Me At WRFD

Found a picture of me at WRFD taken in 1978. More hair and fewer pounds back then. Station was playing the Unrock format. Photo was taken by John (Jack) Phillips.

More on Green Acres aka WRFD

Found the below as I was looking through some old publications. In the early 70's and possibly even beginning in the late 60's, WRFD left the Middle of The Road and became a foreground country music station becoming known as Ohio's Country Giant. The attempt was to tie in the agricultural portion of the programming with the music portion. I really can't say if it worked or not, as the format only remained in place a few years. Did it not work well because of the image of Country at the time? You know. Being Country when Country wasn't cool? Or was the fact that daytime only stations were quickly facing death financially no matter the format?

I do remember hearing people say they used to listen to the station before it went Country, so that could have been an indication as to why Country didn't remain on teh station long.

Also find a clip from Billboard Magazine featuring program director Len Anthony and Robert W. Knight when the station made the transition to oldies.

I had also forgotten that Ed Johnson, the farm broadcaster was at one time one of the voices of the football Buckeyes. More on him some time later.

Mississippi Beginnings

Ever wondered what the origins of the Mississippi River look like? We're standing where the Mighty Mississippi begins.

Beginnings

My rememberances of events that were meaningful to me in radio could never be complete without the inclusion of WDLR in Delaware.

Ted Baxter used to say on the Mary Tyler Moore show "It all started in a 5,000-watt radio station in Fresno, California. With just a $50-a-week paycheck and a dream".

Actually Ted's start was much better than mine. My start was at a 500 watt radio station in Delaware, Ohio working for free and a dream. Free. I begged local manager Jim Lloyd to allow me to have some airtime and I would be willing to do so for free. My first day on the radio was Tuesday May 8, 1973. I was on the air between 7 and 8:45 pm. Working for free.

In just a few weeks, I was hired to handle Saturday's between the hours of 2 until sign-off which was 8:45 in May and extended to 9:00 pm in June. For $1.85/hour. I was thrilled and panicked. For 7 hours I was I was in a cinder block building, all by myself. I honestly believe one of the reasons I am comfortable by myself is that I learned to do so on those Saturdays.

But like Ted, I still had my dream.

WDLR began it's on air life on January 18, 1961 at 12 noon. It was scheduled to operate between the hours of 6 am until Delaware sunset which ranged from 5 pm in December to 8 pm EST in June and July. From a picture and an advertisement in the January 16th Delaware Gazette, here is the exterior of the studios and the announcement of programming actities. The station was to program a format aimed at young married and middle aged people, with lots of local news, farm news, markets and sports.








When I began in 1973 the stations line up included Dan Green doing mornings and news (he left soon after my arrival and was replaced by Ron Culp), John Phillips in the afternoon, Dan Allender Saturday morning and me Saturday afternoon. I was hired to replace a gentleman by the name of Hugh Hannah. Hugh was African-American and was leaving to join a black programmed station in Xenia.

Others at the station were Kris Keltner who was Delaware's version of Ruth Lyons. She hosted for lack of a better term a variety show.

Paul Heinlein who doubled as chief engineer handled evenings during the spring and summer allowing the haywire automation system which never worked right run the show. Uncle Paul as we called him was also responsible for an all religious pay for play preacher Sunday lineup. We teasingly called the Sunday line up "The Sunday Screamers", as they were mostly well meaning self appointed fundamentalist preachers willing to pluck down the $30 for a half hour of radio time to yell, rant and scream into the microphone about salvation and hell. Old time religion.

One preacherman, Barney Sheritt who ran the grain mill in Ostrander, had for lack of a better term religious turrets disease. While delivering his message with strong fervor, he would let slip curse words or strong sexual words. Yet when finished, he was a kind and soft spoken gentleman. Barney was doing risque radio long before it became cool ala Howard Stern.

Mark Litton, who I've remained friends with all these years joined the station a few weeks after I began hosting a top 40 countdown. He also did other sundry work including fill ins.

Mark filled in for Paul one Sunday. While Brother Barney was on the air referred to Mark as a long haired, hippified son of a bitch. On the air. Yet when he was finished, he handed Mark his $30 for his air time, thanked him for engineering the show and said he wished him a great week and would see him next Sunday if he was filling in for Paul.

