

It is just television, it is just entertainment. If so, why do so many in my generation blame our fifty percent plus divorce rate on the false impression of the proper American family we derived from the aforementioned shows. Our rushing to marriage, the proper amount of children, a split level house and the pursuit of the Ozzie and Harriet American Dream?

Statistics show that  fewer couples of my children's generation are marrying and those that do, are at a much older age. This should prove to be a good thing. My observation is that young men are now more liberated from the here to before roles assigned to males, that were unrealistic, but in many cases have been just as persuaded by the boob tube that they are boobs.

As sappy as one might want to label the family Walton, from my vantage of knowing the two generations prior to mine. I believe that the portrayal of that family was much more realistic for that era than any other previously mentioned shows were of theirs.

Men and women are equally strong and able. I believe it is just as politically incorrect to show the male as an idiot as it was for the Jackie Gleason character on the Honeymooners. Ralph Cramden to make a fist and threaten to send his wife Alice to the moon.

Those that know me, know I am far from humorless, but in my opinion it is wrong and cheap to get laughs by creating a false stereotype for either sex. Actually worse than the pristine perfection of the unreal lives in the 50's and 60's television shows.

Though maudlin and somewhat boring, the generation portrayed by the Walton's that were entertained by books and storytelling, rather than television's persuasion is now known as the Greatest Generation, coincidence?

Myrtle Beach Magic, Part I

Early one Monday morning a good friend of mine stopped by my office in New Martinsville, WV. He had just returned from a week vacation on South Carolina's Grand Strand, Myrtle Beach. West Virginia's favorite vacation mecca.

These visits to my office were a regular weekly event, but this one was different. This time he had visualized something in the last week that was going to open financial rewards beyond our belief. The year was 1983 and he had discovered that this little slice of heaven on Earth in the Palmetto State "was exploding with growth and development" This was something that we had to be a part of, it was the "mother lode"

As the enthusiastic observations and projections continued, and me always being quick to jump at any entrepreneural venture, I asked, "okay what do we do to get in, what business opportunity is
really there now? His answer "an oceanfront hotel"

"A hotel, what the hell do we know about hotels?" I asked.

"What is there to know? You check people in and take their money, he informed me"

Both of us still being in our thirties and not knowing the meaning of the word fear, nor did we know what the meaning of doing business in a resort town like Myrtle Beach was, we booked a flight to Myrtle Beach to search for our fortune on the Grand Strand.

During this era there was a popular real estate investment tool called Limited Partnerships. Simply, how LPs worked were investors could invest in a portion of a large real estate package with a potential large upside profit with tax benefits and the project would be managed by the General Partner who would get a small share of the deal and an ongoing management fee.

We created a South Carolina corporation, Ocean Properties Management to be the General Partner. OPM for short, which the two of us knew was really meant to stand for Other People"s Money.

In true form to our self known magnificence and business aptitude any trips that we made on this venture required us to rent luxury cars and smoke expensive cigars while canvassing properties. Which I am sure was much less impressive to prospective sellers than it was to the two of us.

We retained the services of a commercial real estate broker there that specialized in hotels and motels,
Bob Coker.

Bob was a native of nearby Conway, South Carolina and he never slept. We could receive telephone calls from him at 1:00 am, 6:00 am, made no difference if there was a hot deal Coker was not shy about letting us know. This was also the year that he earned the distinction of being the number one top biller for Century 21, not just in Myrtle Beach, or the United States but in the entire World. This guy made Zig Ziglar look like a piker.

On our numerous trips from West Virginia to South Carolina to inspect potential properties to purchase we looked at motels and hotels of all sizes in all parts of the beach. It seemed almost any hotel that we might want was for sale. We also learned that very few of the buildings included the land upon which they were built, the land was leased and in many cases already had three or four mortgages on them.

Even for the two of us at the time that were blind with the confidence of our exceptional business and marketing prowess felt this might be an indicator of problems. In expressing this concern to Coker he said we were missing the "Magic" and that he would pick us up the next day to show us the "magic" that assured success.

Somehow, apparently Coker had determined that his clients were a couple of marks or pigeons from the North that he was going to be able to dazzle with trickery.

