Taiwan - Taipei Street Scenes, Signage #12 / Henry LaRocca at KTRM

This one ticks more boxes - orange and black color combo, of something through something, framed with neat stuff, and a lantern to boot...
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[continued from yesterday's post; series started 05/09]
Henry LaRocca was also a very interesting character.  He and I actually became pretty close as friends, to the point of double-dating and visiting each other's homes.  His father was a plumber, and Henry was officially on the payroll and worked to help whenever he could.  But his first love was radio, and boy was he good on the air...he had an excellent, deep voice for radio and possessed a quick wit that entertained his listeners and helped to develop quite a following.

Henry also was a good guy at heart, but didn't have many real friends (I didn't either my junior year in high school, being new to Beaumont and BCP) so we spent a lot of time together.  It's interesting that later on our shows went head-to-head in competition with each other, after I moved to KLVI, and our friendship waned after that.  But I'll always remember my association with him as a positive thing, and wish him the best in whatever he's done with his life.


Henry LaRocca - just a teenager like myself

Taiwan - Taipei Street Scenes, Signage #11 / Jim Lago at KTRM

This ticks all the boxes - good reflection, colors against black background, contrast with subject, and basketball to boot...
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[continued from yesterday's post; series started 05/09]
I cannot think about KTRM without thinking about Jim Lago.  Jim was good on the air, but definitely had a few rough edges.  At heart he was a good man, however, and I learned a life lesson from him later on, during the summer of 1977 when I was at Channel 6.  Jim was hired on as weekend weather guy, and during one weathercast I was behind camera three as usual.  When the director cut to my camera it was trained on Jim, who started to talk when the red light came on.  Thing was, nobody heard anything!  Over the headphones the director was in minor panic mode, asking me what was going on.  I noticed on the camera's monitor that Jim wasn't mic'd up.  Seeing this, I stepped out from behind the camera, made a gesture that he wasn't wearing his microphone, and instantly he ad-libbed a sentence or two (not that anybody could hear it) while, right one the air during the weathercast, he stepped behind the weatherboard, slung a lavaliere around his neck, and carried on.

In a few minutes, when the cast was over and we'd cut to commercial, Jim headed straight for me, patted me on the back and thanked me for bailing him out.  There had been friction from our days at KTRM, but immediately all of the animosity from the past evaporated!  It was an incredibly good feeling.  Later in life, when I cared about reading such things, the Bible passage came to my attention that says, "Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins." (I Peter 4:8, NIV)

In another aside, more than 30 years later I was in Corpus Christi for a conference of some sort.  One day while there I turned on the radio in the car, and who comes out of the speaker but Jim Lago!  This time he was hosting a local conservative talk show.  Though this was more than 30 years later he still sounded the same, but obviously had mellowed out a lot.  And some of the things he said led me to believe that he may have even turned to Christ in the meantime.  If that's the case then I'll look very much forward to seeing him later on...


Jim Lago

Taiwan - Taipei Street Scenes, Signage #10 / Interesting Characters

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[continued from yesterday's post; series started 05/09]
One thing I enjoyed about working for a bigger station in a bigger market was the people that crossed your path.  They were more interesting...out there in the sticks at KOBS, no one crossed your path except the next guy on the air and the Kobs family.

One night I was on in the middle of my shift and was by myself at KTRM.  Suddenly this guy walks into the studio with some records in his hand.  He was a country artist trying to get some airplay for his recordings whenever he could - this was the days before streaming, Spotify, etc. when getting your song on the radio was the best way to promote your material or be heard by someone that could give you your big break in the business.  So this guy wanted me to play his music right then and there, but I had the presence of mind to say no, telling him to leave me a copy so that I could give it to the music director.  He was disappointed, but thanked me and walked out without getting nasty about it.

Another time I got a phone call about 3:30 a.m. or so on the hot line from a Jody Powell.  Now the hot line was an unlisted number that very few people knew about.  He wanted to talk to Keven Brennan, our news director.  After a short and pleasant conversation about where Kevin might be (asleep) I pressed him for details so that I could leave him a message.  That's when he revealed that he was President Carter's press secretary, obviously catching on to the fact that I had no idea, even after hearing the name.  I was impressed, but asked myself after hanging up, "Don't these people sleep?"  Kevin came in around 5:00 to prepare his news, and when I gave him the message he seemed to be neither surprised nor excited.

Taiwan - Taipei Street Scenes, Signage #9 / Marty's Surprise

The wife and I occasionally watch American Pickers, a pretty good show about a couple of guys roaming the countryside looking for old and beat up stuff to buy and then sell.  It's amazing how they'll pick something up that looks way past its prime - even rusty and falling apart - and see a diamond in the rough.

This oversized coffee cup reminds me of that concept.  There's a certain beauty in things that are old and beat up, way past their prime, but still standing tall and proud.  There's a bit of nostalgia offered as well.

This pic also turned into one of my favorite Found Edges effects in Photoshop, which will be posted tomorrow...
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[continued from yesterday's post; series started 09/05]
Marty Adelman - mentioned a couple of days ago - was by far my favorite guy there at KTRM.  He was a short, ugly fellow but very nice and easy to get along with.  And good on the air, too.  We continued to work together after leaving KTRM, as he took a part-time booth announcing job later at Channel 6 when I was there.

