Christmas at WJTW - 1590 AM Ch. 01

I apologize; I did all the editing myself. So, any mistakes are mine and mine alone. Also, I apologize that I've split this into two parts. I got roasted by some of you for breaking up "The Guitar Player." But I am sending in both parts at the same time. Thanks for your understanding.

I sat in my office staring out the window while contemplating the shit pile my life had become. The winter winds were gusting outside, and the weather forecast called for heavy snow. Of course, this had most of the townspeople happy as it was still almost three weeks before Christmas Eve. However, some of the families wouldn't be all that happy. This was because unemployment was hovering over fourteen percent in the county at the moment. That meant a lot of people were out of work.

I picked up the nameplate from my desk and looked at it. It read -- Tom Ambrose -- President. I remembered the day I bought the radio station with a little sadness but a lot of pride. You see, I own the only radio station in town and the county for that matter, WJTW -- 1590 AM.

As I sat in my office watching the wind blow swirls of snow up and around, my mood bounced between gloomy and hopeful. Even the Christmas music playing from the speaker in my office didn't fill me with the holiday spirit like it normally would. These were desperate times for me as I was in danger of going bankrupt. But I had a plan that would hopefully dig me out from under.

It began almost eighteen months ago when the Windward Sporting Apparel Company announced they were shutting down all operations in the United States. There were only two plants still open -- one in New Jersey and just outside of Milton, North Carolina, my hometown. Our local factory was the fifth-largest employer in the county. There had been numerous rumors about the plant closing, but the decision was finally made to cease all operations.

They shut it down with only two weeks' notice, putting almost two hundred people out of work. That was two hundred direct jobs that were gone. The area probably lost an additional three or four hundred indirect jobs due to the factory's closing.

That announcement was followed that the local Walmart would be closing its doors once their superstore was opened about twenty miles away. Then several other businesses either closed or moved elsewhere, including the CVS drug store. Then the economy nationwide plummeted. Unemployment in our area was running between fourteen and fifteen percent and threatening to go higher.

As the economy crumbled in our area, the radio station lost about forty percent of its advertisers, and I now struggled mightily to pay my bills. I was behind on the mortgage for the station and the land I had purchased for the new tower site. In fact, I just learned that Edgar Brenner, the mortgage holder on the land, was pushing ahead with the foreclosure. I only owed thirty-seven thousand dollars, but if I couldn't bring the mortgage up to date, I'd lose the land and all the money I had put into it. It seemed that all I did nowadays was juggle bills, keeping the wolves away from the door.

Owning a radio station had been a lifelong dream. I had always been fascinated with all forms of broadcasting, but I especially loved radio. But with all my troubles of late, my confidence had been badly shaken. Still, my love of radio remained. One of the things that I had been taught in my business classes was to cut your losses if you continue to lose money. But I refused to give up on the station.

My love affair with radio began when I was in the second grade. That was when I first took notice of the tube-type radio my mother always kept on in the kitchen. It had a nice soft, warm feel to it. My mother had it tuned to her favorite station, WNEW in New York in the morning, and William B. Williams would fill the room with friendly talk and soft music.

I would watch the radio on cold winter days and envy Mr. Williams. He was in a nice warm, safe place while I had to shortly head out into the freezing cold for my walk to school. Of course, at the time, I never realized that Mr. Williams probably had to get up at 4 am and fight his way through New York traffic in freezing conditions to get to that warm, safe place. Anyway, I believe that's when I fell in love with radio.

My love of radio grew over the years, and by the time I entered high school, it was almost an obsession. And yes, I was the guy who did the morning announcements. It was as close to radio as I could get at the time. And yes, I was also one of those geeks who helped handle the audio and visual aids for the school.

Shortly after starting high school, I got a job. It was part-time during the school year and full-time during the summer. I put a huge chunk of what I earned into a savings account that I called my radio station fund. I continued to work in college and kept saving my money. I had good enough grades to get a state-funded scholarship, and my parents paid the rest as long as I was pursuing a business degree. I wanted to major in communications, but I also knew that having a business degree wouldn't hurt when I finally owned my own radio station.

As soon as my parents left me in my dorm room my freshman year, I headed out in search of the college radio station. By the end of my first hour at college, I was signed up as a volunteer. The next four years were really great, and in my senior year, I was appointed to be the station's manager. And what that even doubly great was that it was a paid gig. I got $500 a month to run the station. The only downside was that I had to interface with Chad Duncan III.

Chad was an insufferable snob. Unfortunately, he was also the editor of the school newspaper. Chad's parents were quite wealthy, owning a string of newspapers and magazines in the Northeast. And he let everyone know who he was, how much money his parents had, and that someday, he would be running the company, TriStar Media. Like I said, he was an insufferable snob. Still, I had to deal with him for all school media events to plan the appropriate on-campus publicity. I also had to deal with him at the quarterly budget meetings that the school insisted on for all organizations getting money from the college.

I started attending those meetings when I was a sophomore and got really involved in my junior year when it was decided that I would become the next station manager. In his junior year, Chad became the editor of the school's newspaper, which only inflated his ego even more.

