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Chapter 18

It was late in 1966 and I was still working as a
police reporter for KFJZ doing special assignments for
the Texas State Network in Fort Worth.  It was about
this time that I started thinking that maybe there was
something else in life...something other than radio.
It kept coming in and out of my mind.  If I wasn't
doing radio, what would I do? 
   I had six college hours to show for three semesters
at Stephen F. Austin State College in Nacogdoches.
(It had not made University status just yet).
   I knew if I was going to do anything worthwhile I
would need a college degree.  Remember a few chapters
ago when I said that fate had always had a way of
moving into my life and making things happen when I
needed them to happen?  Here comes fate again.  One
afternoon the phone rang in the newsroom.
   The call was from Dr. Jean Browne, the head of the
speech-drama department at Tyler Junior College.  I
had met Dr. Browne back in 1965 during a brief time at
KDOK in Tyler.  I jocked there for a few months
between Mississippi and Beaumont.  She was producing
one of the great old English drawing room comedies,
"School For Scandal."  I was not a student at the
college but I had gone out to tryouts with a friend
just to meet girls.
Dr. Browne saw me in the audience and thinking I was a
student asked me to read for the lead in the play, the
part of Sir Peter Teazle.
   I had been very active in drama in high school so I
went up and read the part.  She came dashing down to
the stage and exclaimed. "The part is yours!"  I had
to break the news to her then that I was not even a
student at the school.  That didn't stop Dr. Browne.
   It was decided that it was too late to enroll for
the fall term, so she told me just to come to one of
her classes every now and then so that everyone would
think I was a student.  I would do the play and then I
could enroll in the spring.  I agreed and did the play
to rave reviews.  Shortly after the close of the play
I was off to work in Beaumont, so I was not there to
enroll in the spring.
   Dr. Browne told me that she would give me a
scholarship if I would come to Tyler and enroll.
This sounded exactly like what I was looking for.  I
told her there was one drawback.  I had to have a job.
 I could not afford to just go to school full-time.
Once again, Dr. Browne didn't hesitate.  "Let me get
back to you tomorrow,"  she said.  I agreed.
   Early the next morning the phone rang at my
apartment.  It was Dr. Browne.  She said that she had
a job for me if I wanted to come and interview
at KTBB.  I did and suddenly I was the News Director
at the station. 
   Next week, Ken Carter becomes Pat O'Connor...on the
Hubcap Chronicles.

Chapter 16

Teamwork is important in all aspects of broadcasting.  Everyone has
got to be on the same page, working toward the same goal.  It is
important to the disc jockeys but it is the most important thing in a
newsroom.  Everyone has to work hard to bring in the product and it
takes a staff that does not worry about a "star system."  In all my
years in news I worked in one news department where this was
true....KFJZ/Texas State Network.
    It was as if each member of the staff was hand-picked because of
some specialty they had...but that was not the case....it just worked
out that way.
    I guess if we did have a star at TSN in those days it would have
been Porter Randall.  They called him the "Paul Harvey of the Southwest"
and he was.  In small town Texas he was more popular than Paul Harvey.
I am not sure where Porter came from.  I don't think it was Texas.  He
had been a magician and an actor on the Vaudeville stage before taking
that wonderful voice to radio. He was really something to watch and
learn from.  He would wander into the newsroom about 5:30 or 6:00 every
morning.  Most days he dressed like the great white hunter with the bush
jackets and the like.  Porter loved Africa and spent a lot of time
there, just taking pictures.  I couldn't pass up the chance so I started
called him "B'wana Porter."  Everyone else in the newsroom almost had a
cardiac the first morning I called him that.  Porter just gave me that
big old slow grin of his and I knew I had found another friend.  Several
years later I was working in Big Spring.  I had just moved out there and
was getting to know people in the town when the terrible Lubbock tornado
of May, 1970 hit.  I had gotten a call from the Big Spring Police
Department tipping me about the storm so within minutes I was headed for
Lubbock.
    Downtown Lubbock was a shambles.  About ten that morning I ran into
David Day who had made it from TSN Fort Worth to cover the story.  One
of my jobs in Big Spring was to be a sort of "West Texas Bureau" for TSN
so David and I started working together.  We had Porter's noon newscast
coming up.  That is where we would really put the bulk of our effort.
    Gov. Preston Smith, a Lubbock native, was out of the state and Lt.
Gov. Ben Barnes was handling things for the state that day.  He was in
Lubbock and waiting for a call from President Nixon to declare Lubbock a
federal disaster area.  Gov. Barnes gave David permission to tape the
phone call with the President.  We had a problem.  The phone call was
expected right at noon.  So, I told David that I would handle the Porter
Randall newscast and he would be free to tape the President.
    Shortly after 12 that day, seated in an office at Lubbock City Hall,
I went on the air and did ten minutes live with Porter on his noon
cast.  Later that day, when I made it back to Big Spring, I found out
that I was a local celebrity, a hometown hero, and it was all because I
knew Porter Randall on a first name basis.
    We really had a staff of stars at the time. Each one brought
something to the table and when put with everything else gave us a news
department that could not be touched anywhere in the southwest.
    The late John Moncrief had grown up in Fort Worth and graduated from
TCU.  He had been with TSN and KFJZ for several years when I got there.
No one knew the town or the people better than John.  He was one of
those news people that when he started working on a story, he was going
to finish it.  Nothing got in his way.  He was one of the hardest
working radio news people I ever knew.
    Bob Barry came to Fort Worth from Shreveport, Louisiana by way of
Brooklyn.  He lived for politics,  I have never known anyone that put
that much time into the study of politics.  That was why when TSN went
to statewide election coverage Bob was in his element.  He also had a
photographic mind.  He never forgot anything.
    Bob Norman came to TSN after being the Bureau Chief from Mutual
Broacasting's European desk.  This guy opened up a lot of doors for us
when we started expanding because he knew who to call to find out what
we needed to know,
    David Day was being groomed to replace Porter when Porter decided to
hang them up.  It was a good choice.  An outstanding news person and
willing to do whatever it took to get the job done.
    That's enough for now.  Next time I want to talk about other news
people I worked with over the years and pass along a few blue ribbons to
them also.  See you next time on the Hubcap Chronicles.

Chapter 15

Back in my police reporting days at KFJZ  there were radio station
news units all over town.  Some of the stations used one person...news
cameraman to cover for both a television station and a radio station
too.  That was the case with KRLD, WFAA, and WBAP.  Two of the best were
Fred Hatton with WFAA and Steve Pieringer with KRLD.  Fred was a rough
old fellow but he knew his job.  My respect for him doubled with someone
told me that he had gone ashore on several islands in the Pacific during
World War II armed only with a camera.  Steve Pieringer would give his
life doing his job on a hot summer day in August of 1968.  I plan to
devote an entire chapter to that story in a few weeks.
   Our main competition for chasing the news was KXOL.  They had a news
department about the same size as ours but not as well equipped or as
well lead...in my opinion.  If you were in news you could not do better
than a news director like Gene Craft or Joe Holstead and a manager like
Stan Wilson.
   KXOL had some good people.  Many of them made a bigger name for
themselves in television.  They had Bob Schieffer before his days with
CBS...Bruce Neal, a great newsman who made even a bigger name for
himself in public relations with Six Flags Over Texas...Roy Eaton who
went on to Channel 5 and then into his own newspaper...Russ Bloxom,
another of the Channel 5 guys from KXOL ... Bill Hicks and Lowell Duncan.
Bill and Lowell both left the radio-tv business and went into public
relations ... Lowell with American Airlines and Bill with Texas Wesleyan
University
   I had a hard time with these guys because they knew the town much
better than I did...so I started coming in during my off-duty times and
volunteering to go and cover stories.  I felt that the more time I spent
in the city the better I would know it and the more contacts I could
make.  It worked for me.  Within a couple of months I had reached a
point where I knew the city pretty well too.
   Back in the days of mobile news you always wanted to get there first
and be first on the air with the story.  Luckily for us, the Fort Worth
Police Department kind of looked the other way at our speeding to cover
stories.  I did have a patrol officer tell me one night that if he saw
me take another corner on two wheels I was getting a ticket.
   I remember one night when I got there too fast.  My shift ran from
3PM till midnight, Monday through Friday.  Shortly after midnight one
night I was heading back to the station to call it a night.  I was
westbound on the West Freeway and would take the Merrick Street exit and
cross-over to 4801 West Freeway and clock out for another night.  Just
as I was getting ready to exit the freeway a call came over my police
monitors in the car..."Signal 37 and a possible Signal 12 at the Como
Cafe." That got my attention.  Under Fort Worth Police Department radio
codes a signal 37 was a shooting and a signal 12 was a dead body.
   When I exited on Merrick Street I was only about a mile or so from
the scene.  So I put the  "pedal to the metal" in the big Pontiac
Bonneville news unit and within a minute or two came sliding up in front
of the cafe.  I noticed at once that I was the only news media on the
scene...I should have also noticed that I was the only person of any
kind on the scene.  I grabbed my tape recorder and raced inside.  Once
inside I saw two people...one of them was a man on the floor in a large
puddle of blood and French fries and another man at a nearby table with
a gun in one hand and a beer in the other.
   The man at the table looked up at me and said,  "I told him to leave
my fries alone."  I wondered where everyone else got off to?  There was
just the  "shooter" ... the  "shot-ee" and  "me" in the place.  I did not
like this arrangement.  He then said  "Are you the cops?"  I said,  "No, I
was just passing by and came in for a beer.  I left something in my
car...I will be right back."
   I ran outside, jumped into my car and raced up the street about a
block or so and stopped to allow my body to catch up with my heartbeat.
Within a couple of minutes the police and an ambulance showed up and I
bravely went back and covered the story.  It was that episode that
taught me that sometimes getting there first is not all that important.
   Next week we will talk about some of the best newspeople I have ever
known...the old staff at the Texas State Network...that's next week on
the Hubcap Chronicles.

