Dumb Radio Deeds part one...

Sometimes I get writer's block.  It kind of goes along with my ADD...Adult Dumbass Disorder.  As I drove the other day, I realized that there is a complete collection of death defying radio stories I have apparently suppressed mentally, or something.  Let's start with my first radio death defying experience.  First some background.

My first job in radio was in October of 1976 at a small western Nebraska radio station with the call letters KNEB.  There were three men who owned the station.  George Haskell, whose daughter I would later get to know in Lincoln Nebraska and would discriminate against me by hiring their receptionist for a sales job in her all female sales force instead of someone like me, a man, with real experience.  Then there was Les Proctor, who at the time seemed like he might be in his early 80's.  I have heard he still works as an engineer at the station some 32 years later.  If my math skills serve me correctly, that would make him about a hundred and twenty now.  He liked to run his finger up the cart rack while you were on the air making a sound like a train going through the control room while his hearing aid whistled.  The third and last owner was named Wayne M.  I don't write his last name as he might still be alive and sue me for how I am about to describe him.  He was a disbarred Judge who apparently did some plea bargaining with underage defendents, if you catch my drift.  He's the one who would eventually fire me.  He did a call in show from the downtown studios, which he had on a 9 second delay in case he really did get a phone call and he never wore headphones which meant he couldn't hear what was going on the air.  Well, the shelter/studio was not on the delay and many of his shows were done with farting noises, lughter and comments, none of which he heard.  Pretty childish.  Funny though, no one ever told him what was going on as he commentated.

KNEB had beautiful old time studios near downtown Scottsbluff.  The kind of studios where there was actually a studio for an orchestra to perform in.  This is not where the "disc jockeys" worked.  We were at the transmitter site, out in the country, in a bomb shelter/studio, right next to the drainage ditch for the Great Western Sugar Company.  The stench hovered about 5 feet off the ground so if you crouched down and ran into the building, you probably would not throw up. 

I worked the 4pm to midnight shift.  I convinced the owners to make the station a full time 24 hour operation and they finally did, hiring a guy named KC Neff for the overnights.  The station signed off at 10 pm on Sundays so KC could have a night off.  KC and I got to be good friends.  He was a long haired redneck from Minnesota that usually carried a 357 and I, of course, was the mildly talented fat guy from Omaha who only carried a club that I had made in ninth grade woodshop for parent's night. 

One Sunday night I signed the station off and shut down the transmitter and KC and I went into town for a beer.  We returned to the station to do some late night commercial production and when we arrived we found the only door to the fallout shelter/studio was busted down and there was a suspicious car behind the station.  So I coyly positioned the car so the headlights were shining directly on the building.  It was an incredible idea to illuminate the suspicious area.  That door was the only way in or out of the shelter/studio.  Well, except that small 6 inch by 12 inch observation window on the other side of the building which just happened to be the exact exit the perpetrator took. 

I was standing by the front of the car and KC was over knocking the headlights out of the getaway car, which by the way, was loaded with the radio station's equipment.  As I stood in the parking lot, a rather shady character emerged from around the front of the shelter/studio.  He approached me asking what I was doing there.  I replied in kind, asking what exactly he was doing there.  This is the part of the story where you might recall KC's 357 and my billy club.  KC didn't have the 357 that night, but I did have my ninth grade, parent's night billy club. 

The perp proceeded to lunge at me with previously unseen knives, one in each hand.  One of the knives was directed to my midsection and the other came around the back of my head and made contact with my mouth.  At just about the same time, my ninth grade parent's night billy club made contact with his head, rendering him into a state of la la land and a prone position on the gravel parking lot.  KC and I dragged him into the building, me bleeding from two areas of my body.  It turns out that our burglar apparently had failed the interviews to get into NASA as he had cut every wire in the station but the phone line, which we used to call the police.  I held Mr. Brain Donor against the wall with his own knives until the police arrived with guns drawn and pointed at me.  I pointed out who the bad guy was and they took it from there. 

He got six months in the county jail and I got a $15 dollar bonus.  They fired me later that month.  I went to work for 1320 KOLT in Scottsbluff and they doubled my money to $250 a week.  Those were the days!  Although I had been stabbed in the stomach and mouth, the wounds weren't very deep as my trusty ninth grade, parent's night billy club stopped the assault and quite possibly saved my life!  I'm sure here's a lesson here somewhere, you see if you can find it.

That is all...Peters out!