Christmas at WJTW - 1590 AM Ch. 01

After moving into the house, we immediately began fixing it up. I contracted with a painter to paint the inside and then the outside. At the same time, Amanda contacted a flooring company. They convinced us that we should refinish the hardwood floors on the first floor, install wall-to-wall carpeting up the stairway and into the bedrooms. They also convinced us to install tile in the kitchen and bathrooms. Then Amanda set up with a handyman to fix the windows and the broken railing.

As for the radio station, the first thing I did was to contact Scott Wainwright. He had been Mrs. Porter's contract engineer. I asked him to do a complete assessment of what the station needed in order of their importance.

When Scott was finished, it was a detailed report about every piece of equipment in the audio chain. That's all the equipment from the main studio through the limiters and monitors to the transmitter. It also included everything out to the tower. A few small pieces of equipment he thought should be replaced immediately. However, he was emphatic that I needed a new, upgraded automation program.

"Tom," Scott said as he pointed to the automation system that he was recommending, "with this system, you can literally run the station by yourself."

That convinced me, and even though the automation system cost almost $4000, I bought it. I then decided to program the station with hits from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, along with country classics. I truly had no idea what the listeners wanted, but I figured this would work until I figured that out. As it turned out, that was exactly what the listeners wanted.

One other thing that Scott told me really caught my attention. Before Fred had died, he had hired a broadcast engineer out of Washington, D.C., to do a feasibility study about moving the station's tower twenty miles closer to Greenville. The study indicated that such a move would put a strong signal into the Greenville city limits. I also learned that Fred had already submitted the application for a new tower location with the FCC, and they had been approved it. However, the application was set to expire in three months. I immediately filed for a renewal, which was eventually granted. Still, the big stumbling block with this plan was the cost. The total cost of constructing a new tower and ground system would be somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. And that didn't include the cost of the new land to put the tower on. This was money that I didn't have. So, I put that project on hold and just kept renewing the application while I tried to build up the necessary funds.

I took a week's vacation to help with the house repairs and get the music programmed into the new automation system. Once the music was loaded, I added station identifications and liners. Then I turned the station back on. The wonder of wonders, the response from the people throughout the county was extremely positive. And two days after putting the station back on the air, my first advertiser walked in the front door. It was Herb Kanner, the owner of the local funeral home. I was off and running.

Over the next eighteen months, only two things cast a shadow over my little slice of paradise. The first was that I still hated my job, especially my commute. The second cloud was that we found out that Amanda couldn't have children. I was devastated by that news, but surprisingly, Amanda wasn't upset. And she absolutely refused to consider adoption. That should have been my third red flag about Amanda. And, of course, I missed that one as well.

Of the two problems, I could only solve one. The other I would have to learn to accept. So, one night, I explained to Amanda that I wanted to quit my job in Greenville. She was very upset and frightened when I first told her what I wanted to do. Her interior design business hadn't taken off like she thought it should. In fact, Amanda was still only making about 80% of what she had made working for someone else. Amanda argued strongly against my quitting, so I decided the best way to handle this was by showing her the advantages in black and white.

The next day at work, I took care of everything I needed to do by mid-morning. For the rest of the day, I worked on a spreadsheet to show Amanda how I could quit my job, and our lifestyle wouldn't suffer. I was able to show that the money I was plowing back into the station could cover all but about a thousand dollars a month of our expenses. And that, I was confident, would be more than made up for because I'd have more time to sell advertising.

Still, that thousand-dollar shortfall would be enough to cause Amanda to put her back up. So, I decided to offer one final sweetener that I was ashamed I hadn't thought of before. I would advertise my wife's business for free on the radio station.

It was touch and go that night, but the idea of Amanda advertising her business for free on the station really appealed to her. And she especially liked the idea of her voicing her own commercials.