Mark became one of the more successful of our WDLR graduating class as he has gone on to station ownership in Ohio and briefly Illinois.

Kris and Paul were old timers in the business. Kris and her twin sister sang on the the old WHKC (now WTVN) sometime in the long ago past. Kris read poetry, gave household tips, sang standards or religious songs, and gave anniversary and birthday greetings. Kris was in her 70's and yet had firery red hair and had a type A personality to match. She was a tough woman who had seen it all. She would often bring her husband along with her. Pappy as he was called was her polar opposite. Quiet and never without his pipe, Pappy would tamp and smoke away in quiet amusement as Kris did her thing. Looking back, he often reminded me of Pa Kettle. Actually he was a accomplished but retired business man who had built a business making church furniture that was widely respected.

Paul was her nemesis. Paul was a large man with a pencil thin mustache and gap toothed smile. Put him in german dirndl dress ans he would have fit perfectly at a beer hall in Bavaria. He also had a huge cynical and ironic sense of humor.

Kris said he was so big that he had to be incorporated. She nick named him UPI for Uncle Paul Incorporated.

Paul loved to play practical jokes. Kris had a 3x5 card file of birthdays and anniversaries. Paul would insert cards with the names of fake people. Such as Mr. and Mrs. Authur Rightous celebrating an aniversary. The card would keep appearing every few months and Kris would read it and then comment that it just seemed not so long ago that they had celebrated and anniversary.

One of Kris's sponsors was a cemetary. It was managed by a man named Dan. Kris discused on the air that she was looking for some sort of hook or line to use with her commercials for the cemetary. From behind her in the studio he said to "See Digger Dan for his lay away plan."

The station was sold in early 1974 and the new owners came in and cleaned the place up. While I wasn't allowed to do much on the air, the overall effect was a much improved station. But as I noted in the beginngs of this article, I had a dream and running an automation system was not part of that dream. I left in May of 74.

Oddly, I've worked off and on for the station for the next several years and until the year 2001. I hosted music shows, called play by play sports (which for me is a stretch, as I know next to nothing about the positions and strategies of sports), did a local talk show, hosted candidate interviews and more.

The station now has a satellite fed Mexican based format.

The station looks like this today.

Spook

Spook Beckman in his famous WCOL AM "Bumper Room".









What can you say about Spook Beckman? He was at the top. He was at the bottom. His fans loved him no matter what. His detractors had no love for him.

Spook came to Columbus, Ohio from Florida. He was born Frederick Beckman, but earned the moniker Spook because of his then shock of whitish blond hair. He spent time in the 50's at WLW-C television, hamming it up on local shows. He later became the afternoon host of WTVN radio, worked briefly at WVKO and soon back at WTVN.

He returned to WLW-C with a mid morning variety show called Spook Beckman's Coffee Club in January 1965. When the show ended in 1968, he returned to radio. His new radio home was WRFD where he hosted afternoons briefly and then worked in radio sales.

That began a bottom period. When Spook left WRFD, he worked the dinner theater circuit at the Columbus-Springfield Dinner Theater, sold cars for a Westerville Ford dealer and then began a radio come back. Slowly.

Spook was brought into WBNS radio briefly to host a Saturday afternoon show. Later, when radio station WRFD, searching for a format to return to it's former greatness, brought Spook in to WRFD to host a Sunday afternoon show featuring Big Band music. When Spook was brought on full time, I replaced him long term on the Sunday shift when my WTVN gig ended.

Spook's return to WRFD was in a word great. He brought a ready made audience. He also brought something even more important. A pocket full of ready and willing advertisers. While the WRFD program log often looked like a blanket of snow page after page, during Spook's show the page was full of advertisements to be aired. Often with Spook ad libbing the entire commercial from memory and with his personal touch. Spook's show was the corner stone of the radio's format, then known as the Unrock Station. Unrock was for the standards by Frank, Bing and Tony that were played hour after hour with Glenn, Benny and Artie and their big bands sprinkled in between. Spook was back to the glory years.

As a station promotion, a picnic was held on the spacious studio grounds. It was packed with Beckman fans. He created a fan club called the Years, Tears and Beers club. Something about the years for the memories, tears for the tough times and the beers for the good times.