We agree to join him for breakfast at a local restaurant between Conway and Myrtle on Route 501 and then afterwards to go discover the Magic. After a southern breakfast with biscuits, grits, eggs and country ham we join Coker in his car and drive down to Ocean Boulevard where he pulls straight into an oceanfront hotel parking lot facing the beach. "this is it" he says, we say "is what?" Coker says "the Magic, this is the magic. The Ocean is the Magic, each foot of that beach down there is selling for five thousand dollars and that is what you are buying boys, Magic. You can't go wrong with anything you buy here"

 After that inspiration, numerous trips, due diligence, and dozens of cigars we decide we are going to purchase the Ocean Reef (pictured above how it looks today, not then) it was a high rise, oceanfront, in a central downtown location and the real selling point was it had an oceanfront penthouse that was well suited for General Partners housing. The Ocean Reef was owned by Bhoupa "Boopie" Patel, who owned several properties in town. He was selling in order to invest in condominium construction which was a new idea at the time, that we felt would probably not catch on.

We meet with Patel and made an offer of 1.75 million which was less than the 2 million he wanted, Coker felt sure he could convince him to take the offer. At this point in the negotiation I should point out we had raised no partnership money, we had opened a bank account in the corporate name though and had a $100 balance. Patel held firm in his price.

Meanwhile we had learned of several radio stations there that were for sale, both of us knowing something about radio and me thinking at the time that there was no such thing as a bad radio station just bad management. when you coupled that with the Myrtle Beach "magic" to which we had been introduced, perhaps it was an omen that if we could not get our hotel, that we should buy a radio station. Then while we are cranking in the huge profit from that we could wait for the right hotel property to become available.

WMYB AM. Myrtle Beach's original radio station was purchased by the Corporation. The operation and story of this includes humor, intrigue, sex, several deaths and learning lessons never to be forgotten, but that is a story for the next essay as the Magic continued.

Burma Shave and Mail Pouch it wasn't

This weekend while watching a baseball game between the Atlanta Braves and Philadelphia Phillies from Atlanta's Turner Field on TBS, the Turner Broadcasting Station which was originally Atlanta's Channel 17 WTBS. The Braves were wearing their "throwback" uniforms from the 70's. I recalled the first Braves game I attended in Atlanta in 1977.

Sometime during my sophomore year in high school I decided I wanted to be in the Advertising business.

That period in my life was pretty much in the sweet spot of the Mad Men era, and during the first Darrin that was Samantha's husband on Bewitched. The glamour of Madison Avenue in New York, New York looked quite appealing from my perspective on Chestnut Avenue in Oak Hill, West Virginia.

Unlike many that jumped from major to major, I stayed focused on Advertising and was able to major in the field at both the University of Tulsa and took (earned may not be the right word here) a degree in the field from WVU.

During my Junior year in Morgantown I began my search for a career in New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles, sending dozens of letters of interest to all of the well known ad agencies I had followed for years in my favorite read the trade journal Advertising Age. Occasionally I would receive a form letter in response promising to keep my information on file. My goal was to find an ad agency to intern with the summer before my senior year so as to start feeling comfortable in oak paneled board rooms and refine my taste for dry martinis.

Having no luck with the J. Walter Thompsons, McCann-Ericksons or the Cooper Daniels of the world, my hopes of being a Don Draper or David Ogilvy was waning.

Ever resourceful I started searching local yellow pages for any businesses locally that were classified as Advertising. All that was listed in West Virginia was Outdoor Advertising. Outdoor Advertising, billboards. Billboards, this was not really how I had envisioned myself as the Gregory Peck character in The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit, not a guy in bib overalls and a pick up truck.

Rationalizing that these local billboard companies may have some knowledge as vendors of Madison Avenue ad agencies, the same linkage we used to make in small town West Virginia with the big city with the excitement of the Kroger tractor trailer coming to town every Thursday. I wrote letters to all four outdoor advertising companies then in business in the State. Hearing back from two of them, one in Bluefield and the other in Charleston.

Woodie Advertising, in Bluefield, WV was the closest to me, and the President and owner of the company Ralph Woodie had invited me over to discuss my future.

In driving over to Bluefield that morning I was picturing in my mind that I would be meeting with a guy in white overalls with paint and paste on them,  chewing tobacco, overweight and probably struggling to get out of his run down pick up because of obesity. Who I met was a handsome fit man in his early 30s, in a tailored suit wearing a Pulsar watch, and driving a new silver Lincoln Continental.

