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.