One night Marty was doing his show before I came on, and there was a problem with the network feed.  Whenever it cut out on him, Marty had to get on the air lickety split to cover for the dead air.  Well, on this particular night he had his girlfriend at the station with him, and was cut from network just as his girl decide to crawl under the board and squeeze his knee.  It was hilarious to see him in that emergency mode trying to sound professional while fighting both his laughter and that woman.  But somehow he pulled it off.


My friend Marty

Taiwan - Taipei Street Scenes, Signage #8 / POOF Goes the Newsroom

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[continued from yesterday's post; series started 05/09]
There are a few adventures associated with my time at KTRM.  One that comes to mind is the day I shorted out the newsroom.  I had a friend at high school, an Iranian named Javid Jalali, who loved classical music.  KIEL was a sister station that operated out of the same old converted house, featuring classical music.  It operated automatically, playing big reel-to-reel tapes that had all of the music and most of the announcements on a big machine just outside the studio doors at KTRM.  Well, I got the idea that I could just take one of those reel-to-reel tapes and dub it onto another given to me by Javid.  Since I didn't want to disturb anything in the production studio I decided to make the dub in the newsroom before my show started at midnight.

I discovered that one of the reel-to-reel machines in the newsroom was unplugged, so I crawled under the board and attempted to plug it in among the maze of wires already there.  Don't know technically what happened, but the plug obviously touched something it shouldn't have because the next thing I heard was a loud bang that sounded like it was just outside of the house.  Then when I got out from under the board I found out that nothing in the newsroom had any electricity.  Fortunately the damage was confined to that small place and we didn't get knocked off the air.  Marty Adelman was on KTRM before me, and made the appropriate calls to get the newsroom back up and running before the morning local newscasts were scheduled to start.

The KIEL setup.  This contraption played all the necessary music and announcements from reel-to-reel and cart machines automatically; all you had to do was keep up with what was plugged in and cued.  The KTRM studio was through a door just on the other side, and the door to the production room was on the near side, immediately to the right of where I'm taking the picture.

Taiwan - Taipei Street Scenes, Signage #7 / Move to KTRM

Sometimes the signage was on the move...

This guy made easy money, as all he did was slowly wend his way through the crowds in the Youth Shopping District.

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[continued from yesterday's post; series started 05/09]
My time at KOBS was indeed a wonderful experience, full of memories and pride in where I worked.  But it was time to move on; due to an alignment of unfortunate circumstances it became more and more painful to make that drive to my old hometown of Orange.  So I used the reel-to-reel machines in the studio to make some air checks, and applied at KTRM in Beaumont, a country music AM station.

Now these were the days when KTRM occupied an old white one-story house on some property adjacent to Parkdale Mall.  The living room was partitioned to make rooms for a reception desk and office space, and the bedrooms were converted into a transmitter room, the broadcast and production studios, and a newsroom.  Seeing real modern broadcast equipment and being around real professional broadcasters in a much larger city made me feel like I'd hit the big time.

The reason I got hired there was because their part-time weekend guy, Ray Gedaley, had given his notice and they needed someone to take his place to work the midnight-to-six shift on weekends.  I had befriended Henry LaRocca at Beaumont-Charlton Pollard High School and he helped me get a foot in the door.  Also there at that time were Kevin Brennan in news, Robert "X" Brown, Gary Powers as program director, and a midnight-to-six guy that was the music director.  Jim Lago also worked there, and Marty Adelman.

I was trained by Ray Gedaley and Gary Powers, and must admit was more than a little intimidated by the technology and much higher level of professionalism.  There were cart machines that utilized primary, secondary and tertiary lighted cues; timing of songs and announcements had to be exact, down to the second, to hit the network news just right; answering more than one phone line for a much broader audience; monitoring a hot line for VIP's and emergency broadcasts, etc. etc.  Also I had to learn a whole new genre of music, changing from Top 40 to Country (mostly classic).  Later on I would learn to handle the board for remote broadcasts and sports games, and would occasionally substitute for an absentee.  All of this was quite a change and a giant step up from what I'd experienced at KOBS.

Yours truly operating the board at KTRM.  As can be compared with this post, the equipment was professional - not homemade like at KOBS.  Note the carts to my left, something that was beyond what Mr. Kobs was willing to pay for on his shoestring budget.

Taiwan - Taipei Street Scenes, Signage #6 / An Afterword re Mr. Kobs

This was in the Ximending Youth Shopping District.  Very trendy, with signage to match:

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[continued from yesterday's post; series started 05/09]
The experiences I had at KOBS remain pivotal in my formative years of growing up in Orange.  Long after leaving the business I would occasionally drive by the place to just look and remember those days with nostalgia, and in doing so noted with a tinge of sadness the inevitability of change and the end of all things as we know them.  Just a year into college I saw that the Kobs' had built a new house on their property just outside the fenced-in acreage on which the station sat.  It was right around the time that he sold the station to a company that changed the call letters to KZOM and turned it into a professional outfit.  Suppose that was inevitable, and I'll bet Kobs got a pretty penny for the rights to the frequency.  I even was so bold one day as to knock on the door of the old station; the KZOM DJ greeted me and generously showed me around.  The basic layout and furnishings were the same but of course the homemade transmitter and board engineered by their genius inventor were long gone.

Even until recently I've occasionally had dreams of being back in that spare studio working the board and crafting my own show...maybe subconsciously wondering if I still have what it takes to duplicate the energy of my youthful endeavors.