Chapter 14

The Christmas season is upon us and if you have been in the
broadcasting  "bid-ness" for any length of time, then you have worked a
few Christmas shifts.  In my first twenty years in radio I probably
worked twenty Christmas Eves or Christmas Day, or both.  I don't know
why and I can't explain how, but a radio station changes during
Christmas.  Usually, thanks to the office staff, it is decorated with
lights and greenery. Everyone is in a better mood than normal, and the
break room or kitchen is loaded with goodies.  I am sure that many of us
have been kept alive by food that the office girls would bring and leave
in the break room.  I can think of one great office girl, Mackey Beard,
who fed me every holiday I ever worked at KFJZ/TSN.
   My earliest radio Christmas was spent at KRBA in Lufkin.  The
station signed off at 11 PM on Christmas Eve and I often worked that
last eight hour shift playing nothing but tunes of the season.  I would
turn the lights out in the control room and let the carols bring the
spirit of the season to me.  This was back when I was ten feet tall and
bullet proof and was smoking too.  I would sit there and watch the clock
move toward sign off and blow smoke rings around the microphone.  As
soon as the National Anthem was fading I was flipping switches into the
off position and heading for the door.  I would hop into the car and
spin my tires leaving the parking area and heading for my girlfriend's
house.  I would pick her up and head off to St. Cyprian's Episcopal
Church for Midnight Mass.  Most of the nights I would sing in the choir
unless Father John Caskey would draft me to be an altar boy.  I usually
only worked weddings and funerals but sometimes I got called in for
special duty on high Holy days.
   After church it was back to the girlfriend's house where we opened
Christmas gifts and tested mistletoe.  Those were wonderful days in my
life.  Even today I can hear Christmas music and I am suddenly back in
those days.  Thank God for the power of music.
   I spent my first Christmas away from home in 1966 at KFJZ.  I was
working Christmas Eve night but was due to knock off early around 7 PM.
At the time KFJZ and the Texas State network were in the same building 
with KTVT Channel 11 on the West Freeway in Fort Worth.  TSN had 
hired one of the TV newsguys to work that night in order for some 
of the TSN people to have the night off.  The guy they hired was Jim Pratt, 
a great guy and a good newsperson in Dallas/Fort Worth and Amarillo.
   I had returned to the station for the night and was about to leave
the building when a three alarm fire broke out at a luxury apartment
complex called the  "Royal Orleans" apartments at Hulen and
Bellaire...not far from the radio station.  Bob Norman, another of our
news people was hanging out at the station so the two of us hopped in a
news unit and headed out to cover the fire.  A three alarm fire on
Christmas Eve was a big story.
   We got as close to the fire as possible and parked the news unit.  I
jumped out with the walkie-talkie and Bob stayed with the two way in the
unit to coordinate things.  I got down to where firemen were actually
fighting the fire and found that they were trying to move furniture and
Christmas presents out of apartments that were burning.  I stuck the
radio in my coat pocket and ran into an apartment to help salvage a few
things.  The upstairs part of the apartment was burning and just as I
started back out the door with a load of goodies, the roof caved in.
   I was knocked to the floor but not hurt.  The fire burnt a hole in
the back of my coat and kind of smoked me a bit but I was okay.  I got
back outside and started doing reports back to the station.  Bob had
heard a fireman say that a newsman had been hurt when the roof came down
.  He found out they were talking about me but that I was okay.  He told
our fill in man, Jim Pratt, that I had been kind of shaken up.  When Jim
called the story into the wire services they carried the story about the
fire causing several hundred thousand dollars in damage but the only
injury being to KFJZ newsman Ken Carter.
   I knew nothing about all of this and went back to the station and
dropped off Bob and the news unit and went over to a friend's apartment
for egg nog and a night of good cheer.
   When the story appeared on UPI that night a kid working at the
station back in my home town saw it and called my parents to see how I
was doing.  I had not called them because I was not hurt.  They
panicked.  The first time the oldest son was away from home at Christmas
and now he had been hurt in a fire.  Do you see where this is going?
   They called my apartment, I wasn't home.  They called the radio
station, but it was late and no one was answering the phone in the
newsroom.  They called the Fort Worth Police and then the Fire
Department...still no information of the missing son.
   Finally, about eight on Christmas morning...I returned to my
apartment...and decided to call home and wish the folks a Merry
Christmas.  I was very shocked when my Mom started crying the minute she
heard my voice.  It took a while to explain it all.  If only cell phones
could have been invented about thirty years earlier.
   Well, that is my Christmas story for this year.  I hope you all have
a wonderful holiday season.  It has been great to hear all the music
again, but I can wait for another year to hear it again.  I realize this
is not in keeping with the spirit of the season but I hope whomever came
up with the idea of having dogs bark Christmas songs gets a large lump
of coal and other bad things in their stocking.  

Merry Christmas to all and to all a goodnight....from stately Hubba Manor.