I really couldn't believe that I hadn't suggested advertising to Amanda before. I guess I was too busy finding new paying advertisers. My business plan was simple. I visited at least a dozen businesses each week. Some were existing advertisers, but most were not. I'd introduce myself to the owner or manager and give them some small promotional gifts like pens, note pads, or a calendar. Then I'd tell them about the advantages of advertising on the radio and give them a list of our rates. My final piece of advice was to urge them to voice their own ads to make their business seem more personal. That way, the new customers never came into their store as strangers.

For the next three years, I was living my dream. I had a wife I loved and who I thought loved me. I had achieved a lifelong ambition of owning a radio station, and the station was doing well. But as I had mentioned, my life had fallen from its high point straight into a pile of shit. It had now gotten to the point where I was on the verge of losing everything. Still, I refused to give up and slowly tried to claw my way out. This was a battle I had to win for myself and everyone who depended on the station.

One of those people who desperately depended on the station was Lew Talbort. He was working the third shift in the Windward plant. But Lew had been a DJ in several major cities for twenty years until his alcohol problem got the best of him.

A month after putting the station back on the air, I knew I needed more voices than just me and occasionally Amanda. But I wasn't sure that I could afford to pay someone. But then, one day, Lew walked in and introduced himself. I didn't know what to make of him at first. Even though it was only eleven in the morning, I could smell the booze on him. Still, I was intrigued when we started telling me about all the radio stations he had worked for. I took a risk and hired him to do a show from 7 AM to 9 AM.

When people learned I had hired Lew, they warned me that I was making a mistake. But Lew was there religiously, Monday through Friday on time. And one of the rules I laid down was no drinking before or during his show. At first, Lew tapered his drinking to the afternoons. Then he restricted it to just the weekends. Finally, he quit altogether. As Lew got sober, I expanded his duties and pay.

His morning show began awkwardly as he hadn't worked on-air for some time. And where Lew had worked before, someone else ran the console. But Lew slowly found his footing, and the listeners loved his show. His show was a mix of music and stories. Lew told stories of his life and the history of the area. He also told stories about the unique people he had met in the county and everywhere else he had lived. They were stories of struggle, sacrifice, tragedy, love, success, and redemption. I marveled at how he constantly came up with new and different tales to spin on the air. However, Lew never got the hang of operating the console smoothly and was constantly flubbing up something. Despite his constant mistakes, or maybe because of them, the audience loved Lew.

The next person who found a refuge in the station was a skinny, pimply-faced young man with red hair who walked into the building one day. Obviously, he hadn't bathed in a while as I could smell him from fifteen feet away. I would learn later that Jimmy's father had deserted the family. His mother was struggling with her alcoholism while trying to raise four kids.

"What can I do for you, son?" I asked him.

The boy looked panic-stricken. "I'm sorry, I'll leave."

"Hey," I called to him as he turned quickly to leave, "what's your name?"

"Jimmy Saunders, sir," he said as he turned back to face me.

"Well, Jimmy Saunders, would you like a tour of the station?"

"Really? That would be great," he asked with disbelief and then added. "If it wouldn't be too much trouble?"

"No trouble at all," I tried to reassure him. "There's nothing I like better than showing people my radio station. Actually, though, I don't consider it my radio station; I believe it belongs to the people of Calvary County."

Jimmy reminded me of myself minus the pimples and red hair. He was totally mesmerized by everything he saw. I was amused as I watched Jimmy's face shine with wonder as we went from one room to another. I was watching someone who had just been bitten by the "radio bug."

When the tour was finished, I could see that Jimmy was reluctant to leave, so I asked him if he'd like to do some volunteer work at the station. Jimmy's face lit up like a Christmas tree, and he nodded vigorously.

I grabbed two t-shirts with the WJTW logo and gave them to Jimmy. He took them and held them tight to his chest. It was clear from his expression that the value he put on those two shirts was infinitely greater than what I had paid for them.

"One thing, however," I tried to think of some way to say what needed to be said without crushing the boy, "if you're going to be working here, you'll need to take a shower before you come in."

The look on Jimmy's face went from pure joy to total panic. "We, we, we, we don't have any running water at home. A pipe broke, and my mom doesn't have the money to fix it. We don't have PE anymore at the high school, so I can't use the shower in the locker room."