But something that happened very recently took me by surprise.  I was with my brother Mike just a couple of years ago, in 2018, and we were on our way from a visit to Mom's grave in Orange driving back to Beaumont.  On the way we decided to stop by the old station site to have a look.  We arrived at the end of the paved section of Kobs Korner and saw someone on a small front-loader clearing some brush and maintaining the property immediately surrounding the small building that housed the station, which was still there.

Turns out the guy doing the work owned the property now, as KZOM had moved to new and more accessible digs. This fellow knew the history of the place going back to the '70's since he'd grown up in one of the houses nearby.  He filled us in on what happened in the intervening years.  He described how the tower had finally been knocked down and dismantled.  The old studio building now served as a junk shed, but the same old steps were there on which Mrs. Kobs placed the key for my return so many years ago.  These things were interesting to us, but when I asked about the Kobs family and what became of them he revealed that Mrs. Kobs had passed away a dozen years before, but Mr. Kobs, now in his 90's, was STILL ALIVE, active, living in the same house he'd built in the late '70's, and puttering about town in an old Cadillac!  His daughter, the music director, was living there taking care of him.

As we were leaving I saw Kobs' house and fleetingly wondered if I should stop and say hi.  But the thought was quickly quelled.  I'd worked for him when I was 16, and now I was 60 years old.  Does this guy really want to be haunted by one of his old DJ's from the past...why give the old man a heart attack?  So we drove on, secure that the place had served its purpose in its time for all of us, and it's best to just move on...

Taiwan - Taipei Street Scenes, Signage #5 / Air Checks

[continued from yesterday's post; series started 05/09]
Sometimes while at KOBS I would have Brent Holland record parts of my show on his 8-track system at home.  We did this twice; once earlier on and again during my last day on the air (the second time around).  That last day I brought in my own music - borrowed from my brother Allan's collection - and created a special show for the last hour.  I don't know what happened to the first tape, but the second one was later converted to cassette tape, then, decades later, onto a CD.

Recently - in 2016 - this old CD re-surfaced and I decided to listen to this show in the car on the way to church with the wife.  Though proud that I'd had these experiences, and my times as a DJ often provided fodder for stories around the dinner table, after so many years I was shocked at what I sounded like and what actually made it out over the air.  I determined that my kids would never, ever listen to this, and destroyed the CD immediately after returning home.  Must've been in a bad mood.

Taiwan - Taipei Street Scenes, Signage #4 / Creepy Listener

[continued from yesterday's post; series started 05/09]
As mentioned in yesterday's post, my parents got a divorce and my dad moved to Beaumont to start his new family...this would have been around 1975.  Before moving to Beaumont to join him myself, my little brother and I continued to live with Mom.  During this void my mom rented out one of our bedrooms to help make ends meet.  The first renter was a guy named Maurice, a young fellow probably in his early 20's.

I didn't take much time to get to know him, but this Maurice became a fan of the show, and would occasionally mention that he heard me do this or that on the air.  Nothing really unusual, until one day he told me that he listened to my entire 8-hour shift - every minute, without even going to the bathroom.  WOW...it really, really gave me the creeps that someone would do that, so from then on I avoided contact with him on even the most casual basis.  Don't know what eventually became of him, but wish him well nonetheless...

Taiwan - Taipei Street Scenes, Signage #3 / Defection and Return

Saw an opportunity here, so applied glowing edges to the foot:

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[continued from yesterday's post; series started 05/09]
I took sort of a leave of absence once during my tenure at KOBS.  My parents had gotten a divorce, and my father remarried and moved to Beaumont.  I made the decision to move to Beaumont with him and his new family, and decided to quit radio work so that I wouldn't have to drive to Orange all the time and create stress for the family.  I took a job at Market Basket on Calder, but hated it.  After a few months there I told Dad of my misery and he let me call Kobs to see if something was open.

Now KOBS was a rock-bottom, barely-alive station that, as mentioned in earlier posts, was built from scratch from the ground up.  It is doubtful that sales came at all close to covering expenses.  And in spite of the fact that it was an FM station it didn't even broadcast in stereo because it would have cost so much more to build and operate.  So Kobs hired rock-bottom talent as well - in other words, those with no experience at all such as myself who would work for minimum wage.  Anyone who was worth anything as an announcer considered the place just a launching pad to bigger and better markets, and a lot of jocks in the Beaumont-Port Arthur stations got their start there (again, including myself).  This created a sort of revolving door, and left Kobs in the lurch sometimes for DJ announcers.  In fact, the length of the shifts we had to work reflected this; if there was no shortage of announcers we worked four-hour shows like the other stations...when the DJ's were pulling 8-hour shifts you knew someone quit and new-hires weren't yet hired to take their place.  When things got desperate Kobs himself worked as a DJ using the air name "Chuck Hubert".

Well, I'd been listening in, and hearing Kobs do his show gave me confidence that I'd have no trouble coming back into the fold.  I called the station and his wife answered.  Mrs. Kobs and I never got along well, but when she heard my request she actually sounded excited, and told me to come in to sign on the following day...the key would, literally, be under the mat.  The next morning I drove there from Beaumont, got the key from under the mat and signed on as if no time had passed at all.  They arrived at their usual business hours and said they were glad to see me.

Taiwan - Taipei Street Scenes, Signage #2 / Lightning Strike

Not unlike this post from the suspension bridge, these characters caught my eye.  They were hanging on a banner, and each one was printed on a separate page in one of about five colors.  In Photoshop I selected the characters, expanding the selection by about 10 pixels to create a rim of the colored paper they were on.