Chapter 13

I will never forget my first night at work as a  "Police Reporter" in
Fort Worth.  I showed up at the KFJZ studios on the West Freeway about
three in the afternoon.  I was given the keys to a news unit, a tape
recorder, a flashlight, a Mapsco, and an Exxon gasoline card.  Gene
Craft patted me on the back and said,  "Go get them Carter." This was
all well and good but I knew nothing about the city and wasn't very sure
about what they wanted me to cover.
   It was really a neat job.  I drove a mobile unit on the streets of
Fort Worth from 3pm till midnight  Monday through Friday.  I chased
everything.  We covered all violent crimes...shootings, stabbings,
robberies, auto accidents, fires...if the Police covered it, we did
too.  In addition to all of that I also was expected to check in with
the Tarrant County Sheriff's office a couple of times a night to make
sure we didn't miss anything in the county.  I was expected to check the
emergency rooms of the hospitals for any story that might have slipped
past the police.  Luckily, most trauma cases in Fort Worth went to John
Peter Smith Hospital.  It is the county hospital and at that time was
the only one that had a fully staffed emergency room twenty four hours a
day.  I was at JPS usually a half dozen times per night.  I also would
stop by and check with St. Joseph's, Harris, and All Saints...just in
case.  It was not difficult to keep an eye on the hospitals.  They were
all within about a mile or so of each other.  I was also single at the
time and there were a lot of very pretty nurses working in those days.
   I was also expected to stop in at the Press Room down at City Hall a
couple of times per night.  This allowed me to get to know the police
officers that worked downtown.  This is where I met one of the finest
police officers I ever knew, Homicide Lt. Oliver Ball.  Lt. Ball was not
a  "police officer" ... he was a COP...plain and simple.  For some reason we
hit it off perfectly.  The first night I met him he started grilling me
about how I thought reporters should work with the police.
I told him that I saw my job as being that of a mirror.  I reflected
what went on.  I did not change nor distort it in any way.
I also told him that my job was to report what he did and not to report
on what I thought he should have done.  I think what really cemented our
relationship was when I told him that I would not tell him how to do his
job if he would not tell me how to do mine.  A big grin covered his face
and I had a friend for as long as I worked that beat.  Oliver has gone
on to work that heavenly beat now but I would imagine there are still
some guys working detective division at the Fort Worth Police Department
that he trained...maybe that is why I always  feel safe when I am in
Fort Worth.
   I met another life-long friend working this beat.  At the time he
was just Jim Marrs, police reporter for the Fort Worth Press.  This was
back in the days when Fort Worth, like many cities, had two newspapers.
I loved the old Press.  It was a tabloid style paper and they pulled no
punches.  The other paper, the Star-Telegram, in my opinion, kind of had
a hard time with facts, if you know what I mean.  Jim hung out at the
Press Room at the Cop Shop and so if I needed to check on a story he was
a good source.  I, in turn, would let him listen to any tape interviews
I had done of a story and that helped him out too.  Jim would later go
on to become a great writer.  His book about the Kennedy Assassination
was the basis for the script of the Oliver Stone movie  "JFK."
   As I said earlier in this chapter, I was single at this time in my
life.  I did not have much time for a social life.  The one thing that I
missed about being out of Beaumont was the music scene in the clubs.  It
may have been Jim that tipped me first about Delbert McClinton.  Delbert
played all the little dives in the area and if you were reporting on
shootings and stabbings and that kind of violent lifestyle a police
reporter got to know all of those clubs.  A lot of them were on the
"Jacksboro Strip."  This was a bunch of clubs up and down the Jacksboro
highway northwest of downtown.  There were others on the Mansfield
Highway...and there was the Tracer Club on East Lancaster in east Fort
Worth.  Delbert's shows at the Tracer always started about nine each
night.  I made it a point to find some reason to be in east Fort Worth
around nine each night to catch Delbert's show.  It must have really
made an impression on me because I am still a big Delbert McClinton fan.

   Next week I will tell the story of my first Christmas away from home
and how it almost got me killed.  That is next week on the Hubcap
Chronicles.

Chapter 12

    My time at KLVI in Beaumont, Texas working with Joe Holstead was an
intense learning experience.  We covered all kinds of stories and all in
all did one hell of a job for a two man news department.  We did a great
job with the story of the University of Texas sniper in the summer of
1966.  We spent that entire afternoon covering the story and about five
that afternoon we were told that the sales department had sold a
documentary about the story that would air that night after the Houston
Astros baseball game.  We knew that we did not have time to produce the
show, so we did it live.  Now that was an adventure.  Joe was presenting
the first half of the show while I was writing the second half.

    I guess what really turned me against ownership at the station took
place in our coverage of the murder of 8 nurses in Chicago by Richard
Speck in July of 1966.  I was working the morning shift that day and
called a friend of mine that was working in Chicago for help on the
story.  He gave me several minutes of audio and other things that no
other station in the market had.  Later that morning the owner stuck his
head in the newsroom and complimented me on the coverage of the story.
It was several weeks later that I found out that he had deducted the
cost of the phone call to Chicago from my salary.

    I hated the city but I loved working at the radio station.  I should
have known that it would not last forever.  Joe had done just about
everything he could do in radio news at the time.  He wanted to move
into television and he got a chance with a television station in
Lafayette, Louisiana.   I really hated to see him go but I knew it was
best for him at the time.  I knew that he would be a winner on
television just like he had been on radio.  Joe told me that he had
asked the owner to make me News Director when he left but that they
thought I was too young and inexperienced.  I couldn't argue with that
and if Joe was leaving, I was not sure if I wanted to stay in Beaumont.

    During the time Joe was working out his notice we went to the UPI
broadcasters get together in Houston and one night all the people at the
conference went to a Houston Astros baseball game.  I should have known
that something good was going to happen to me...it always did.  At the
game I was sitting next to Gene Craft from the Texas State Network in
Fort Worth.

    I knew very little about the Texas State Network.  I was familiar with
the concept of a regional news network but I had never really paid much
attention to the idea.  The more I talked with Gene the more the idea
appealed to me.  I also found out that the news crew for TSN was also
the news department for the hottest rock station in Fort Worth, KFJZ.  I
had never thought about working in Dallas-Fort Worth.  Gene and I hit it
off from the start.  We shared a lot of the same ideas about how news
should be covered and he asked if I would be interested in coming to TSN
if an opening took place.  I told him yes I would.  Since Joe was
leaving Beaumont I really didn't have anything holding me there.  I
knew that Robert B. McEntire would not be in Beaumont much longer.  He
was too good for the market.  I felt that KNUZ would be bringing him to
Houston at any time.  Little did I know that KILT would beat them to it.

    Less than a month after the meeting with Gene Craft in Houston he
called and offered me a job as a police reporter for KFJZ and weekend
anchor for TSN.  I took it and in October of 1966 I headed for
Dallas-Fort Worth, a market where I would work for almost the next 40
years.

    I showed up in Fort Worth without a car.  Gene picked me up at the
bus station and took me to the Green Oaks Inn where the station had a
trade-out.  He picked me up the next morning and took me to the radio
station.  I was going around the station meeting everyone when John
Moncrief came rushing out  of the news room looking for someone to go
and cover a story.  It was around lunch time and we were a bit
shorthanded ... so I said that I will go cover it.  What had happened was a
patient at the Carswell Air Force Base hospital had crawled out on a
fifth floor ledge and was threatening to jump.  I grabbed the keys to a
news unit and a tape recorder and took off out of the parking lot.

    Suddenly it hit me that I had no idea where the base was located.  About
that time I noticed a large B-52 looking like it was coming in for a
landing.  I decided to follow that airplane.  As luck would have it I
pulled up at the fence not fifty yards from the hospital and there was
the guy standing on the ledge.  I grabbed the two way and got the disc
jockey on with me.  The jock at the time just happened to be the Program
Director, Bill Ennis.  I went on the air and started describing all that
was going on around me.  I must have done ten minutes without stopping
when it suddenly came to me that we were probably missing a lot of
commercials.  Not knowing any better I broke for commercials.  During
the break I started thinking..."hope he doesn't jump during a
commercial."  I decided if he did that I would just recreate it like I
had done with football games and the like.  Lucky for me he did not jump
and was talked off the ledge a few minutes later.

    I found my way back to the station and arrived to rave reviews from
Bill and Gene and everyone else.  I knew I was going to love this job
and I did.   

All about the best news department I ever worked for when
we do this again next week on the Hubcap Chronicles.

Chapter 11

Beaumont, Texas is no garden spot.  It is dirty, polluted, smelly,
and it rained  39 days in a row when I moved there in the winter of
1966.  While the cities of the "Golden Triangle" were nothing to write
home about, we did have a pretty good group of radio stations in the
market.  I always liked it when the competition was good.  Good
competition always makes you work harder
    Our main competition was KAYC. They were the "sister station" to the
legendary KNUZ in Houston. We battled them for the Top 40 ratings in the
market.  They were good.  Al Caldwell did mornings for them and was the
program director.  He was a pro even back then.  They also had a good
news department under the direction of Ross Allen.  They got even better
about two weeks after I started at KLVI  with Joe Holstead.  They hired
my best buddy and almost brother Robert  B. McEntire.  It was going to
be strange going up against Robert.  We started to try and be roomies
but both stations shot that down right away.
    We did share stories.  His newscast was at :55 and mine was at the
top of the hour....So, about ten minutes before news time we would get
on the phone and make sure that we were not scooping each other.  The
"no scoop" rule only applied when we were on opposite each other....The
other times it was "no holds barred - catch as catch can"  stiff
competition.
    I had been in radio about five years when I went to work with Joe.
I learned more radio from him in a month than I had picked up in the
first five years of the career.  We were only a two man news department
but we did not miss many stories.
One thing that really improved for me was my basic reporting skills.  I
became a much better writer/reporter simply because Joe would not have
it any other way.  We used to compete with each other on newscast
quality.  This lead to the invention of a thing we came to call the
"Beaumont Free Style."
    The "Free Style" was a real hoss to master.  When you were doing the
"Free Style" you did your entire newscast from memory.  You took the time
to write the newscast and put it all together and then when it came time
to actually do the news, you did it without the copy.  After a month or
so, I don't think Joe or I ever did a newscast with copy again.  It was
all ad-lib.  It sure made you think a lot faster and become a master of
journalistic foot-work.
    When we were not working Robert and I could usually be found at one
of two places....A quaint little neighborhood bar called "Sam's Alley
Galley" or just across the Sabine River from Orange, Texas at the
greatest "road-house" of all time...the "Big Oaks."   The "Oaks" was a
lot like the roadhouse in the Patrick Swayze movie.  I can't ever
remember going there without seeing at least three or four
fights...maybe a knife wound or two...and on a good night...a gunshot.
The best part of it all though was still the music.  At the Oaks you
could see...John Fred and the Playboys..Joe Stampley and the
Uniques..The Boogie Kings...Frankie Ford...Ernie K. Doe...everybody that
was anybody in the music business at the time.
    Things could not have been going better....but that is usually when
someone drops a clod in the punchbowl.  That is exactly what was about
to happen at KLVI.  