We clashed for the first time when I submitted my budget at the beginning of my senior year. The station desperately needed to replace a bunch of old equipment. I swear that Marconi must have built some of our equipment because it was so old. Chad also wanted an increase in his budget to get a new computer system, even though his current computers were less than three years old. He also wanted new furniture for the newspaper's offices. When the budgets were finally approved, the radio station received an increase of $40,000, while the newspaper's budget was cut by $25,000. Needless to say, Chad was furious.

The newspaper had its budget cut because it had gone digital some years back. Their biggest expense used to be printing. But these days, they printed far fewer of the actual newspapers. Most of the students read the paper with an app on their phones. That didn't matter to Chad; he now hated the radio station, particularly me, since I was the station's manager.

Ever since I became acquainted with Chad, I knew he had a girlfriend named Amanda Edwards. She wasn't drop-dead gorgeous, but she was really cute. Anyway, they had been together since the beginning of our freshman year, but then Chad suddenly dumped her midway through our senior year. That really crushed Amanda, who was one of the columnists for the school newspaper besides majoring in interior design.

Amanda came to work for the radio station, which further soured Chad on the station and me. I gave Amanda a job as a roving reporter and also had her do a weekly editorial. Even though Chad had discarded her, he was angered that I had taken her in at the radio station. So, Chad's anger spilled over into the school's newspaper. He began taking shots at the radio station in each edition. We at the radio station, of course, returned fire. Then Chad complained to the College President that we were squandering our budget on pizza and beer. And while we did have weekly pizza and beer parties at the station, we paid for it out of our own pockets.

Still, I had to go before the disciplinary board. Chad showed up with pictures of some of our parties. I showed up with receipts showing where every penny spent out of the Station's budget went. Clearly, we had done nothing wrong, and no disciplinary action was taken against the station or me. Still, I thought the whole feud was silly and tried to bury the hatchet. Chad just viewed that as weakness and upped his attacks.

It took a few weeks, but we got our payback, or we thought we did, with the help of a computer science major, Billy Williams. Each week, when the paper was ready to be published, Chad would review it one last time. Then he would digitally transmit the finished product to the printer and post it online. Billy figured out a way to intercept the finished paper and substitute one we had written. We didn't do anything horrible; we just inserted nonsense stories, dozens of limericks, only one-half of each sports score. We put in several silly editorials demanding things like nap time during each class. We also put one in demanding that beer should be dispensed from the drinking fountains instead of water.

When the paper came out, Chad was livid. Most of his staff thought it was really funny, which made him even crazier. I couldn't understand why he was so upset. The consensus on campus was that this was the best edition of the paper to come out in years. It was our intention to embarrass Chad, but it backfired on us. Still, Chad didn't see it that way.

"You son of a bitch!" Chad screamed as he stormed into my office and threw a copy of the paper on my desk. "You did this!"

"You messed up the paper," Chad was so angry; spital was flying from his mouth. "I don't know how you did it, but you did it. I won't forget this."

Finished with his rant, Chad stormed back out of the radio station, and I chuckled while putting the incident out of my mind. One good thing to come out of our prank was that the newspaper stopped printing nasty articles about us. I thought he had finally calmed down and put the whole incident behind him. But the truth was that the administration had already come down hard on Chad. They felt he was abusing his position with the newspaper. And Chad was the type of person who didn't forgive, and he never forgot.

Shortly after putting out the fake newspaper, Amanda and I started going out. It was just an occasional date at first, but as time moved on, it got more serious. At first, I only thought of Amanda as a volunteer. Then we became friends, and finally, we started dating. After becoming intimate, we moved in together and shared an apartment for the last three months of school. I was totally in love with her by then, and I thought she felt the same about me. Anyway, six months after we graduated, Amanda and I were married.

Amanda got a job working as an interior designer for a large company. At the same time, I got a job as a stockbroker for a large financial institution. We were both making decent money, but we hated our jobs. Amanda hated the woman she worked for, and I hated selling the financial instruments that our company created. I felt they were inferior investments.

Still, things were coasting along for a year until Amanda came home one day and told me that she had quit her job. She had decided that she wanted to start her own interior design company. I was a little upset that Amanda hadn't seen fit to discuss it with me first. Still, I wanted to support my wife in her new venture, so I let that go. I should have realized that this was the first red flag about my marriage.

With only one sure income, I was paying most of the bills. Ever since we married, whenever I got a bonus, I had split it between our new house fund and my radio station fund. Eighty percent went into the new house account, and twenty percent went into my radio station account. And if Amanda got paid cash for a job, she would work that money into the new house account. However, after Amanda quit her job without discussing it, I changed how I split any bonuses. It was now going to be 50/50. Amanda wasn't happy about the change and never put another dime into the new house fund. That was red flag number two, and I totally missed it.

About a year after that, apparently, the bosses at my job thought I was doing a really good job. So, they offered me the opportunity to open a new office in Greenville, North Carolina. I thought Amanda would hit the ceiling when I broached the subject. Yet, to my surprise, she was thrilled. Since Amanda was butting heads with the larger interior design companies in our current location, her business wasn't growing as fast as she wanted. The thought of moving to a smaller city intrigued her.