Found Edges effect below, then the original below that:

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[continued from yesterday's post; series started 05/09]
One time there was a lightning strike at the station.  It made quite a noise because the current went down the tower, through the transmitter, snaked into the studio and fried the first stage oscillator.  The room filled with a bright flash and we were off the air.

It happened on a Saturday night about 8:00 when I was carrying the evening shift until the usual sign-off at 10:00p.  The Kobs' home number was posted by the phone in case of an emergency so I immediately called it and got no answer.  Thinking they were out to eat or something I continued calling every 15 minutes until the wee hours.  Before it got to that point, however, I called home to explain that I'd be spending the night at the station to deal with the problem.  I finally fell asleep about 1:15 a.m.

Randy Fuller had the morning shift the next day, and imagine his surprise when he saw me splayed out on the floor unconscious...thought I got hit on the head or worse by an intruder! After waking up I told him what happened, and he told me to go home and get some sleep.  The Kobs' were out of town for the weekend.

Taiwan - Taipei Street Scenes, Signage #1 / Some Affirmation

Since we spent so much time walking the streets taking in the sights, smells and sounds of the Taiwanese culture, had plenty of opportunity to snap some photos of signs that caught my interest.  These will be posted pretty much in the order taken, so won't be specific to any geographical area within the city.

One day I broke away from the conversation after lunch and saw this establishment just a few doors down from the restaurant - in fact on our way to the park where the last few posts were captured.  An idea taken from Japan, this is a hotel where you can rent a sleeping pod for an hour or night to catch some Z's.  Very interesting concept, and dense - literally - with lucrative potential.  Think it's a great idea.
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[continued from previous post; series started 05/09]
You know, I suppose we all need affirmation once in a while...something in life that tells us that what we do and why we're here is worthwhile after all.  Especially for those of us who are basically insecure, the moments and events that tell us we're OK really stand out along the pathway of life's journey.  Unbeknownst to her, Cheryl Smith provided such a moment after I'd left radio in the Golden Triangle.

We maintained a friendship and wrote letters back and forth for a couple of years.  In fact, it was the summer after my first year of college that she wrote and revealed what she'd done for an English class assignment (she was a senior in high school at the time).  The assignment was to write about someone who'd been a positive influence in her life, then read it out loud in front of the class.  I was the subject of that essay, but would never have learned about this were it not for the fact that one of my old Riverside buddies from Orange, Mike Welton, happened to be sitting in that very class.  Until that time they didn't know each other or that I was a mutual friend.  And as a sidebar regarding coincidences, this was at a school in a nearby town that neither of us had attended before.

So it is that this world is small, what goes around comes around (the #1 rule of the the universe), and, for better or worse, our actions and influence reach far beyond what we might imagine when they occur.

Taiwan - Taipei Street Scenes, Building from Park #2 / A Few Followers

[continued from yesterday's post; series started 05/09]
While on at KOBS I did gather something of a listenership.  One time my brother Allan was at a grocery store cashing a check and the lady behind him in line, hearing his name, asked if we were related because she listened to my show.  Another time - close to the end of my second stint there - my brother was poolside at the apartment complex where we lived in Beaumont, and a nearby group of teenagers was blasting my show out on the radio.  There were other instances also...at times a heady experience, at times a source of embarrassment.

Of course being a teenager I welcomed this attention, and on occasion would arrange to meet groupies in person.  But first it was necessary to see what I was getting into.  My friend Brent and I would arrange to meet a girl at some location - usually Parkdale Mall under the big clock - and I'd send Brent out first to see if she was worth the trouble of seeing.  If she was I'd get the signal and walk up; if not we'd both walk away, standing her up.

One that was definitely worth seeing was Cheryl Smith...a beautiful girl with long brownish-black hair.  I even got around to visiting her apartment and meeting her parents one time.  Nothing "happened" between us but she was definitely worth getting to know.  And we met through an interesting circumstance.

Cheryl had a friend named Janet Rougeau who called the station one day during the afternoon shift.  She requested a song for Cheryl, who'd just suffered a breakup and was devastated.  I moved the dedication ahead in the lineup and was able to play the song right away on the air.  Have no idea why I did this, but it was one of those times when you just have a feeling and know you can get away with it...I asked Janet for Cheryl's phone number so that I could call and surprise her.  There was another Kobs rule that there were to be no on-air dedications, but I did it anyway, saying something about Cheryl and her boyfriend and that I hoped it'd work out, etc. etc.  Then the song played.

Imagine the shock when I called her at home and asked if she heard the song and if everything was going to be okay.  I revealed that her friend Janet gave me the number, then she became incredibly gushy and thankful because it happened that both she and her boyfriend were listening, which prompted the guy to call her and apologize.  It was a nice moment, and of course I gave my audience an update at the next opportunity.

Cheryl and Janet both called regularly after that, but I didn't actually meet Janet until she went into the hospital due to an infection.  I went to visit her at Orange Memorial, and remember that she was quite embarrassed at my seeing her in that condition.

Taiwan - Taipei Street Scenes, Building from Park #1 / Sunday Boredom

Also while at the park I snapped some shots of buildings appearing to rise out of the vegetation, even though we were in the middle of one of the largest cities on the planet.
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[continued from yesterday's post; series started 05/09]
Sometimes if we got real bored on those Sunday mornings we'd put a sock on the light sensor at the bottom of the tower and watch the red light blink on top...

Taiwan - Taipei Street Scenes, Park Tree Silhouettes / Nap Time

A couple of tree silhouettes from inside the park looking out toward the edge...