Sadly for WRFD, Spook's return lasted only a few years. He was called away by WCOL radio who itself was going through a metamorphosis. When Spook left, the stations program log once again returned to looking like a blizzard had hit page after page.

WCOL offered him a showcase studio on East Broad Street that became known as the Bumper Room. Spook often refereed to his afternoon drive radio show as bumper to bumper time, capitalizing on bumper to bumper traffic in the afternoon.

When first arriving at WCOL, Spook's show consisted of playing contemporary music. What we often called chicken rock. Enough of today’s music to be current, but with the rockier, edgier songs absent from the play list. Spook fit that format,,,,,,well let's put it this way. Johnny Cochran couldn't have defended Spook and the music being played as a good fit.

That format however was on its way out, and Spook once again was in his element as the station moved the Music of Your Life Format. Where WRFD had tried with its Unrock version of the format, WCOL went with the Music of Your Life product. It was more complete in scope and depth, wasn't being played from scratchy records but rather recordings of the once famous and great songs and had a complete package to make it a viable format during those times.

To further its image in the market, WCOL employed some of Columbus once great radio personalities to anchor the disc jockey lineup. Coming from WTVN and later WRFD John Fraim anchored mornings from high atop the Leveque Tower, Joe Cunningham held forth in mid-days much as he did at WBNS. Beckman was in the Bumper Room with his unique flavor of entertainment and folksy charm and former WCOL morning man when the station was in its Top Forty heyday, Wes Hopkins, rounded out the line up in the evenings. While it lasted, it was the true stars of music coming to play on a station anchored by once heavy weight radio personalities.

I was never quite sure why the station moved from the format. Although never huge in audience, it was still quite widely accepted and had its fair share of the radio advertising pie. Maybe it simply cost too much to maintain, but the station pulled the plug and moved to a mostly syndicated talk format in the mid-80.

Beckman moved to country formatted WMNI. That move never felt like a good fit. Beckman seemed to be at his finest element at WRFD playing the Unrock and at WCOL with the Music of Your Life. Country music just wasn’t' Spook. But being the always professional broadcaster, Spook and his loyal fans re-emerged together at 920 on the dial where Spook remained until illness and death took him from us in November of 1986.

Looking back, it seems almost unimaginable that Spook's voice hasn't graced Columbus microphones in over 20 years. It seems just like yesterday hearing the microphone open and a commercial begins with the familiar "Hi folks, this is Spook for.......Know them for a lifetime".

Spooks generosity as well as creativity was also evidenced by his heavy involvement in local charities. Spook began the Secret Santa project in the 1950's to provide toys for children often left off Santa's list. He also was an avid paper seller for Charitie Newsies manning a post at James and Livingston for years.

Spook was always larger than life. His booming baritone voice, his fun personality, his ability to literally have listeners and advertisers eat out of the palm of his hand was a talent most radio hosts could only dream of.

Hamburger Inn

It may be called a greasy spoon. It may be called a hole in the wall. To me, it's small town diner heaven. And it's long overdue for it's place on this blog.

The Hamburger Inn has been a Delaware Institution since the 1930's. Located on the main drag (Sandusky Street) in downtown Delaware, this is a great place to nail some great chow at a great price.

The hamburger buns are baked fresh on the premisis. Same for the carmel icing covered cinnamon rolls. French fries are fresh cut and fried as is the same for the home fries. And breakfast is great.

The Hamburger Inn is also a great place to meet some of Delaware's notables and quoteables. Everyone from OWU students, local politicos and even some of the towns more colorful figures can be found at the counter seating only Hamburger Inn.

















The famous back entrance is a neat way to see the whole place.






















Interior shots.

Jib Jab

To most people, when they hear the words Jib Jab, they think of the political comedy spoofs streaming periodically on the internet. And while I am very aware of and enjoy their work, to me Jib Jab means a great place to get a hot dog.

While heading to Niles to see the McKinley museum, we took a detour to Girrard, Ohio to Jib Jab Hot Dogs. Having been there late last spring, we looked forward to the return visit.

I've already chronicled another great hot dog place here. And while Jib Jab doesn't have the ambieance that Hillbilly Hotdogs has, it does have hot dogs with great taste. And a neat feature is the hot sauces made available (see last photo) to spice up your dogs.

If you're up Youngstown way, make Jib Jab a stop.