The Very First Time ever, even

Right around the time I was fifteen, I was a pretty miserable kid. My mom was a kind, wonderful mother but she just wasn't all there. Alcohol had pretty much consumed her life and to this day, I understand why. There wasn't a whole lot of love shown by my dad because that was just the way he was, I think it was passed down the Raley ancestry. Early 1971 was a tough time, lots of butter beans and bread, remember that, Vick? but hey many have had worse. Stuck on a farm in the fucking middle of nowhere when the world was spinning around me. My brother had just returned from Vietnam an absolute mess. There wasn't much to take comfort in around that time in Ava, Mo. Just about the only thing that saved me was the radio.
Whether it was WLS fading in and out of the distance, or KAAY from Little Rock and once in a while WLAC from Nashville with "John R.".


We had a small radio station in Ava. The call letters were KSOA. By some strange designation, it was supposed to mean "Keeping South Ozarks Alerted." I guess it was some weather slogan, but whenever they said that, I wondered if they knew something I didn't. Alerted from what? I had a very good friend in high school named Steve Faszholz. Steve was the all american guy who is now a anesthesiologist somewhere here in St. Louis. Steve's brother Chuck happened to do afternoons at the little 5,000 watt daytime AM station. I became curious and before you knew it, I was in the studio a lot. One spring day, Chuck let me make a segue. Although I transposed the order in which he told me to do things(before you turn off the turntable, pot it down or it will sound like shit), he let me hang around. Later that week, for whatever reason, they needed someone to read the news. Chuck looked at me and said..."you've got five minutes, read this" and handed me some copy. Five minutes later, on an April day in 1971, I read the news and absolutely, unequivicably, without a doubt nailed it. I remember the overpowering rush of adreneline that hit me after that. It was a high a never felt before but five years later, I felt again. We moved away a month later and I never did appear on the station again. The station is now KKOZ AM/FM and is no longer on the town square.