I was excited to find that he had worked on Madison Avenue prior to coming back to the South, to work for a friend of his that owned the billboard company in Richmond, Virginia. He sang the praises of his friend and reinforced all of the attributes of the billboard industry. Woodie told me he would be happy to hire me after my graduation. I respectfully declined, explaining I had New York, LA, or another major market in mind. he understood and told me he would support me in anyway he could including giving me a reference to his friend, Ted Turner who now owned the billboard company in Atlanta.

This experience had pretty much refocused me from Madison Avenue to take the contrarian route of outdoor advertising through Cleveland for a year and back to Parkersburg, WV to manage a company there at the ripe young age of 22.

I learned that every spring Ted Turner hosted a large client party including bagpipers, trapeze artists, magicians, open bars, and some other censurable activities.

The morning after WVU had beaten NC State in the Peach Bowl in 1976, while waiting on a flight I read on the front page of the Atlanta Constitution that Ted Turner had bought the Atlanta Braves Baseball Team to air on his newly purchased television station. He had paid one million dollars down and a million a year for nine years. One hell of a deal, considering the TV station had been paying the Braves $800,000 a year for the rights to carry their games, and Forbes now values the Braves at 450 million dollars.

The Spring of the next year I was asked to make a presentation at a regional outdoor advertising conference to be held in Atlanta and the conference would coincide with "The Party" and another night a reception at the Stadium Club at the old Fulton County Stadium hosted by Turner.

As a 25 year old, I had some trepidation on having to present to a conference of my peers that were all older and more experienced, but the opportunity to attend this infamous shindig and a major league baseball game with a team owner outweighed those butterflies.

"The Party" was all it had been billed to be, held in the warehouse facility of Turner's billboard business. I was able to first meet Turner's best friend and roommate from Brown. Peter Dames, who now was his right hand man in the media business. Pete was quite a character himself and in most circles would be considered a renegade but in the Turner Organization he was the cool calm hand. he shared with me one of Ted's secrets of his successful philandering was that his wife was named Jane, his secretary was named Jane, and his mistress was named Jane. This was long before he met and married Jane Fonda. I suppose you might say he had a Jane Addiction.

A huge rare roast beef and shrimp, bigger than your thumb dominated the buffet table in the oversize suite in which our reception was held. Positioned above the third base line at the stadium. I was at buffet table loading my plate, standing with Lewis Manderson and his new wife. Lewis was a hard driving entrepreneur that had built a large outdoor advertising company in the Southeast. The Manderson School of Business at the University of Alabama is named for him. The Business Schools at the Universities of Texas, Texas A&M, and Arizona are also named after Billboard guys. About that time and expectedly late the elevator doors to the suite opened and out stepped Ted Turner  and fellow Georgian and bother of the then President of the United States Billy Carter. They both had cans of beer in hand, it was also apparent that those were not the first that Ted and the First Brother had consumed that day.

Turner and Carter came straight to the food table and Manderson introduced me and his new wife who was wearing a low cut blouse. Turner focused his slurry eyes toward the new Mrs. Manderson's cleavage and said "are those real?"

The party moved outside to the seats in the stadium and a constant flow of people brought dollar bills for Turner to autograph, a practice I had not seen before or since. Other than that and sitting with the Owner the balance of the evening was no different from any major league game I have attended. There was one little hiccup in leaving I was riding with a couple of young guys who worked for Turner in a company car. Well over the legal B.A.L. they managed to hang the vehicle on a curb puncturing the gasoline tank and spilling fuel onto the parking lot requiring fire trucks to flush the spill and me courageously to hail a cab back to my hotel. my presentation was the next morning.

Fortunately the morning session started late in that Pete Dames was the moderator and had to be at a photo op with the Mayor of Atlanta for a billboard they had donated for a new lion exhibit at Zoo Atlanta. Dames had come up with copy for the board himself, it had a photo of lions and the copy read "Visit Atlanta's New Cat House"

Turner went on to start CNN, the Cartoon Network, Turner Classic Movies and other revolutionary landmarks in the cable and broadcasting business. He merged with AOL Time warner and at one point was worth over 3 Billion Dollars. He is the largest individual land owner in the World. Turner's father committed suicide the day after he had purchased the Atlanta business and Ted at 24 years old convinced the lenders to let him continue, and he built a multibillion dollar media empire from the back of a business I once had no respect.

Turner's motto is "Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise"

Cheers Ted, and thanks for the invitation.