More about that next time on the Hubcap Chronicles.

Chapter 10

I was not unhappy jocking at KDOK in Tyler in late 1965.  It was a
great music time.  The Beatles, the Stones, all the great British bands
were serving up hit after hit.  I have always felt that when the time
comes that you have to psych yourself up to go to work each day, then it
is time to change jobs.  I had just finished a "crash" course in radio
news during my time in Mississippi.  I missed news and I wanted back in.
    I don't know why but early in my career it always seemed that if I
needed to do something to aid the career, then a path would open for me
to make it to that goal.  I guess it could have been Fate...then again,
who knows?
    I was home in Lufkin for the weekend to visit my parents and see my
girlfriend.  I got a call at my parent's house from Joe Holstead.  Joe
was the News Director at KLVI in Beaumont and he was looking for an
afternoon newsman.  I told him that I could send him a tape and resume
and he said that would be fine but he would really rather meet with me
in person...sort of a local audition kind of thing.  I told him I could
be in Beaumont on Monday if that was okay.  I called the radio station
in Tyler and got a couple of days off and headed down to Beaumont on a
cold and rainy January day.
    As I drove through the rain I tuned in the station and it sounded
great.  It was a good Top 40 radio station...the jocks were better than
what you would expect in a market like Beaumont...but it was the news
that really stood out.  Joe Holstead was a "pro" in every meaning of the
word.  His writing was clear and concise..his delivery flawless..and
content was outstanding.
I was a fan before I ever met him.
    Just north of town I came up on an accident involving a school bus
and a log truck.  I pulled over to the side of the road and whipped out
my Department of Public Safety press card and started trying to get the
story.  It was not as bad as it first seemed.  A couple of kids injured
but none seriously.  This was before the day of cell phones and the like
so I got back in the car and headed up the road looking for a pay
phone.  There was a little Mom and Pop grocery store just up the road so
I stopped and called in the story.
    I have got to hand it to Joe.  If he was impressed he didn't let it
show.  About a half hour later I pulled up at the station and went in to
meet a guy that would be a big influence on my career for the next
twenty years or so.
    Joe Holstead looked like a caricature of Teddy Roosevelt.  He had
bright red hair, freckles, and a smile that would light up a room.  More
than all of that there was an air about him and an attitude of "I can
handle anything you want to bring on."
We spent the rest of the day and most of the night talking about
news..radio..news..sports..life in general..and news.  News was his life
and he lived it well.
    I don't know how long Joe had been in the market but he knew
everyone...and better still, everyone knew him.  I think he knew every
law enforcement officer in that part of the state.  He also knew their
wives names, how their children were doing in school...everything.  He
knew all the politicians...mayors, city council members, school board
members, judges, attorneys, ...everyone.  If there was ever a chance
that you would make news or know something about a news story...Joe
Holstead knew you.  I knew that first night that I had stumbled upon a
person that could teach me everything I wanted to know about news and
how to report it.  Once again, Fate had stepped into my life and put me
in the right place at the right time.
    It was about the same time that I realized that even though I had
just covered some of the biggest news stories of the decade, I was still
a long way from being a newsman....but Joe Holstead was going to change
all of that.

Next time...The education of a newsman begins...on the Hubcap
Chronicles.

Chapter 9

I don't know who said  "You can never go home again," but they were
right. I thought when I left WWUN in Jackson, Mississippi and returned
to KEEE Radio in Nacogdoches, Texas that it would be like I had never
left.  I was wrong.  I knew the minute I walked in the building that
things had changed.  Looking back on it now, almost 40 years later, I
realize that the station had not changed....I had changed.  I would not
be happy covering two car fender-benders on North Street or a school
board meeting...or the city council.  I had leaped off the porch and had
been running with the big dogs so to speak.
For that reason my stay in Nacogdoches this time was only about two
months.  I was off to Tyler and afternoon drive jocking at KDOK.
   KDOK was already a legendary station in east Texas radio.  A  lot of
great talent had been at the station over the years.
A couple of my favorites had worked at KDOK...Jimmy Rabbit and Sweet
Randy Robbins,the greatest jive jock of all time.
I can count on one hand all the jocks I have known over the years that I
could just set and listen to for hours on end and be entertained.  You
want to know who they are?  Okay, here goes...My idol, John R. on WLAC
in Nashville...Sweet Randy Robbins..Mark E. Baby Stevens during his solo
days at KFJZ in Fort Worth...Art Roberts on WLS in Chicago...Terry
Dorsey, during his solo days on KPLX in Dallas-Fort Worth...The Midnight
Cowboy, Bill Mack...and the  "peroxide Princess", Paula Street on KLUV in
Dallas or WODS in Boston....Okay, so there were seven fingers on that
hand.
   Getting back to KDOK...I got the job there through the son of the
owner.  KDOK was owned by Dana Adams.  His son, Dana Jr. and I had
worked together in Nacogdoches.  He introduced me to his Dad and that is
how I got to Tyler.  At this time, the summer of 1965, KDOK was a
daytime station.  I did afternoons and during the winter my shift during
some months was only a couple of hours long.  I also did a lot of play
by play sports.  We did high school and junior college football and some
basketball.  I did color on most of the broadcast and learned a lot
working with a great play by play man by the name of Virgil Stone.
Virgil had been doing play by play in Tyler for years.  I think he may
have gone back to the days of leather helmets and peach basket goals.  I
learned a lot from him.  There was a third man on our broadcast most of
the time....John Bass.  John has one of the greatest voices of all time
on radio.  He is also a fine singer with a degree in music from Southern
Methodist University.  John and I would serenade Virgil with old Roy
Acuff songs during those long road trips.
   I enjoyed my time in Tyler.  I learned a lot more about the business
and I sharpened my skills a bit too.  That was an amazing thing about
radio back in those days.  Everybody learned from everyone else.  I know
a lot of you did what I did back then.  We would spend hours in the
production room just playing around.  You would try new things and work
on bits that you would use the next day.  Those were the days when you
really did  "show-prep."  It was also a time when all the jocks worked
well together.  You wanted everyone on the staff to do well.  You don't
see that much anymore.  Everybody is sort of our for themselves and the
business is hurting because of that attitude.
   I also met a couple of guys that were working across town at KTBB.
The late Bill Compton and Hank Cookenboo were really talented.  They
were developing a style of radio that would really catch on in a few
years....It was sort of  "Free-form" radio.  I learned a lot from both of
them.  I remember fondly learning the fine art of drinking cheap wine
and listening to Lou Rawls and Bob Dylan.  Bill and Hank could explain
Dylan to me...and I would explain Lou Rawls to them.  Lou Rawls had been
the protégé of Sam Cooke and if he was good enough for Sam, he was good
enough for me.
   One of the neat things about KDOK was that it was sort of a  "farm
team" or a minor league club fro KLIF in Dallas.  The  "mighty 1190" sent
a lot of people of KDOK for seasoning and training.  I wanted to go to
KLIF but I knew I was not ready and I was not sure if I wanted to go as
a jock or as a newsman.  I missed doing news.  I had enjoyed the work
and I thought if I ever was going to make it to a major market it would
probably be in news.
   I had gone home to Lufkin for the weekend to see my parents and my
girlfriend.  I was really surprised when I got a phone call at my
parents house from a man that would once again change my career path in
radio.  He would also become one of my dearest friends and a man whose
work I admired greatly.

