KTLW in Texas City proved to be a great experience for a kid who had just turned 18. KTLW offered me the opportunity to do live remotes, operate the board for a live church-music program, write commercial copy, read news, and replace worn-out needles in the turntable heads. And because KTLW was a daytimer, I gained the experiences of signing the station on and signing the station off.

I also learned to take transmitter readings. But after three months, I was ready to become a rock-and-roll disc jockey. A new station, KBRZ, was being built down the Texas coast, in Freeport.

Out of the clear blue, the manager of KBRZ called to ask me to become one of their two DJs. He had heard me on KTLW; nevertheless, he still wanted me to join his staff.

The pay was ten dollars more than I was making in Texas City. But for me, the big inducement was the freedom to select my own music, and play it every afternoon from 2:00 pm until sign off. KBRZ made a daring move by offering a green kid the opportunity to play what he wanted, with few restrictions.

Immediately I gave two weeks' notice, and prepared to move 60 miles down the coast. With the Showboat Theater and KTLW in my rear-view mirror, I was on my way to small-town stardom. Upon arrival in Freeport, I checked into a small hotel on the coastal highway which led to the KBRZ studios.

The station was housed in its own five-room building, in the middle of a grass field, where cows were pastured and encouraged to eat as much as they could, to lessen the need for mowing. At times, the windows of the control room were open for ventilation, and a cow would walk up and bellow, startling me in the middle of my big moment on the air.

Two offices were located in the front of the building, one for sales/traffic and the other for the manager. The remainder of the building consisted of a studio, a control room,and a transmitter room to the side of the control room.

Though the station was small, it was new, and efficiently built. But I soon discovered a few restrictions on my ability to play the music I wanted. Half the music was required to be selected from the Billboard "Pop Parade," and that meant lots of "white" music.

After a week of no rhythm-and-blues, I made a trip to the record distributors in Houston to load up on R & B. Steve Poncio, the owner of one of the biggest independent distributorships in Houston, gladly gave me free product, even though I was from a tiny market.

I also took everything I could get from King, Imperial, Specialty, Atlantic and several other lesser-known independent R & B labels. The term "rock-and- roll" had not come into general usage yet, but I knew rhythm-and-blues was the kind of music I wanted to play.

In those days records were pressed in one size: the thick, heavy 78 RPM. The 45 had not been introduced yet, and our turntables played only at 78 or 33 1/3 revolutions per minute.

After I selected all the "wax" for my show, I had a stack weighing twenty to thirty pounds, which had to be placed on the desk beside the control board. Later, RCA produced a much lighter version of the 78 RPM record which didn't break as easily, though it would crack at the slightest excuse.

But in 1953, all the records were thick and heavy and broke easily. A cracked record simply meant you pressed the disc flat on the turntable and let it rip. If the crack left a bump similar to a mismatch in a road surface after repairs have been made -- then you'd place a quarter on the turntable head. The added weight would help insure the needle would ride the grooves without skipping. Sound quality was not a big issue.

At KBRZ, I adopted a new name: "Hucklebuck Chuck." "Hucklebuck" came from an old big-band record called "The Hucklebuck," about a dance, and later I became "Chuck, the Cat who likes to Hucklebuck." Corny, sure, but it was effective.

Before long, I was hitting it big with the teens in Freeport/Lake Jackson/Clute, and Angleton. We weren't rated by a rating service, but I could tell my show was doing well: kids would drive to the studio to see me, and I'd be invited to their parties.

They would ask me to dance because they thought a "hip" D.J.like me would be able to do that. I couldn't dance a step. The Bop was the craze at that time and I was clueless. The teen fans never discovered that because I was too "cool" to dance on demand.

We were about the same age, and I was playing the music they liked. I had become a very popular DJ in my little part of Texas, and I loved the attention.

The key to the popularity I achieved at KBRZ in Freeport was the music, not any great talent on my part, although I was indeed improving every day. At KBRZ, I was asked to do the play-by-play of the Angleton High School football games. I didn't know much about football, but that didn't stop me.

I'd do anything to get experience, as long as I was on the air. So, at the Friday-night football games I'd deliver play-by-play and the station manager, Ken Ferguson, would do the color commentary. No one could hear us as we announced the evening's contests, because KBRZ was a daytime-only station, but we were recording the play-by-play for playback the following morning.

Another new experience for me: I was being asked to be the ring announcer at the weekly wrestling matches in Angleton. I designed a printed wrestling program with pictures and sponsors, in hopes of making some extra money.

I was working very hard, but I wasn't making the big bucks I'd expected. At ten cents a copy, you had to sell lots of programs. Some weeks the printing bill for the programs was higher than the receipts from sales and advertising. So I was getting experience in sales, sports, design, writing . . . and losing money.

One day, I approached the manager and suggested we turn our call letters into a word which would identify our station. I was such a fan of KNUZ, which was called "K-News", that I thought this the way to go. The manager liked the idea, so KBRZ became "K-Breeze," which connected nicely with the ocean winds of the Gulf Coast. KBRZ kept that name for the duration of the station's existence.

Let's see: three stations in less than a year. I believe I see a pattern developing. In Freeport, I met and married my first wife. Her name was Linda, and she had no idea what she had gotten herself into. But how could anyone resist being married to a $60-a-week small-town radio star?

Aside from painting my baby-blue Ford pink, installing leopard-skin seat covers, getting married, learning my wife was pregnant, and living the life of a small-town radio star, not much happened in Freeport.

After ten months, my fourth radio station in a career of less than two years was just around the corner, and so was the chance for even more firsts for this young radio guy. Next week, we'll talk about another move, one, which again, brought me close to Houston.