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[continued from yesterday's post; series started 05/09]
There was another time when I fell asleep during my show.  Mr. Kobs was a very religious man, and though this was a top-40 station on Sunday mornings we were supposed to play classical music albums from sign-on until noon, with a few half-hour syndicated religious programs sprinkled in.  The night before I had been gallivanting till the wee hours with a friend, and had a very difficult time waking up.

I did manage to get to the station in time to sign on, but with that classical music had a real hard time staying awake.  So hard, in fact, that I was not completely successful.  I had just started one side of an album at about 7:45, and the next thing I knew it was something like 8:20!  The album had finished so there was nothing but dead air going out save the rhythmic scratch of the needle as the record wound around and around.  I had slept right through a scheduled PSA and newscast.

The sad fact is that the phone wasn't ringing either - nobody was listening!  Actually we all believed that the Kobs's were the only ones that listened to that Sunday morning show anyway, and they were probably were either at or on the way to church.

Taiwan - Taipei Street Scenes, Park Bird / Trip to Stuckey's

Saw some of these at the zoo but forgot what they named it.  This fellow was stalking around looking for insects and didn't seem spooked by my presence at all.
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[continued from yesterday's post; series started on 05/09]
Then another time I locked myself out of the building during my show.  Brent Holland would occasionally come over on Sunday mornings so that we could sneak away and go to Stuckey's for a coke during one of those half-hour syndicated religious programs.  At the bottom of the hour I started the program and we high-tailed it in his car down the highway.  Of course, I didn't want anyone to stumble onto the place and walk in while no one was there, so I carefully locked the front door behind me, not remembering the key was inside.

On the way back to the station I discovered that I didn't have it!  We were pretty nervous but held on to the hope that the back door was unlocked.  Well, it wasn't, and Brent and I had to jimmy the screen door open and pick the lock to get back in, with less than two minutes remaining before the program ended...seems that fate was in my favor this time.

Taiwan - Taipei Street Scenes, Park Sculpture / Studio Visitor

[continued from yesterday's post; series started on 05/09]
There are many, many adventure associated with my time at KOBS.  I will select a few that stand out...

The Kobs's were very strict in their rules. We were never to have visitors, bring in outside records, depart from the program log, tie up the phone line on personal business, give the phone number out on the air (an odd rule for a radio station that took requests), or leave the station during our program.  I was pretty good about it most of the time, but after being there a while did my share of stretching the boundaries.

I had a friend at the time named Brady Richardson.  He thought it was neat that I was a disk jockey, so one time I invited him out to the station to have a look.  It was a Sunday afternoon and I didn't count on the Kobs family dropping in - they lived in Port Arthur and I'd never seen them there on a Sunday before.  So Brady came by and we were having a grand old time; I was thoroughly enjoying being a big shot and showing off.  In fact I got so bold as to allow him to sit at the console while I went to the restroom.

Well, in one of those rarest of occasions, when the worst of all possible events would be combined by the fates, the Kobs's did stop by, and at the very moment when I was in the restroom and Brady was at the console.  With my headphones on no less.  I popped into the studio to see Mr. Kobs glaring at Brady, his wife and child (the music director) in the lounge on the other side of the glass with astonished expressions on their faces.  All Brady could do was throw up his hands, obviously not knowing what to do.

As for me - I didn't get fired, but didn't take as many changes from then on...

Taiwan - Taipei Street Scenes, Tent Protest / Road to Work

Some take to their tents as a way to attract attention to their cause.  Don't know what this says, but there is clearly a message.

Others that have taken to the tent life to protest in urban streets are featured in this post from Paris, France, and this post from across the White House in Washington, D.C.
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[continued from yesterday's post; series started 05/09]
When I look back on those days at KOBS, one of the things I remember most was the bicycle ride to work.  Mom never gave me a ride, and almost never let me drive, even when I had to start pedaling at 3:45 a.m. for a sign-on shift...and the latter third of the route was along the service road of I-10!  It was her position that if I wanted to take on a job, I could earn enough to buy my own car or ride a bike.  It was a great lesson in responsibility, and though it was tough at the time I do not regret being made to do it.

And it was a long ride, too.  From our house at 1512 Chapman I would go down Link street up to West Park Avenue.  When Park hit I-10 I'd stay on the feeder, cross Highway 62, and keep going until time to turn right onto Burton toward the station.  After leaving the highway it was a quiet, peaceful ride through a neighborhood that had decent-size houses on large lots separated by patches of woods.  Burton took a few bends and turns, then suddenly there was the field to the right where I could see the tower.  I really got a charge of energy whenever I first saw that tower, knowing that  1) I was almost there;  and 2) soon enough my own voice and my own show would be transmitted from that tower!

It was a right turn onto Kobs Korner and into the property.  As stated a few posts ago (and can be seen on Google Maps now), the street was a decent, paved, straight road for a few hundred feet, then there was a stop at a homemade gate that Kobs jury-rigged to prevent someone from inadvertently wandering onto the station grounds.  There may have even been a lock there.  Anyway, once going through, it got curvy and very rutted for a few hundred more feet, with weeds growing tall on both sides.  Then the station had sort of a yard with a picnic table, a small storage shed that housed lawn care equipment, and the station itself.  For me it was a pleasant and interesting ride, even though it was 7.5 miles one way.


The station building, with Jason's car in front.  The structure to the left housed the lawn mower and other equipment to maintain the property, which Kobs did himself.