"That's not a problem, Jimmy," I said calmly. "Just bring some clean clothes tomorrow, and you can shower here."

That was how Jimmy came to work for me. At first, I just had him cleaning around the station. But then I started teaching him how to use the equipment in the production studio. He learned quickly, and before long, I had him producing commercials. At that point, I started paying him. It was only a hundred dollars a week, but it was like a fortune to Jimmy. He spent every penny buying food and clothes for his brother and sisters.

After three months, I gave him an evening on-air shift. He did a show that continued to play our music but highlighted what was going on in the high school. The show became fairly popular, and with that, Jimmy's popularity in school began to rise. He was no longer the smelly outcast.

I taught Jimmy how to set up the equipment at the football stadiums and even call a game or be the color commentator during football season. Finally, I hired Jimmy to do the afternoon drive time show. That was two years ago, and now Jimmy was being considered for a DJ job in a much bigger market.

And it was Jimmy who gave me the solution that solved a potential crisis involving the high school football games. The problem was that there were five high schools in the county, and each one wanted the radio station to broadcast their Friday night games. I knew that if I broadcast one high school to the exclusion of the others, I risked alienating those teams' supporters. Jimmy came up with a unique solution.

Since the schools played a ten-game season, he suggested broadcasting two games for each school. Also, he suggested that we hire students to attend the other four games. They would be using digital recorders to record the significant plays of the other games. The following day, we'd edit the significant plays from the recorders with the significant plays from the game we broadcast and play it as a Saturday morning sports show. This arrangement proved to be very popular and solved a possibly big problem.

About two years after acquiring the radio station, I found the land perfect for my new tower location. It was a ten-acre parcel as close as I could legally move under the application that Fred had originally filed. The ten-acre parcel was owned by Edgar Brenner, one of the larger farmers in the area. Edgar had a reputation of being a ruthless businessman, and he proved that to me.

He had fifteen hundred acres of prime farmland. Well, he actually had fourteen hundred and ninety acres of prime land. The ten acres I was interested in were pretty marshy. In fact, there was only about an acre of that parcel that was completely high and dry. Even so, Mr. Brenner told me he wanted eight thousand dollars an acre. That was the going rate for prime farmland, and this definitely wasn't that. Still, he refused to budge because he had done his homework and knew this land was perfect for me.

I only needed five acres, and I tried to get Edgar to sell me the five acres on the road. But he said, I had to buy all ten, or there would be no deal.

"I really don't care whether I sell the land or not," he told me over the phone. "However, I will hold a five-year mortgage at nine percent interest. The prevailing rate at the bank was between three and four percent. Mr. Brenner had discussed the financing with the local banks and knew they wouldn't finance me. I looked everywhere for another piece of land, and there wasn't anything I could make work. If I wanted the land, I would have to bite the bullet and accept Mr. Brenner's terms. I finally bought the land when I realized that the station could afford the mortgage even under Edgar's harsh terms.

About six months after the land purchase, business was going great, and I needed a part-time bookkeeper to keep my books and someone to answer the phone and get the bills out. I wanted someone for twenty hours and was looking to pay about two hundred dollars a week. So, I put the word out that I was hiring. I even put a small ad in a Greenville throw-away paper. I got no response at all.

I was about to give up on the idea and wait until I could hire someone full-time. But then, one morning, there was a knock on my doorframe. When I looked up, I found a young woman in her twenties. Her expression reminded me of Jimmy; she seemed scared to death.

"I'm sorry to bother you," she apologized meekly, "but there wasn't anyone out there. Is the job still available?" She held up the throw-away paper.

"It is," I answered as I studied her. She was only about five foot three with light brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her dress was wrinkled, and her shoes were well worn. The young woman was slender to the point of almost being skinny. Still, she had a pretty face and a pleasant smile, if a bit shy.

The young woman continued to glance about nervously until I got my wits about me. "Please, have a seat," I said, pointing to a chair across from me.