Looking Back and Looking Forward

I am apparently in a period of my life where I do too much looking back.

 I understand psychologically that one does this in order to recapture the feeling of their youth. I believe this theory, in that I find it quite enjoyable. I do try to keep it in the minority of my thoughts, embracing all the excitement and gee whizzes of all the great technology today in the majority.

But in my recognition of this, ironically, I recalled back to the middle of August of 1969 when I was 17 years old. My mother had driven me to the airport in Charleston, WV to board a prop airplane to take me to Tulsa, Oklahoma to begin preseason football practice for the Tulsa Golden Hurricane Football Team.

Tulsa, which was then and continues to be the smallest school in the Nation playing Division I athletics.

The previous Fall the Fighting Golden Hurricane had played their oil city rival, the University of Houston in the  then new Astrodome. Unfortunately for the boys from Tulsa the Cougars of Houston scored 100 points and Tulsa only one touchdown, that's right 100-6. Larry Gatlin, later of the Country Music Gatlin Brothers as a fourth string receiver caught the last touchdown pass bring the score to 99.

For this humiliating reason and that the monied supporters new multi million dollar LaFortune Hall, a dormitory exclusively for the student athletes had just been built. It was decided rather than to drop football they would throw more money at the Program. Hiring the Defensive Coordinator from a powerful Michigan State University team who had featured  players like Bubba Smith and George Webster. Vince Carillot was to be the head coach and bring the magic of his boss legendary Coach Duffy Daughtery that had been so successful in East Lansing and is credited with the quote "Football is not a contact sport. Dancing is a contact sport. Football is a collision sport" The first time I heard the quote was from Carillot on my previous recruiting trip to visit the campus and the City of Tulsa. I'll have to confess for a 17 year old kid that had done everything humanly possible to get my weight up to 210 pounds, the quote gave me some pause.

When I landed at Tulsa's sparkling new and vast International Airport there was a Graduate Assistant there to meet me, notice I didn't include greet. Bob Junko. Junko, who hailed from Washington, PA had been the only bright spot on the previous years team as a fearless linebacker of which legends were made of, he is not a big man. But he has that same look in his eyes that is usually found in those housed on Death Row. Accompanying  Junko that day was the guy who was to be roomate, Gary Tretter from Monessen, Pennsylvania. This was as much of home as they could offer, in that it was somewhere near West Virginia and there was not one other student in the school from the Mountain State. Less than a week later Gary snuck off from the dorm and went back to Monessen leaving all of his clothes and belongings behind. Some indication of what preseason training was like in the 100 degree Oklahoma sun. From that point forward when any player had reached near his breaking point he would verbalize that he was thinking about pulling a "Tretter" Last I heard the guy whose name had become a  disambiguation  of a verb was the Police Chief in Monessen, which would seem to be to be more of a collision sport in itself.

 Junko turned out to be as crazy as he looked while on the practice field, but a pretty supportive friend when you weren't donning the pads. He had explained to us that in signing our letter of intent that we had sold our bodies to the University; therefore we had no right to even consider not attacking the man with the ball with reckless abandon and absolutely no consideration for the body that was no longer owned by us, but by the Trustees of the good old University of Tulsa. Nothing, absolutely nothing excited Junk more than extolling a hit that would draw blood. I remember one of my proudest moments, in that we were trained there to spear tackle which was legal at the time In doing it properly you drove the point of your helmet into the chin of the man you were tackling and then continued to drive him back to the ground. This one day I performed, the now illegal act to perfection, but in doing so caused myself to have a bloody nose, which bled profusely all over my face and jersey. Well Junko could not have been happier had he seen his first born, he was giddy with excitement and praise declaring that I now, had in fact sold my body to the School. Bloody noses really don't hurt so I was basking in the glory and gladly letting my hemoglobin shine for this fine Presbyterian Institution located in the great plains oil fields. Junko is now and has been for years the Director of Football for Pitt, there is probably some symmetry to that, I am just not sure what.