From the station building looking out on the curvy dirt road described above, with my dad's car in the foreground.  During my second stint there, while living in Beaumont, I had to drive to work as opposed to riding my bicycle when I lived in Orange.

Taiwan - Taipei Street Scenes, Umbrella Tent / DJ Training Day

Went to a park nearby and found this rare sight.  Homelessness is nearly unheard of in Taiwan, at least in my experience there.
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[continued from yesterday's post; series started 05/09]
So it was time to start my new career as a radio station disk jockey.  Getting the job was simple; I went to KOBS, showed Kobs my third phone certificate, filled out a short application and was on my way.  Mr. Kobs took me into the studio and introduced me to Randy Fuller, the DJ on duty at the time and the guy that would be training me.  They got me a chair and I sat outside of the console and watched him do about an hour of his show, knowing that the following Saturday I would be sitting in that seat doing my own show.  I was sixteen years old.

Saturday came, and I was nervous.  I really had no idea what it would be like in the "hot seat", but once I sat down there wasn't much to do but follow Randy's instructions.  He trained me how to cue records and gave pointers on how to sound professional in my announcements.  I forget how long he stayed with me...could have been for the whole program of four hours.  What I do remember is how the time flew by, how nervous I was, and how I was hoping to God that nobody that knew me was listening!  Turns out that my girlfriend, Linda, was in fact listening as well as a few family members.  I was not encouraged by what Linda said afterwards.

But after a few shows I did get the hang of it, and ended up feeling somewhat comfortable being on the air.  Jason Blalock was hired a short time after I was, and we developed a camaraderie that was very close; we were already good buddies, but this unique shared experience really cemented our friendship.  Our shows often ran back-to-back, and we sometimes hung around long after the first show was over to shoot the breeze and help smooth the transition.


Jason, being silly while making an announcement:  The stack of top-40 hits is in the foreground; the phone with its "gumball machine" light on the other side of the board.  As stated in yesterday's post, everything here was built from scratch by Mr. Kobs.

Jason sitting at the console:  You can see the shelves in the back next to the wall, which had the records for our shifts in separate stacks, labeled "AM" and "PM".  Also seen here are the reel-to-reel machines and the actual PSAs and commercials above.  Mr. Kobs didn't have a teletype machine, the standard for radio stations at the time.

Jason was very careful putting his feet up there, as even the slightest bump on the plywood would cause the records to skip.

Taiwan - Taipei Street Scenes, Motorcycles with Stone Bridge / Studio Setup at KOBS

Many times we'd be at a restaurant, and while the others were in conversation after eating I'd get up with the Bigger Cahoona and traipse the streets nearby looking for things to capture.  There certainly wasn't any lack of subjects, and it was fun just being off by myself.

I was going to do something about the motorcycles at the bottom of this frame, but decided that they enhanced the image instead of detracting from it...
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[continued from yesterday's post; series started 05/09]
The board was equally interesting...built entirely from scratch and laid out on a plywood table in the familiar U-shape of most radio station studios of the time.  Thing is, the plywood was only 5/8-inch thick or so, and when a record was going the DJ had to be very careful not to bump it and make the song skip.  The pots (large round turn-dials) and on-air switches were very simple, with a switch below each pot that toggled to the left for cueing and right for on-air.  The two turntables were to the right, and two reel-to-reel tape machines for playing PSAs and commercials were on the left, with a homemade peg-board of sorts above them for storage of the reels.  KOBS operated on such a shoe-string budget that Kobs either could not afford or would not buy cart machines, which were used in every other radio station in the market at the time.

Speaking of shoe-string budget - Kobs didn't have any teletype machines for news, either.  On the way to the station, it was the morning DJ's responsibility to buy several newspapers which served as the sole source of news form KOBS.  We bought the Houston Post (which I favored over the Chronicle), the Beaumont Enterprise, and the Orange Leader.  During the first hour while the songs were playing we would cut the stories we thought were interesting and read them at the top of each hour - first international, then national, then state, and finally local news, in that order.  Figure this - we were just kids at the time, mere teenagers, and functioned as news directors, editors, and on-air broadcasters for every newscast we did during our shift.  As long as we didn't do anything real goofy everything was okay with Kobs.

And the music setup was interesting, also.  Mr. and Mrs. Kobs (and, supposedly, their 8-year-old daughter the music director) held a tight reign on the songs we played, partly because they were Puritan-caliber religious fanatics.  In actuality Mrs. Kobs did most of the actual music directing, and at the beginning of our shift we would see on a shelf in the back of the studio our music for the day; a stack of about 20 albums, with 50 or 60 45's sitting on top.  The hot top-40 hits of the day were always kept in a separate stack on the board for every DJ to play in semi-rotation.  It was always a suspenseful moment to see what music you were allowed to play during your shift.

There was a lone phone (745-2222) on the console to the left of the board.  It was the old rotary type.  Being in the studio with a live mic on at times, it didn't ring - Kobs rigged a light in front of it that resembled one of those old gumball machines they used to have on top of police cars (only much smaller), which blinked whenever a call came in.  Oddly, we were not allowed to give the phone number out on the air, but anybody could look up the number and call in a request.

The station itself was located way on the outskirts of town - a 7.5-mile bicycle ride for me - in the sticks of the land Kobs had bought.  As stated in yesterday's post, the road that turned into the station was named Kobs Korner, which was paved and straight for a short distance, at the end of which was a gate held in place with some wire.  Beyond the gate the road turned into a curving, rutted shell-top (which can be seen on Google Maps), and when it rained real hard the entire thing would be under water, which for me was tricky to negotiate on my bike in the dark whenever I had either the morning shift or closed down at night.  I used a flashlight, or the moonlight when I didn't think to bring one, to identify the roadway by seeing where the tall grass came up on either side.  The utter peace and solitude of the place, though, was a great salve to my soul during the turbulent teen-age years.