My first encounter with the legendary Joe Holstead next time on the
Hubcap Chronicles.

Chapter 8

I never thought I would get in trouble with the KKK or the White
Citizen's Council because I was a big James Brown fan...but I did.  I
had moved to Jackson, Mississippi to be News Director at a brand new
station that was going on the air in April of 1965.  We all came in
early in order to practice so that we would sound like we knew what we
were doing when we went on the air.  I came in a few days earlier than
the rest of the staff just to sort of get a feel for the place.  This
was my first time working away from home and I wanted to be ready when
the time came.
    The city of Jackson is in two counties.  The major part of the city
is in Hinds County and the suburbs are in Rankin County.  I was living
in a motel in Rankin County while I looked for an apartment.  I didn't
know anyone in town and so one day I ask one of the guys at the hotel
what was going on in town.  He said the biggest thing was James Brown
was appearing at Steve's Rose Room.  I had no idea what or where it was
but I wasn't going to pass up a chance to see James Brown.  I asked for
directions to the club and that night I headed for the Rose Room.   I
really didn't notice at first that I was the only white guy in the
audience.  James came on and did about two hours and it was great.  I
had a couple of beers, enjoyed the show, and went back to the motel.
Early the next morning the phone rang.  I answered about half awake.
The voice on the other end started reaming me out about going to see a
show at a black nightclub.  I thought it was someone putting me on...and
so I immediately started giving as good as I got.  I even talked about
his Momma a bit too.  He did point out that he was with a group called
the Mississippi White Citizen's Council and that I should also expect to
hear from the Klan about this too.  I slammed down the phone and tried
to go back to sleep.  A few minutes later the phone rang again.  This
time it was Tim LeBlanc.  He was the manager of the radio station.  We
talked about getting together for lunch that day and I happened to
mention the phone call.  I was laughing about it.  I just knew someone
was playing a joke.  Tim was not laughing.  He said the call was
probably for real.  I checked out of the motel a few minutes later and
moved to another place for the next couple of nights.
    Working at WWUN was really something.  It was a brand new radio
station going on the air for the first time.  That was a real learning
experience.  The people putting the station on the air were really sharp
people.  They owned a radio station in Baton Rouge also.  They had put
out the word that we were going to be a country station.  They had even
started getting country records from the distributors, while the station
in Baton Rouge was getting extra copies of all the rock and roll stuff
for the station in Jackson.
    There was only one rock station in Jackson at the time...WRBC.  Two
of the jocks on our station had been at WRBC.
Jimmy McCullough and Ron Grantham knew Rebel Broadcasting Company very
well.  On the morning of April 8, 1965 we signed on at 5AM with Little
Milton's "We're Gonna Make It" and the race was on.
    The station was a piece of work in itself.  The other two stations
where I had worked were downtown in bank or office buildings...WWUN was
in a Jim Walter Home at the transmitter site next to a graveyard.  It
was indeed a different kind of place.  It was a different kind of life
for me too.  I was covering stories that were making news all over the
world.  The Civil Rights movement was in full swing and I was in the
middle of it.  I went to Selma, Alabama for the march to Montgomery...I
was on the Edmund Pettus Bridge when Sheriff Jim Clark turned the dogs
loose on the marchers.  I was in Neshoba County, Mississippi when they
dug up the bodies of three civil rights workers that had been slain
there.  This was very heady stuff for a novice newsman like me.  The
biggest story I had covered before coming to Mississippi was a record
breaking tomato crop in Nacogdoches County, Texas.  It seemed that every
day I was getting calls from large stations in New York, Boston,
Chicago, and all the networks wanting help with stories coming out of
Mississippi.  It was exciting and it was educational...but it was not in
Texas.
      I missed my friends, my family, my girlfriend, and most of all, I
missed Texas.  I discovered at an early age that to my way of thinking,
Texas radio was about as good as it was going to get.  I guess that was
why I never left the state again
I knew it was time to say good-bye to Mississippi and head on back to
God's Country.

Next time....Vicksburg in the rear view mirror...what a beautiful sight.

Chapter 7

It was December of 1964 and things were rocking along pretty well.
I had been working news for about six months and I was really enjoying
what I was doing.  I was making good contacts around town and that meant
the job was a lot easier.  It is a definite "truism" that the secret to
being a good reporter is contacts.  It is even more true in small
towns.  I had reached a point where people were calling me with
stories.  That is when you know that you have arrived.
    The only down side of my new job as News Director at KEEE in
Nacogdoches, Texas was that the day started so very early.  I had to be
at the station by 5 am Monday through Friday.  I would sign the station
on at 5 and put on an hour program with one of the early radio
preachers, Dr. Carl McEntire.  While he was preaching away I would be on
the phone calling around and trying to find any news stories that had
taken place overnight.  I did my first newscast at 6 am and then the
owner came in and did a two hour jock shift.  J.C. Stallings was a great
owner and a great guy to work for, but as a disc jockey he left a little
to be desired.  He would walk into the studio just as I was wrapping up
the newscast and try to makes as much noise as possible.  What could I
say?  He was the owner.  I really had no problem with noise but he also
showed up every morning with a hot, steaming, thermos of rich, chocolate
Ovaltine.  I used to think it was bad enough when the morning guys would
spill coffee on the records and all over the board...but Ovaltine was
ten times as bad as coffee.
    Early one December morning I walked into the station getting ready
to sign on and the phone was ringing.  I answered and the voice on the
line said that his name was Gene Nelson and he was with a broadcast
company in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  They were putting a new station on
the air in Jackson, Mississippi and my name had been given them as a
possible News Director for the station.  He wanted to know if I was
interested.  I thought it was someone putting me on.  I had only been in
news a few months and I was getting an offer from a station in a much
larger market.  It didn't seem to be for real to me, but I said I was
interested.  He said that he would like to get a tape and a resume as
soon as possible.  So I told him that I would get one out that day.  I
finished my morning shift and went off to class and forgot all about the
phone call.  When I came back for my afternoon shift I kept waiting for
someone to say..."Gotcha."    No one said a word.  I still thought I was
being set up  so I didn't bother to send out a tape.
    A couple of weeks passed.  Then one morning just after Christmas,
the phone was again ringing when I walked into the studio.  It was Gene
Nelson again wanting to know what had happened to his tape and resume.
I apologized profusely and put a package in the mail that afternoon.  I
didn't think I would ever hear from him again.  Four days later he calls
again and said he liked my tape and wanted to know if I could come to
Baton Rouge and meet with him that weekend.  I drove to Baton Rouge on
Saturday morning and met with Gene and took the job as News Director at
WWUN in Jackson, Mississippi.
    The plan was for the station to sign on the air in late March or
early April.  They wanted the entire air staff to be there a month
before we went on the air.  We would report to work each day just like
the station was already on the air and do our shifts.  That way we
didn't sound like "Ned the New Kids" when we finally did sign on April
8, 1965.
    The hardest thing for me to do was tell J.C. Stallings that I was
leaving.  He had been great to me and I really liked my job and the
people that I worked with...but I knew that if I was going to make a
career in broadcasting that moving from station to station was going to
be part of the plan.  J.C. gave me a going away party at his house and
told me that I always had a job with him, anytime I wanted it.  That
made me feel a little better.
    A few days later I packed everything I owned in my car and headed
off for Jackson, Mississippi.  I was the first one of the group to
arrive.  I actually moved a few days early so that I could see Lester
Flatt and Earl Scruggs in concert at the Mississippi State Fairgrounds.
I had been driving home from my meeting with Gene in Baton Rouge and
about the only thing I could pick up on the radio was WSM and the Grand
Old Opry.  I heard that Flatt and Scruggs were going to be in Jackson
and it was a few days before I was due there, so I just moved early to
see the show.
    I checked into a motel on the Rankin County side of Jackson and
started looking around for an apartment.  I also started making contacts
the first day in town.  Homer Garrison, the longtime head of the Texas
Department of Public Safety had written a letter of introduction for me
to his Mississippi counterpart...Col. T.B. Birdsong.  I called on Col.
Birdsong and hand delivered the letter.  He was impressed.  I had done
something right in his eyes.  I did not realize at the time just how
hated news people were in Mississippi at that time.  They tried to blame
all their problems on agitation by the news media.
By bringing the letter I had shown respect for Col. Birdsong and I also
made a good contact and a friend that would serve me well all the time I
spent in Mississippi.
    Two days later I had my first of many run-ins with the local KKK and
the White Citizen's Council...and it was all because I went to see James
Brown and the Hollywood Flames in concert.  