During that era Freshman still were segregated from upperclassmen in their practice and games. Playing an abbreviated schedule of only four games. The"Gales", as the Freshman team were known, opened their season against the University of Oklahoma, OU. This was a very big deal because Tulsa is a weak stepchild in Oklahoma, as an understatement to the Big Red of Norman. Oklahoma had had a great recruiting year with some real blue chippers, best of which was a running back, Greg Pruitt who later played for the Browns. OU was always known to have some, if not all the best high school players that money could buy from Texas and Oklahoma and this year was no different. Though this year Oil Barons of Tulsa had ponied up some cash for a pretty good team too. We had Drew Pearson from South River, New Jersey who later was an All Pro with the Dallas Cowboys as our quarterback, Drew is the guy who caught the original "Hail Mary" pass. His high school quarterback had been Joe Theisman, who was then playing for Notre Dame and later the Redskins. Steve King from a small town in Oklahoma and now a one of my Linked In contacts, as a linebacker who played several years as a starter for New England and about 5 other guys who made it into the NFL. My bloodletting did not trump my lack of speed so I knew that I had no chance nor desire to "go pro" Pearson's first year as a Cowboy he made $11,000 and had to have a second job at first to survive. Things were different then.

The night had come and I remember standing in the tunnel of Skelly Oil Stadium waiting to run onto the field, standing there seeing the lights reflecting off of the bright red OU helmets that I had watched on television for years, and now in just a few minutes I would be on the same turf with these guys and then it occurred to me I was 1500 miles from Oak Hill, WV and there was not one person in the stands that cared whether I was there or not. I wasn't in high school anymore and this football was different and I had sold my body and it was a collision sport, still fun but not like it had been on sandlots and high school.

We played the "Little Boomers" even most of the night and only lost by a field goal. This was a huge moral victory for the Investors, I mean supporters of the Program. We were the toast of the town and the great hope for the future. This was also only the second year Tulsa had allowed Blacks on the team.

The next week we played the University of Arkansas again at home, they were also loaded with studs, their quarterback was Joe Ferguson who was the second coming of Terry Bradshaw; from the same Shreveport High School as Bradshaw. At that time there were no limit on the number of scholarships a school could award and Arkansas had given scholarships to every starter on Ferguson's high school team in order to sign him.

 Building upon our momentum from Oklahoma and the rumor that one of the car dealers in Tulsa may be offering some of the more outstanding players some "really good" deals on new Pontiacs. We soundly beat Ferguson and all of his blue chip teammates. ferguson lived on to have many better days and for several years was the starting quarterback for the Buffalo Bills.

We went on to beat Wichita State of which a couple of years later would lose all of their team to a plane crash. We barely lost to a Junior College team Northeast Oklahoma State in Miami, Oklahoma. When the coaches had recruited us they had promised we would have a trip to Miami, and as God is my witness I did not know there was a Miami in Oklahoma, and that it was a damn long bus ride from Tulsa.

The strategy that had brought and bought this team together drew the attention of the NCAA, Tulsa, the School that I had contractually sold my body to, was suspended for the entire balance of my classes tenure there. Coach Carillot was forced to resign. I had blown out my shoulder and many of us were considering either pulling a "Tretter" or transferring to other schools.

Drew Pearson had been offered a scholarship to Marshall prior to Tulsa, he liked Huntington. We liked each other and seriously looked into transferring back there together. We didn't and the next Fall was the year of their tragic crash, so that decision was fortuitous.

So I transferred back to WVU where Bobby Bowden had just taken over for Jim Carlen. I had met with Coach Bowden and was considering sitting out the required year and playing for him after my shoulder healed. Bowden always referred to me as the "Oak Hill Flash" in reference to my lack of foot speed.
I tell folks that are not real familiar with the sport that if I had been one second faster in the 40 yard dash I could have been an All Pro. They find this small measure seemingly very close to greatness. I used the line once when introducing Larry Csonka, the former Miami Dolphin great at a banquet comparing my speed to his using this, Csonka saw no humor in the remark.

I had received a grant for my tuition, fees, and books. I got a work study job appropriate for a jock as a Librarian for the Physical Education Department, and a small academic scholarship in my field of advertising. So after a year of healing having a better "ride" than a "student athlete" being reunited with my high school sweetheart, I decided I had played major college football and it was time to move on forward never to don the pads again. But with these and many more great experiences and stories.

Several years later I overheard my mother telling a friend of hers about taking me to the airport that day in August. Unlike today, there was no security then and she described to her friend how she noticed after hugging her goodbye. when I walked through the chain link gate onto the tarmac to climb the steps used at that time she said "he never once looked back, not once"

Now some four decades later I am giving myself permission to do just that.