Don’t always count out the independent because he(or She) might come back around and kick you in the behind.
I watched a show last night about the bio of the late great Robin Williams. Who took his life in August 2014. The bio went along many similar paths as I walked as a child. Like Robin, I too played in a obscure world, not with toy soldiers , but HotWheels and Matchbox cars, trucks. I would dig in Mom’s flower garden for days, use popsicle sticks for bridges, houses, garages. Like Robin I wanted to be a entertainer, I saw my first glimpse of my future at age 7 while being a feature guest on the then Fireman Frank Show on KCPX(now KTVX) Ch-4 . At the time hit 40 radio KCPX was in the same building. I caught light on radio in Idaho at a tiny station there called KART AM 1400. A radio personality,(we don’t say DJ anymore) by the name of Phil Grey took me under his wing, and I began, but being KART was more LDS owned my brand of radio was not allowed. Long before there was a Howard Stern, and Dr. Demento, there were edgy radio hosts like WolfMan Jack. I was more the WolfMan Jack. A kid at then KEEP AM 1450 , by the name of Paul J Wilson, used to hang tight on weekends, when he left , Mike Arms took me under his tutelage and I heard over the networks radio jocks that were not so scared of being tarred and feathered by religious groups predominate in the Magic Valley area of Idaho.
Later as I grew into more radio knowledge, I got taken on through my Marine/Navy Recruiter Neil Ceaderstrom, who became a sales rep for then better ran KLIX AM 1310. Bobby Dobbs and Charlie Tuma took a chance with me on weekends doing a weekend shift. Of course by this time the open road and going trailer trucking became my point of a career direction, I loved the smell of diesel in the air, open road and 18 wheels humming on asphalt, so out of a youth based CB club, a small junior 4-H trucker club was put together. Called the TeenAge Truckers Association. Modeled loosely after the nationwide truckers group the Independent Truckers Association, our organization grew into a reworked evolved ITA into the UAITA or United American Independent Truckers Association.
So there I was at KLIX AM 1310. One late night waiting on ABC News at the top of the hour which ABC news does not know how to count, or tell time, I was eavesdropping out of one side of my headphones and trying to make conversation to fill time to the news, and heard this thing out of New Mexico on KOB AM 770 . It was called JoC Radio. It was radio for over the road truckers what a gas, I thought, I could do this, so I approached Charlie Tuma GM of KLIX, he said bring in 5 sponsors and we’ll try it. I did, and gave birth to Long Haul Radio. However in came a dark cloud, Bobby Dobbs quit, Some prim and proper guy named Dennis Conrad came in as Program Director, he peed all over Long Haul Radio , but I was not done. Oh I shopped it around to every station in the Tragic Valley but no takers. So the club bought some radio gear, set up our own station in Hazzard(Hagerman) Idaho shot the signal this was microwave link in primitive form, to Buhl where the station was located and wallah, Long Haul Radio stayed as the voice real voice of America’s Truckers. In 1981 we met Hazzard County head on, and grew a sub group of the UAITA that was at first a marketing project for a hot rod shop . The ploy worked, my did it work, the Hazzard County Knytes(Knights) was born. And became a major club in 1982. In 1983 after I got somewhat over the anger of mine towards the LDS Church’s Ward in Hagerman after I had been so charitable only two years prior to providing 15 families mainly children, with new or near new toys with 12 kids a piece, for Christmas and yet when I could have used a crutch or shoulder to cry on there was none except for those members of the Knytes. Not that Ward.
In June 1983 The Hazzard Knytes got its own station license and KTOW FM went on the air at 105.7 FM.
KTOW by the way was sold 2011 to a station in Colorado to get money to buy outright KBAR out of Burley that project went sour, another story for another time.
We moved the studios of KTOW to Rupert in 1992 and reworked Long Haul Radio into what we felt would be a off the wall fully anti establishment , fight the system program, that came with the name we called the service shop, called the Dixie Diesel Shop, so Dixie Diesel Trucker Radio was born . We grew Dixie Diesel into an award winning operation that went syndicated in 1995, after The UAITA bought out the ITRN network.
This remained until 2000. In 2001 once again I moved to Utah, and the thought of running a separate show dedicated to enthusiasts of military aviation, came into view. So in 2001 we began looking for call letters. After doing some cyber searching, hit on this gig out of Nashville Tennessee called WolfFM.com , set up, ran, hosted, and programmed by a blind man in a third story apartment. This was streaming radio, but also very recorded and automated. The then newly formed BlackSheep Aviation Club that grew into the AyreWolvez, decided if this guy can do it so can we. So we bundled it together and in May 2004 AyreWolfFM was born, now located at www.livestream.com/ayrewolffm
In 2008 I moved from Pocatello Idaho after doing a short stint on Cable Access Channel Vision12 there in search of green, so there was to be this huge nuke power plant on the other side of Hammett Idaho . So I moved to Glenns Ferry Idaho. Was there about a year until some hecklers really struck my groin , and the guy who owned the place I was living there went bankrupt, so I moved to Gooding Idaho. The radio operation has stayed steady.
Like Robin Williams, I took the bazaar the goofy, the not so tame and the edgy, racy side of radio rather than Cookie cutter like many radio jocks do.
After tossing things around in 2009 that fall the as far as radio goes, and had I known more then, it could have been more I just did not pick up on the signals very well, but a love of my life called in from an ad for on air talent. Her name was Erin, and since she was a nurse and had a striking resemblance to HeeHaw’s Nurse GoodBody>
More Later
TTYLY
Quote of the Day:
Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.
--Oscar Fingall O’Flahertie Wills Wilde
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