More about that next time on the Hubcap Chronicles.

Chapter 6

    The early days at KEEE Radio in Nacogdoches were some of my
 happiest days in the business.  Every day was a new learning
 experience.  I was working with people that really took pride in what
 they did...from the other jocks to the owner.
 One of the best things about the experience was that no matter how
 stupid the question, there was always someone there to answer it.  It
 was also the first time I worked with a group of people that really
 stressed teamwork.  We would hold staff meetings about once a month.  At
 these meetings goals would be set and a game plan would be worked out in
 order to achieve these goals.  Everyone was on the same page and
 everyone was working toward the same end.  I really enjoyed working
 under those circumstances.  It is a shame that the business just doesn't
 seem to work like that anymore.
     I was working the night shift.  I went to class at Stephen F. Austin
 State College until one every afternoon.  Had a production shift from
 one till five and worked on the air from six till ten at night.  This
 was back in the days of six day work weeks for jocks.  My weekend shift
 was Sunday afternoon.  I was the "new kid" on the staff for only about
 three months.
 Toward the end of the summer, another new guy joined the team.  He came
 to us from a station in Palestine, Texas.  His name was Mike Selden and
 he would become one of the best jocks I ever knew.
     Like most small stations in Texas we did high school football games
 on Friday night.  About two weeks before the season opened, Mr.
 Stallings called me into the office.  He asked if I would be interested
 in doing play by play of the high school team and help out with the home
 games on the college schedule too.  I had never done play by play
 before.  I knew I could do it if I was given a chance.  I made it
 through the season without any major problems and it was the beginning
 of many years of doing play by play sports on radio.
     Our News Director was a fellow named Frank Hayley.  I knew he would
 not be there long...he was too good.  Good news people are hard to find
 and I knew that he was getting offers all the time.  I enjoyed reading
 news when the opportunity presented itself.  Frank finally got an offer
 he liked and he was off to Tyler.  I told the boss I wanted a shot at
 doing news so I became the News Director at the station.  I came in at
 five in the morning, signed the station on the air, and did the morning
 news.  I was off to class after that and then back to the station in the
 afternoon.  I worked a split shift but it didn't matter to me.  It was
 still radio and that was the only thing that was important.
     Doing news opened up a lot of new things to me.  There were the
 usual small town political things...city councils, school boards, and
 that kind of stuff.  There was also what we used to call the "hard
 news."  This was all the police things like auto accidents, robberies,
 murders, and all the stuff that made you feel like Jimmy Olsen at the
 Daily Planet.
     I have always enjoyed meeting people and interacting with them.
 News allowed this to happen much more often than playing records at
 night on the radio.  The real secret to making it as a news person in a
 small town is contacts.  The more people you know, the easier it is to
 get the story.  I really enjoyed that part of the business.
     This was also the time when news on Top 40 radio stations was pretty
 much show business too.  I always liked to try and find a different
 angle for a story or a more creative way of telling the same story.  I
 was very lucky that my owner felt the same way about news.  He not only
 liked for me to take that way of doing the job, he even encouraged it.
 I decided that I was not competing with newspapers for the story but
 that my competition was television.  So I had to paint a picture in the
 mind's eye instead of on a television screen.  I started using sound
 effects and music and everything else I could think of to do it that
 way.  It gave me the chance to be creative and to indulge in "theater of
 the mind."  I loved it and went charging right into news without even
 looking back at my disc jockey days.
     Before too long I was doing stories for stations like KILT and KNUZ
 in Houston and KLIF and KBOX in Dallas.   It seemed to me at the time
 that my path to a major market was going to open up a lot faster in news
 than it ever would as a disc jockey.
     It was 1964 and the biggest news story in America at the time was
 the beginning of the Civil Rights movement in the south.  Little did I
 know that in a few weeks I would be right in the middle of the movement.

 Next time....Hubcap heads way down south in Dixie.

Chapter 5

It was a summer day in 1964.  My girlfriend Rhonda and I were just
out driving around town.  I had all the windows down in my 64 Impala
two-door hardtop and the radio was blaring. Life was good.  We were
listening to KEEE in Nacogdoches.  It was the only all Top 40 station
between Tyler and Houston.  I really admired the station and I hoped
that some day I would be good enough to work there.
    The afternoon drive shift had just started and the jock went into
his first break.  I almost drove off the road.  I won't give the guys
name here but he was the worst disc jockey I had ever heard in my life.
He sounded like someone doing a bad impression of a disc jockey.  He was
so bad that my girlfriend, who in the two years we dated never said a
bad word about anyone, said, "He is terrible.  You are better than
him."  I made a decision right there that would change my entire radio
career path forever.  I told Rhonda I would have to take her home right
then because I was driving to Nacogdoches and applying for a job at
KEEE.
    I drove the twenty miles to Nacogdoches and rehearsed in my mind
what I was going to say when I got there.  The radio station was
downtown on the second floor of the Stone Fort National Bank.  I parked
the car and trudged up the long staircase to the second floor.  I walked
down the hallway to the manager's office and knocked on the door.  A
voice that sounded like the voice of God bid me to come in.  I walked in
and that was my first meeting with one of the finest radio men I ever
knew, J.C. Stallings.
    J.C. was a former World War II Marine drill instructor.  He ran his
radio station like Marine boot camp.  He was 6'4" tall and hard as a
rock.  He kept his hair in Marine boot camp style and he could wilt
flowers with his language when he got upset.  More than all of that he
was something that was very rare in radio in those days and even more
rare today.  He expected loyalty but he gave it in return.
    I introduced myself and told him I was looking to move up and would
like to apply for a job with his station.  He asked if I had an air
check.  I didn't know what he was talking about.  He said that was
okay.  He knew who I was and had heard me on the station in Lufkin.
    It was about three in the afternoon when I walked into his office.
We sat there for four hours talking about everything.
It was the most intense job interview I have ever had.  At about seven
he told me I had a job.  We didn't even talk salary.
I didn't care.  I was finally in Top 40 radio.
    KEEE had everything my other station did not.  They had
jingles..reverb on the signal..a real news department..a production
room..It was a real radio station.
    We walked into the production room and he threaded one of two ten
inch reels on an Ampex 351 machine.  He told me that one of the tapes
was KBOX and the other was KLIF.  He also told me not to come out of the
production room until I could sound like those tapes.  I stayed in there
till midnight that night and was back the next day ready to listen some
more.
    We had a great staff at the station at that time.  Ray Driver, Bill
Neff, and Jim Stallworth.  Jim was also the engineer.
We had things at KEEE radio in 1964 that I never saw at any other
station.  Things that Jim had built.  We had a natural echo chamber that
he had built in the stairwell of the bank building.  There was a pedal
underneath the control board that looked like the clutch on a car.  Hit
the clutch and the echo chamber kicked in even more than normal.  The
turntable pots on the board could be wide open, but if the motor was not
running in the turntable the system was in cue.  To me it was all magic.

    Two weeks later I worked my first shift.  I was doing 6pm-10pm.  It
was a four hour shift.  I was used to doing eight hours so this was like
working part-time.  The only bad thing was that the station cut power at
sundown so my girlfriend and all my friends back in Lufkin could not
hear me.  My parents could not hear me either. That was okay, they never
listened anyway.
    Bill Neff sat with me the first two hours of the shift just to make
sure that I knew what I was doing.  When he left and I was there by
myself I was as nervous as the first time I went on the air.  I finished
my shift and my relief came in.  I was just about to walk out of the
station when he yelled that the boss was on the phone and wanted to talk
with me.  I stepped into the production room and picked up the phone.  I
thought my first shift had been my last.  Why else would the owner call
when you went off the air?  I picked up the phone and said,  "Yes sir?"
That drill instructor voice just said, "Carter, you're a keeper." and
hung up the phone.
    I had made it.  I was not a "boot" anymore.  By the way, the salary
that we never talked about was $42 a week.  I thought that was all the
money in the world.  Finally, the guy who I thought was the really bad
disc jockey became the program director.  Isn't that the way it worked
out a lot back then...you can't cut it on the air...so you become the
Program Director.