"I'm Tom Ambrose," I said, offering my hand across my desk.

"I'm Traci Bronson," she responded while shaking my hand.

"So, tell me about yourself," I inquired. "Do you have a resume?"

"No sir," she looked stricken, "I didn't know I needed one."

"No problem," I assured her with a wave of my hand. "Do you have any bookkeeping experience?"

She shook her head and looked down at the floor. In truth, doing my books didn't require any bookkeeping experience. We recorded everything on a computer spreadsheet.

"Are you familiar with Windows?"

She looked up and nodded with a tiny smile. "I know how to use a word processor."

"How about a spreadsheet?"

When she shook her head no, I felt this wasn't the job for her. But what happened next caused me to reassess the job interview in a completely different way.

"Mommy?" I heard a small child call out softly.

Traci was out of her seat in a shot. "I'm terribly sorry. That's my daughter. I'll put her back in the car."

"No, bring her in," I said with a smile. "I don't mind."

The little girl couldn't have been much more than three or four years old. Her thin blonde hair had been brushed recently, with a pretty pink bow in it. The little girl had the remnants of a lollypop on each corner of her mouth. She was holding her mother's hand and sucking her thumb.

When Traci sat down again, the little girl climbed up into her mother's lap and laid her head down on her mother's shoulder.

"Can we get something to eat soon?" the little girl said. "I'm really hungry."

"Hush, honey. We'll go get something to eat when I'm finished. This is my daughter, Kimberly," Traci kissed her daughter's head.

I reached back to my credenza and grabbed a Tupperware container. I opened it and asked the little girl. "Do you like cookies?"

Kimberly's eyes lit up, but she looked over at her mother questioningly. Cassie nodded, and Kimberly took one of the cookies. "Thank you."

"One cookie isn't enough," I said with a grin as I plucked two cookies from the container and put them on the desk in front of Kimberly. "You need at least two more. How about you mom, these are homemade chocolate chip cookies that Mrs. Myers from down the street baked this morning. She brings them to us each week, saying she's bribing us to keep playing the same music on WJTW. Mrs. Myers would be really upset if you didn't try at least a couple."

Kimberly wolfed down her cookies while Traci nibbled on one of hers. Traci kept her eyes firming on me, I'm sure, to see if I was going to give her the job or not. I took another look at Kimberly sitting in her lap and decided to give her a shot.

"Well, if you're interested in the job, it's yours," I said as I stood up. I watched as Traci's eyes lit up as she gushed how thankful she was for the opportunity. "Let me get a W-9 form, so we can get you signed up."

When I was almost back to my office door, I heard Kimberly ask her mother a question that damn near broke my heart.

"Mommy, do we have to sleep in the car again tonight? It's so cold."

"It will only be for a little while longer, honey," Traci said sadly.

I waited a couple of seconds and then strode back into my office. "If you're going to be working here, you should at least know where the bathroom is. Come on, let me give you both a tour of the station."

I took them through the radio side of the building. I got the biggest kick out of Kimberly's wide eyes when she realized that what was playing in the main studio was going out over the air. I saved the residential section of the tour to the very last.

"The previous owners used this section of the building as their home. They raised their kids here until they could afford to build that colonial house across the way. My wife and I bought the house and the station at the same time."

I led them through the rooms on the residential side and then made the offer. I just hoped Traci wouldn't be creeped out by it.

"Oh, hey, it just occurred to me that you're new here in town and probably haven't had a chance to find a place," I said tentatively. "I mean, if you've found a place, or you're planning to stay at one of the motels, that's good. But if you want, you can use this side of the station until you find something of your own."

I could see that Traci was not entirely happy with my suggestion, so I tried to put her at ease. "Look, I know it sounds a little weird, but my afternoon guy Jimmy has spent plenty of nights here. Even my morning guy, Lew, slept here when his apartment was fumigated. Anyway, I planned on putting new locks on the bedroom doors, but I haven't gotten around to it. I'll install one in the big bedroom if you like, and you'll have the only keys. But whatever you want to do is fine with me."