It was truly an amazing place and an incredible adventure to work for KOBS.  And as it so happens, Jason Blalock and I both got a job there within a week of each other.  Pictured below are a couple I took of during our days there with an old Instamatic.



Yours Truly at the board, in my white leisure suit no less (sans jacket):

The music stack:

The throne.  I used to play long songs to get the job done properly in here - "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" by Elton John, at 6:50, was a favorite.

Taiwan - Taipei Street Scenes, Crossing Woman / Old Man Kobs

We were using Taipei as our base, leaving for the occasional jaunt to Chiayi, Zhuqi or some other place.  On our last return to the city we were treated royally by a businessman we know from there who knew all the interesting spots.  This was the time I captured lots of street scenes, and have saved the most interesting (to me) for posting in this blog.
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[continued from yesterday's post; series started 05/09]
KOBS was owned and operated by a man named Charles H. Kobs.  Yes, his name was actually Kobs...it was formerly Cobbs, but when he built and obtained a license from the FCC to operate the station had the spelling of his name changed so that it would match the call letters.  He owned two cars, and the license plates read "KOBS-1" and KOBS-2".  The land he bought was extensive enough that he could name the road leading onto the station property "Kobs Korner", which is searchable on Google Maps to this day.  The exact location of the building that housed the station is 30.132422N -93.845997W.

His on-air name was "Chuck Hubert".  In the national registry of radio stations he was listed as the owner, his wife was listed as the program director, and his 8-year-old daughter was listed as the music director.  It was truly a family operation - in fact it was rumored that he married into money for the sole purpose of being able to launch the venture.  Before doing that he was chief engineer of Channel 4, KJAC television in Port Arthur.

He was a genius as an engineer, and made full use of those skills to literally build the transmitter and studio board from scratch.  I'll swear it's true that the transmitter had vacuum cleaner parts and ping pong balls that served important functions...the phase 1 modulator of said transmitter was tethered by wire into the studio because the studio had air conditioning and the adjacent transmitter room did not.  And to turn on that thing in the mornings was a chore - it took 25 minutes to ramp up the transmitter to full operational status, a process that required several steps to be done at specific time intervals.  He knew if a DJ did everything on time because he had his clock radio at home in Port Arthur set to go off as soon as we were supposed to go on the air at 5:25 a.m.  Similarly, at the end of the broadcast day (10:00p), several buttons and switches had to be toggled and turned in a timed sequence. 


The board as we saw it before sitting down to a shift:

The first-stage oscillator, wired into the studio because it needed to be air conditioned.  The window at the top of this and the previous picture looked into the transmitter room, which was not air conditioned.  We had to take readings from it once in a while as part of our duties, and it got mighty hot in there during the summer.

 

One fateful night lightning struck and knocked this guy out on me...air time was done for the weekend.

Kobs Korner Street.  Mr. Kobs lived into his 90's in a house built on the land to the right of this clearing.

 

Taiwan - National Palace Museum, Colorful Plate / Third Phone Test

And this will round it out for the museum posts.  Very colorful, and fortunately the white background enabled a fast enough shutter speed to minimize motion blur.  Even so, depended heavily on sharpening and other enhancements, as it was captured hand-held in a relatively dark room.

Now to other parts of Taipei for the last series of the trip...
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[continued from yesterday's post]
Jason and I learned from Mark that in order to be a disk jockey you had to study a book and take a test to get at least your 3rd-class radio license, called the "third phone".  It was a thinnish, letter-size booklet packed with information on everything from how far your mouth should be from the microphone to some basics on transmitter operations.  It was rumored to be a difficult test, with trick questions mixed in.  So Jason and I each got a book and turned our studies into a friendly competition to see who could learn it the fastest.  We mostly studied alone in our houses, but called to check on each other's progress from time to time.  It was a fun project that potentially had great rewards if one or both of us succeeded.

Finally the day came, and I drove to Beaumont to the Federal Building downtown to take the test.  It was all multiple choice and admittedly there was some fancy guesswork, but several weeks later I got my notice in the mail along with a license to operate a broadcast from a radio station.  It was one of the most exciting days of my young life - a ticket to unforeseen adventures and a new chapter in life.  I didn't take the test on the same day as Jason, but he got his license at about the same time.

So what to do with it?  That part was easy...there was an FM radio station in the Orange market, at 104.5 on the dial, with the call letters KOBS that hired DJs with no experience, offering the perfect opportunity to get started, develop skills, and learn the business well enough to launch into bigger markets if you were good enough.  I eventually did go on to a bigger market (Beaumont), but my days at KOBS provide the warmest memories of my time as a disk jockey.

Taiwan - National Palace Museum, Pork Rock / DJ Start

Yes, a rock carved into the shape of a piece of pork.
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Flying airplanes as a teenager was exciting and unique enough.  Another seminal time of my youth was experience working as a disk jockey at several radio stations.

One night when I was fifteen - which would have made it the year of 1974 - a friend of mine named Jason Blalock decided to sneak my dad's car out and drive from Orange to nearby Beaumont.  Once there we were driving down Fannett Road and saw a radio tower with a lone car parked at its base in front of a smallish building.  Must be a radio station.  On a lark we decided to stop and knock on the door.  By now it was about 1:30 in the morning.