Next Time.....I become a newsman?

Chapter 4

    I guess you could say that after six decades on this earth, over
four of them in radio, I am on the PM side of the "hot clock" of
life.    It seems like only yesterday that I was waking up every morning
looking forward to going to the radio station.  I could not wait to go
to work.
    Every day at the radio station was a new adventure.  I was learning
all the time.  Much of what I learned I was just finding out on my
own.   I would hear something on another station and I would try to
duplicate it on my show.  I stole ideas for bits from everyone.  I
lifted more stuff than Otis elevators.  I did not know it at the time
but I did learn later that this was a pretty good practice.  All you do
is find someone's work that you admire and then you try to do the same
with just a bit of seasoning of your own.  Later, when you really have
all the basics down, you can start doing your own material.  Then
someone will lift that from you and it becomes an endless process.
    In the words of the late Stevie Ray Vaughn,  "The house was rockin'"
at KRBA.  Robert B. and I were doing most of the night shifts.  You must
realize this was radio some four decades ago.  Shifts were not the three
and four hour cake walks of today.  We went on the air at 3 PM and
stayed on until the station signed off at 11 PM.  That's right, eight
hour shifts.  On Sunday you went on at 1 PM and stayed on until sign off
at 10 PM, a nine hour shift.  The thing that upset me most about it was
that the shifts were too short.  How can you expect someone that wants
to be a radio legend to just work eight or nine hours a day?
    Looking back on the two or so years I spent at my first radio job,
those were the happiest days of them all.  KRBA was the perfect place to
start.  We did not have a program director.  You came in and did your
show.  You played whatever you felt like playing.  If, for instance, you
wanted to stick a Buck Owens song right in the middle of a rock and roll
show no one said a word.  You were allowed to experiment.  You were
allowed to be a personality jock...even though at the time I had no idea
what that was.
    As I said before, these were the early days of radio in a small
market.  All commercials on our station were either read by the jock or
they were on vinyl disc.  We did not have cart machines until about
1964.  Even then, we still read commercials live.  Many times the
commercial copy was an ad from the local paper.  You were expected to
ad-lib your spots from that newspaper ad.  It was great training.  It
made you think and it made you be creative.  I remember on one occasion
of having to do thirty spots in my shift for a furniture store that was
having a "going out of business sale."  The only copy we had was a
newspaper ad.  I am happy to say that we did such a great job for the
store that he kept the going out of business sale going for almost six
months.
    We were very short on the equipment side of the operation.  There
were two microphones in the entire station.  One was in the control room
and the other was in a small studio next door, and the plugs did not
match.  I remember one night, Robert B. and I unplugged the microphone
in the control room when we signed off and stuck it among some old boxes
in the back of the building.  The morning man had to find it before he
could sign on the next day.  That was just one of the many pranks we
played during that time.
    The last thing on the program log each night was a five minute
newscast from the wires of United Press International.  The UPI machine
was in a small closet about twenty feet from the control room.
One night, Robert B. McEntire, who would one day be the news voice of
Houston was doing his sign off news.  He had been on the phone talking
to a girlfriend most of the night and just walked out and ripped the
copy off the machine.  There a long string of wire copy out in the
hallway as he read the news.  I took my trusty Zippo and set fire to the
other end.  When he realized what had happened I thought he would break
for a recorded PSA...but instead, he just started reading faster.
I must give him credit for finishing the newscast before the fire
consumed his copy.
    One of the most frightening things in my entire radio career
happened at this station.  It was about 2:30 one afternoon and I was in
the back of the control room pulling records for my show that started at
3.  The morning man was wrapping up his ten hour shift.  He was a
notorious womanizer.  The big problem was that most of the women he went
after were married.
This particular afternoon an angry husband showed up.  I happened to
look up and standing in the control room door was a man with a 30-30
Winchester and he was not a happy camper.  He was there to see the
morning man.  I thought he was going to shoot him on the spot.  As with
most control rooms there was only one door...and it was blocked by the
man with the rifle.  It entered my mind that he was going to kill the
morning man and would probably not want any witnesses.  I got to hand it
to the morning guy.  He was doing some fast talking.  I was to the point
where my life was flashing before my eyes.  Since I was a very young man
at the time, it did not take long.  About this time, the owner Mr.
Yates, came back and talked the man into his office and Mrs. Yates
called the police.  I did a lot of segues that day because I was still
too scared to talk when I went on the air.


Next Time....I become a full-time "Top 40" jock 

Chapter 3   

 I really don't know why we stopped in at KRBA on that sunny June
day in 1962.  My friend Butch McEntire and I had been out cruising up
and down Timberland Drive and hanging out at Read's Drive-In most of the
summer.  I was working part time on a Royal Crown Cola truck and Butch
was picking up a little change playing drums for various bands around
the area.  We both wanted to be disc jockeys, but how do you get that
first job?  We had no experience.  For some reason we just decided to
walk into the station and tell them we wanted a job.

      We pulled up in front of the station and just walked in the door
and announced that we were looking for a radio gig.

      The lady at the front desk was Shirley Yates, the wife of the owner
Darrell E. Yates.  Looking back on it now I can still see the smile on
her face and the twinkle in her eye when we told her what we wanted.
Mr. Yates heard what we were talking about out front and walked out of
his office and he too was smiling. I think they were both just trying
not to laugh out loud.

      He told us he didn't have any openings at the time but we were
welcome to stop in at night and watch the DJ on duty and maybe we could
learn what was going on and maybe there would be an opening some day.
That was good enough for me.

I remember we got back in the car and headed back for Read's both of us
thinking, "Look out Wolfman Jack, here we come."

    I wonder how many of us got that first job because of people like
Darrell and Shirley Yates?   Small market radio owners that were willing
to take a chance and give someone that opportunity to make a dream come
true.

    I was back the next night and walked right into the studio.  The
front door was never locked when the station was on the air.  Hard to
imagine a situation like that anymore.  The DJ working that night was
Bobby Ramsey from nearby Diboll, Texas.  Bobby was already a local sports legend.   He had been  All State in football, basketball, and baseball.  He would later become
Dr. Robert T. Ramsey, Chairman of the Department of Communications at
Stephen F. Austin State University.  He was a great teacher even then.
He taught me the nuts and bolts of the radio business that summer.

    The first couple of nights all I did was watch Bobby work.  The
board was an old General Electric model from about 1948.  It was really
a pretty simple board but it looked like the controls of a space ship to
me.  Bobby handled it all like there was nothing to it.  I was thinking to myself,
"Someday I will be like that."

    About the third or fourth night Bobby asked me if I wanted to answer
the phones and take requests for a program called "The Song and Dance
Parade."  It was an hour long all-request show that ran each night at
nine.  I can't believe how nervous I was that first night just picking
up the phone and saying, "KRBA, do you have a request?"

    This went on all summer long.  I would get up in the morning and be
ready for my job on the soft drink truck at five.

I would work all day in the hot sun delivering "RC Cola" to the thirsty
masses. I was usually finished by about four in the afternoon.  I would race
home, take a shower, and head for the radio station.  I would stay there
until the station signed off at eleven.  It was hard but I didn't
notice.  I was in radio and I was ten feet tall and bullet proof.

    Toward the end of August Bobby told me he was going to be leaving
the station to go back to college in the fall. There was going to be an
opening and Mr. Yates had asked him if he thought I could handle it.
Thank you Bobby for saying "Yes."

     Butch had been coming up to the station too at night and it was decided
that we both would get part of the night shift. I was finally "in" radio.
It was a real radio station, not microphones made out of broom handles
and soup cans.  I would be broadcasting to real people and not chickens
and other assorted farm animals.

    My  first day on the air all by myself was Monday, September 2,
1962...Labor Day.  I was so nervous I could hardly talk.  About a half
hour into my shift I had settled down and was really beginning to cook.
The master control pot on the board was on the far right side, next to
the pot that controlled the volume on one of the turntables.  We played
records back in those days.  You remember records ... those little small
black vinyl discs?  I came out of a record and turned on the microphone
to back announce the song.  Instead of turning down the pot controlling the turntable,
I turned down the master control pot.