The move went smoothly, and Amanda's business did grow. However, she still wasn't making as much money as she did, working for a large interior design company. On the other hand, I got a bonus for moving to Greenville. I also got a bonus for getting the office open and staffed in less than a month. And finally, I got a bonus for making the office profitable within the first six months of operation. Still, I hated the job. But we settled into our new location in a rented house, and our lives went on.

One of the things that Amanda and I did on our weekends was to explore the small towns in the counties surrounding Greenville. Amanda was always on the lookout for furniture and accessories she could use in her business. I, on the other hand, was looking for antique radios. I had bought five so far, with one being the exact model my mother used in the kitchen all those years ago.

One of these day excursions changed our lives forever. On that particular day, we decided to visit the small town of Milton. After hitting all the antique stores on one side of the town and having lunch in a cute diner, we decided to explore a little bit of the town. We had turned down a side street off of the main drag and found ourselves in a cute residential area.

I wanted to turn around, but Amanda wanted to keep wandering in the neighborhood. I reminded my wife that there were still a few antique stores on the other side of town that we hadn't explored yet. Still, she was fascinated by the variety of different-style houses. We had just turned a corner when Amanda spied a stately two-story colonial house about two blocks away. She insisted that we take a look, and when we approached, Amanda was excited to see the for-sale sign in the front yard. Not only was the house for sale, but that day, it was an open house.

Amanda all but dragged me up the front steps, and the real estate lady was thrilled to have someone to show the house to. Apparently, it had been a slow day. Anyway, Amanda followed the lady, checking out every corner of the house. From my observation, it was a soundly built house, but it needed some TLC. After touring the house once, Amanda wanted to go through it again. However, I had found something that was much more interesting to me.

I discovered a radio station sitting across a field behind the house. So, while my wife took a second house tour, I wandered down to the station. The sign out front said -- WJTW -- 1590 AM -- YOUR HOMETOWN RADIO STATION. The I and the O in radio were so faded that you almost couldn't see them.

I found a Mrs. Sylvia Porter in an office inside the station. I apparently scared her because she thought she had locked the door. I quickly learned that she owned both the house my wife was exploring and the radio station. She and her husband had operated the station for thirty-two years. They had initially lived in part of the radio station after Mr. Porter had expanded the building. He added two bedrooms, a bathroom, a small living room, and a kitchenette onto the original station building. He also put a fireplace in the living room. After their two girls were born, Mr. Porter built the two-story colonial house across the field.

Mrs. Porter explained that her husband had died two years ago, which caused her eyes to mist over. She had tried to continue running the station, but her heart wasn't in it. The station had been for sale for over a year, with no one showing any interest. Finally, five months ago, Mrs. Porter turned the station off. Also, the station's license was up for renewal, and she wasn't going to renew it. Her plan was to just sell the land.

In talking with Mrs. Porter, I got the impression that she desperately wanted to move to Florida to be near her daughters. And, so far, she was really discouraged because not only had no one had made any offers on the station, but the last two offers on the house had fallen through. Neither potential buyer could get financing. People had convinced Mrs. Porter not to hold the financing herself at that time. But now, she was beginning to rethink that decision.

The more I talked with Mrs. Porter, the more excited I became. I wanted to own this radio station so badly that I could almost taste it. I told her that I was very interested but didn't have enough money. Surprised by my interest, Mrs. Porter quickly offered to hold a mortgage on the property for me. My heart was in overdrive when I met back up with my wife. Before I could say a word, Amanda told me that she had fallen in love with the house and wanted to make an offer. She felt the house could be made into a showcase for her business. Over coffee, I told her about the radio station and its availability. I suggested that we put an offer in on both properties.

When I first laid out my idea of buying the house and the station, Amanda balked. She thought we should use the two funds to put more down on the house and the rest to make needed repairs. Even though the house was well built and sturdy, Mrs. Porter hadn't done much to keep it up. It needed to be painted inside and out, the flooring needed to be replaced. Also, some of the windows were cracked, and the porch decking needed repair. Some of the spindles on the railing were broken and needed to be repaired or replaced.

I knew that Amanda would get her dander up if I flatly rejected her idea. Instead, I explained that I felt sure we could get a much better deal on the house if we bought both. I also told Amanda that I was confident that I could get Mrs. Porter to finance the sale of the station and the house. By the end of our discussion, Amanda had agreed.

We submitted a bid for $200,000 for the house, and after researching the value of the ten acres that the station sat on, I found it was worth $75,000. Then I determined the depreciated value of the station's equipment and offered $100,000 for the station. Mrs. Porter accepted the offer and agreed to finance the house sale at 4% and the station at 7%. We signed the papers that day.

Four weeks later, we closed on the house and the station. Both Amanda and I were over the moon happy. We had put $30,000 down on the house, and I put $20,000 down on the station. The balance in the new house account would be used to begin the restoration, and the $8000 left in the radio station account, I would use as operating funds.

We made a move into our new house two days after the closing. The commute to Greenville was about forty-five minutes each way. I quickly learned to hate it, but I tempered this by telling myself that I now owned a radio station. Also, the steady paycheck took the strain out of carrying both mortgages.