So we parked in front next to the other car and knocked.  We saw from the signage that it was KAYC, an AM top-forty station that we regularly listened to (but as of this writing in 2020 no longer exists).  No one answered right away so we knocked several more times.  Finally the DJ, a guy named Mark Evans, answered the door.  It was a cold winter night, but he was wearing shorts, one of those colorful Hawaiian shirts, and a lei around his neck.  I knew right away that this was a business I wanted to be a part of.

He invited us in and the three of us crammed into the broadcast studio.  We watched him work, and he gave us pointers about what it was like and how to get into the business.  I was hooked, and Jason was too.  After an hour or so we drove back home in time for the missing car not to be noticed.

Taiwan - National Palace Museum, Jadeite Cabbage / Return to the Cockpit

This is what they were looking at, a rock carved into the shape of a cabbage.  And like the Mona Lisa, this is one of the main stars of the museum, and even has a Wikipedia article of its own.

The stone in tomorrow's post is another carved into a food shape...
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[continued from yesterday's post; series started 05/01]
They say that flying and the skills honed in training are a lot like riding a bicycle, and I learned that to be true.  One time during my college years I was driving through Orange and on a lark decided to stop by the airport.  By then the flight school had started using another, new airplane - a Cessna 152 instead of 94G, which was a 150 - and it was parked out in front of the hanger when I pulled up.  I saw someone there I recognized, an older gentleman that, during my days there, had taken taken on flying as an activity to keep himself busy after a stint in jail.  In fact he was the other pilot that took me up to take pictures for the school annual.

So after becoming reacquainted I suggested that we go up for a spin to see if I remembered anything.  I happened to have enough cash on me for a half hour.  He readily agreed and we hopped in, me flying left seat for some touch-and-goes.

I was amazed at how quickly things came back after more than five years.  My instrument scan was there as if instinctual, the pattern turns and altitude management did not have to be re-taught, and by the second time around I was landing it myself.  Very encouraging, but still not enough incentive to take it up again.  I was satisfied that I could still fly an airplane.

One time my daughter asked if, should an airline pilot become disabled and I was called upon to bring it down, could I do it?  After a moment's hesitation I told her yes, but it wasn't because of any skills I'd retained.  It was because the large airliners are easier to fly than small Cessnas because of their automation and rock-steady behavior in windy conditions that so easily buffet those little planes around.  Anyone could do it if not afraid and with a little radio assistance from someone close by.

So this and the flight through the mountains of Colorado as told in this post are the last of my flying experiences as a pilot.  Though I never went on to obtain a full license my childhood dreams came true enough to satisfy any craving I ever had to be a pilot, and without breaking the bank in the process.

Taiwan - National Palace Museum, Crowd Pleaser / Flying a Beech 18

Now for a look or two inside the museum.  As noted in this post from another trip, people going crazy over the subject of their photographs is often a good subject in itself.

Tomorrow's post will feature what they're gawking at...
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[continued from yesterday's post; series started 05/01]
I don't regret that I never took it to the end to acquire a full pilot's license.  I'd been soloing for a while since turning 16 and was at the point where I was practicing for the check ride to become fully qualified.  So I'd fly out to the practice field, climb to the usual 6,000', then practice figure-8 turns, steep turns, stalls, etc. but really wasn't into it, and as stated before it was boring at an altitude where the ground seems to barely move along as I puttered at a measly 100 knots or so.  Besides, the money (now earned as a disc jockey at a local radio station instead of the paper route) gravitated to a then-becoming-serious girlfriend.  There just wasn't much practicality in becoming a pilot.  So I simply stopped going to flying lessons and let the matter rest.

But the flying days weren't quite over.  During my college days my brother Bob was living in Houston as a practicing attorney.  He was working with a client who was a professional pilot making a cargo run in a Beech 18 between Houston and Brownsville every day.  Due to my experience with airplanes Bob hooked us up one day so that I could tag along for the experience.

I met the guy at Hobby in this building across the field from the terminal.  The first thing I noticed about him was his youth and that he had thick glasses on.  I thought, "here is a guy with thick glasses and I'm about to fly to Brownsville with him."  He was a very friendly fellow, though, and I was not as intimidated as I thought I might be with a professional pilot.  Pretty soon we went out to the plane on the tarmac, and it was my first glimpse of a Beech 18.  I was struck by its resemblance to a DC-3, though a bit smaller.  Being the only other person on the plane, I was designated to fly right-seat as the copilot.

Then came a surprise.  We were doing the preflight together, and he hauled a full box of oil cans over to the plane.  When asked he told me that the radial engines had a voracious appetite for oil, and he wanted to be sure we had enough.  He hopped onto the wings and put oil in both engines before start-up as part of the preflight routine.

So we climb into the cockpit, he and I work together to start the engines and go through the other checklists, and off we went.  He had headphones on all the way down to Brownsville so there wasn't much talk, so I spent our time in the air getting a feel for the instrumentation and where we were along the route.  In pretty good time we landed in Brownsville and offloaded the cargo, then waited a while for the Houston-bound cargo to be loaded.

On our leg back to Houston I did quite a bit of the flying, and was proud when he said I stayed on course better than he usually did.  In my approach to Houston I was a bit over-cautious, however, and ended up a little high.  After making an adjustment we landed on the numbers.  After thanking him for the experience I hopped into my old blue Rambler and headed back to Bob's.