This killed everything on the board.  I noticed something was wrong.
The gauges weren't showing any volume going out.

     I was off the air, or so I thought.  Mr. Yates was in his office.  It
was a holiday but there were not too many of those for small market
radio owners.  I told him we were off the air.  He came back to the
studio, checked the remote and saw that nothing was going out.  He
jumped in the car and drove the fifteen miles to the transmitter.
Everything was okay there so he drove back to the station.  About an
hour had passed.  I could not believe my luck.  First day on the air and
the station breaks down.

    He walks back into the studio, hot and sweating from his time at
the transmitter.  He stood there for a moment looking around.  He then
walks over to the board and turns the master control pot up.  He turns
and looks at me, smiles and walks back to his office.  I almost
fainted.  My radio career was going to be over on the first day.  I had
just put the station off the air for an hour in afternoon drive time.  I
sat down and started playing records again after telling the listening
audience that we were back on the air after "technical difficulties."

    Mr. Yates never said a word about it.  You can also bet I never made
that mistake again.  That was the beginning of my almost a half century
in radio.  That was the beginning of a dream come true and a career
started.  I think those were some of my happiest days in radio working
at KRBA.  There was no play list...there was really no format to
follow...no Program Director to satisfy.  You just worked your eight or
ten hour shift and had fun.  It is a shame those days could not have
lasted forever.


Next......Education?  I don't need no stinking education...I am a DJ!

e-mail Hubcap

Chapter 2

In 1954 my family left the farm and moved into metropolitan Lufkin.  I said a sad good-bye to the idyllic days of wandering through the forest and nights of great AM radio reception from the top of the tall hill where we lived.  I did not look forward to being a "city boy."

We moved into a rambling two story house at the corner of Moody and Clark streets.  This would be my home for the next ten years.  I immediately discovered something that had been missing from my life in the country.  There were other kids in the 'hood.  Guys to pal around with and things to do that I had not even imagined when I was tucked away in the bosom of solitude in the country.  On my street were guys like Dickie McAvoy, Steve Stephens, Wayne "Ox" Moore and Boozer Herrington.  There were endless days of sandlot baseball, football, and riding bikes all over town.  The three motion picture houses in Lufkin were just a short bike ride away.  Many an afternoon was spent at the Lynn, the Texan, or the Pines theaters viewing Hollywood's best and
worst.  It was also about this time that I made a great discovery...girls.  For most of my life up till that time I had thought girls were just boys with long hair that danced backwards.  What a shock
it was to discover there were other things involved.  More about that in
later chapters.

I think it was a late night in the winter of 55 that I made the discovery that would change my life forever...Rock and Roll. I was tuning around the dial and found myself way on the right side of the band.  There was a station coming in loud and clear that I had never heard before.  I got there right around the top of the hour and heard the station identification.  It was WLAC in Nashville, Tennessee.  The first song after the ID was like nothing I had ever experienced.  It was loud, it was hot, it had a great beat, and I could not understand a word the singer was belting out.  This was my kind of music.  After the song was over the DJ came on and I was floored.  He was so glib, he was so with it, he was so cool...He was John R. "way down south in Dixie." >From that moment on, John R. was my hero.  He was the role model that would shape the entire existence of what would be Hubcap Carter.  All the years since then I have patterned everything I have done to be like
John R.  I have not succeeded.  He was way too cool for anything I could ever do, but that did not stop me from trying. Over the years since then I have talked to many people in our business and have not been surprised to find that John R. played a role in their lives too.  In 1992 I worked with the legendary Wolfman Jack at KODZ in Dallas and even Wolfman said he was a big fan of John R.

Every night I would go first to WLAC when I started my nightly radio journey.  I did not know about power and pattern changes after sundown then.  I could never figure out why the station came in so great at night but that I could not find them in the daytime.  I also found there were more jocks on WLAC than John R.  There were people like Hoss Allen, Herman Broussard, and another that I would steal bits from too...Hugh Jarrett.  "Big Hugh Baby" was not on the radio all the time. I later found out that the reason was that his "day job" was being a bass singer for the Jordanaires. 

WLAC could not be called a rock station by the standards of today or yesterday.  They were rhythm and blues and did I love that music.  It was there that I first heard B.B. King, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Howling Wolf, Lightening Hopkins, John Lee Hooker, Ruth Brown, Big Mama Thornton, Lonesome Sundown, Tarheel Slim and Little Ann, Jimmy Reed and many, many more.  It was during this time that I thought my name had been changed to "Dammit."  It seemed like the only thing my Dad ever said to me was, "Turn it down, dammit."

Junior High School came into my life not long after that and I found that I was not the only kid in town that was really into this music. The first I shared it with was a classmate named Frank Russell.  Frank's dad was the local Air Force recruiter. Being a "military brat" Frank had moved around a lot.  Lufkin was your typical east Texas town.  It was very "clannish." You were not really taken into the fold unless you had been there a few years.  Frank and I bonded at once when I discovered that he listened to WLAC too and that we were both big Little Richard fans.  That proved to me that music is indeed the international language.  Here I was being a buddy with a new kid in town that was also a Yankee.  Very strange for those days.

Lufkin Junior High had a school band and one of the drummers for the band would become as close to me as a brother. His name was "Butch" McEntire.  He would later become a charter member of the Texas Radio Hall of Fame under the name Robert B. McEntire.  He has been one of the top news people in Houston since he joined KILT in 1967.  Imagine staying at the same station that long.  It proves one of two things.  He is either a great newsman or he has pictures that he should not have.  I prefer the first reason.  I was really impressed with Butch because he was a great drummer.  He did not stay with the school band very long.  He had a problem with the director...or maybe the director had a problem with him. I don't know all the facts but I think it had something to do with Butch insisting on doing a "kick it" kind of drumming, ala Chuck Berry to John Phillip Sousa.  It was not long after this that Butch entered the ranks of the "free-lance" drummers.  He was one of the first I met that really did "march to a different drum."  More about the great "Robert B. McEntire, KILT News" later.

It was now 1959 and my passion for radio had grown stronger and stronger.  I would listen nightly to radio stations around the country playing rock and roll music.  I didn't know what "Top 40" was.  In the words of someone later, "It was all rock and roll to me."  I spent my nights listening to WLAC, KOMA in Oklahoma City, KAAY in Little Rock, WNOE in New Orleans and many many more.  It really depended on something else I had never heard of before.."skip."  It did stand out to me that I seemed to hear a lot more stations on those cold, clear winter nights. I really don't understand it all, even today. But hey, I am a jock.  That's why God made engineers.

One night I was listening to the radio and one of my sisters popped into the room.  She said something then that made her an angel in my eyes. She knew a disc jockey at one of the local stations.  She had gone to high school with Billy Ed Young.  He was doing an afternoon rock and roll show on KTRE in Lufkin.  I had never listened to the station in the daytime because that was the station my Mom listened to for people like Gabriel Heater, Fulton Lewis Junior, and other people I was not interested in at all.  They were news people.  I could care less about news.  Rock and Roll was in my blood. I had no time for news.  The next afternoon I tuned in to the station as soon as I got home from school.  It was great.  I discovered then that rock and roll songs did not all have static.  Here was my music static free.  A few days later I decided to go and visit Billy Ed.  My heart was in my throat as I climbed the long staircase up to the studios. They were upstairs over the local J.C. Penny store downtown.  I had rehearsed over and over the line I would use to get into see Bill Young.  To my surprise the first person I met when I walked in was the mother of my friend "Scooter" Rowan.  That made it much easier.  I told Mrs. Rowan I was really interested in radio and would it be okay if I watched Bill Young for a few minutes.  She went back to ask Bill and suddenly I was in my first control room talking to my first real live disc jockey.

I owe a lot to Bill Young.  He let me come in that day and many days after and just watch him work.  He could not have been nicer to me and more informative.  He was a great teacher.  He never hesitated to take time to answer the thousands of question I would ask, no matter how stupid they may have seemed at the time.  I owe him more than I could ever repay.  "Thank You " Bill for taking the time with me and allowing me to watch a real pro work.  Over the years I have had many young people come into the control room where I was working and just want to watch o