Excerpt #10 from the long-awaited book that Chuck Blore has almost finished writing ...

www.chuckblore.com

OKAY, OKAY, I WROTE THE BOOK

Return with us now, to those thrilling days of yesteryear ... when modern radio was very very young ....

“You’re going to El Paso . You are going to be a Program Director and I think you’ve made a wise decision.” Gordon McLendon, sometimes AKA God, had issued a directive. No discussion. That’s the way it’s gonna be. Well, there was maybe a small discussion, as I recall something like this.

CHUCK: You say, “You think I’ve made a wise decision.” Well, I think maybe you’re making an unwise decision because I don’t know the first thing about being a program director. I swear, I have trouble just doing one little three hour show. I don’t have the slightest idea about programming a radio station. You need guys who think like you do. All the stuff that makes it a McLendon Station comes from Dallas and I don’t know how to do that.

GORDON: Our El Paso station gets the same stuff. You’ll do fine.

CHUCK: Please let me just do my three hours.

GORDON: Think of it this way. Instead of just three hours, you’ll be programming an entire day.

CHUCK: I want to be a deejay, Gordon.

GORDON: You’re going to be a Program Director, and wise or not, that is the decision.

So the decision was, be a PD or be out of a job, which also meant be out of the McLendon organization. I could probably get another job but there was no other radio company like this one and I had learned more, in the six months or so that I had been there, than in the five years I’d spent in Tucson. And, I’d only just begun.

“So, it looks like we’re gonna live in El Paso, Cath.”

“El Paso?” She said, “Where is that?”

“It’s in Texas, that’s all I know?”

Actually, I knew a little bit more than that but I didn’t want to scare her to death. Frank Bell, the all night jock at KTSA was a Texas native so I had asked him about El Paso. Now, all this other dialog I’m writing in this book is kind of a recreation of something close to what was said but there are at least three things that are absolutely word for word. The first was when Olga, my eighth grade girl friend said, “I’ll show you my bra.” The second was Gordon’s “... wise decision” line and the third was Frank’s description of El Paso, “If Texas was a Jack Ass, El Paso would be the tail, or something very close to it.”

“Something very close to it.”

“Yeah. Very close.”

“I think it’s very close to Mexico.” I told Cath. “It’s an eight station market and the station, KELP, has like a 35 share.”

“That means 35% of the people there listen to that station and the other seven stations divide what’s left, right?” She was very good with math.

“Yeah, I guess.” said I, who was not.

“So, it obviously a pretty good station.”

“Yeah, and I have no idea what I’m supposed to do there.”

Cath and I were still not wild about the idea of leaving KTSA. The station was great and we’d made a lot of new friends. We had a neat little house about five miles out of town with nothing much around except another neat little house about 100 yards from where we were. Our neighbors had a neat little boy four years old, the same age as our daughter, Cathianne. His name was Bill. Not Billy, but Bill. And Bill, not the little boy, but the name, was the reason we suddenly wanted out of San Antonio.

One day Cathianne and Bill had been playing in the very pretty garden which ran along the pathway between the two houses. I called for Cathi to come in, it was nap time. She began to cry, “ I don’t want to take a nap. I want to pay with Bee-yull.” Cath and I stared at each other, one shocked face looking into the other. “She said, Bee-yull. She meant Bill but she said. Bee-yull.”

“Oh my God. She’s talking Texan.” That whole sentence came out of Cath’s mouth in the form of one long startled gasp. “I’ll go pack.” she said, “You call Don Keyes and tell him we can leave tomorrow.”

I called Don and he said some guy named Gary Owens was replacing me and he would see how quickly Gary could be ready.

The day after Thanksgiving we left for El Paso. I remember the date because we had Thanksgiving dinner with Don and Sally Keyes. We were reflecting on the things for which we were thankful. Don was rumbling on about the great successes of his radio station and Cath was thankful we were leaving and had saved Cathianne from the curse of the Texas Tongue.

Two things I remember about the drive to El Paso. The first was that our little four year old had decided she would be much more comfortable if she were to make the journey naked. Oh my, she thought that was funny. Taking off all her clothes in the back seat and forcing her little naked self between the two front seats to show off her belly button. Cath would redress her ... not redress because she was doing something she shouldn’t do, but re-dress because she didn’t have any clothes on. A few minutes later that little naked belly button would push it’s way to the front seat followed by hilarious laughter. At first Cath and I did not see anything comical about it but about the fourth time it happened we were a part of the laughter. It wasn’t that we found anything specifically amusing about the belly but we couldn’t help but revel in the belly laughs that followed. God it was fun.

The other thing occurred when we were still out of radio range of El Paso. I told Cath I was afraid I would hear the station and not hear anything wrong and what’s a Program Director for if not to right wrongs. It really concerned me until we began to hear some familiar noises emanating from 920 on the dial. (Today KELP is a Christian Station at 1590) After only a few minutes I said to Cath, “You have to drive.” She got behind the wheel. I got behind a big yellow pad and didn’t stop writing until we got to the Tail of the Jack Ass.

I got to the station early the next morning to introduce myself to the KELP GM. His name was Herb Golombeck and over the next year I would learn that Herb was one of the nicest men ever to enter a radio station. I also introduced Herb to my yellow pad which was now absolutely filled with my frenetic scribbling. “Jesus!” he said, “You got all this in two hours?”

“Yessir”

“And 4 to 6. That’s right in the middle of our best show.” Then he began to read it. “I heard most of this stuff. I thought it was okay.”

“Well, it may be okay but it’s a long, long way from Gordon’s Policy Book.”

“Chuck,” said Herb, “Klif is a long long way from Gordon’s Policy Book.”

I agreed and Herb conceded he hadn’t even thought of that policy book for two years and he wouldn’t be surprised if all Gordon’s stations were off policy from time to time.

“Yeah,” I said, “But what if ...?”

“Hmmm,” Herb replied, “Yeah. What if ...?”

(...to be continued)