Doug Broome’s on Two Notch

This week, I was driving on Two Notch Road here in Columbia looking for a body shop to repair some fender rash that my car picked up in a parking lot. I had not been out there in over 20 years and I was slack-jawed at how much things have changed. The one thing that had not was the Burger King that was across from the WCOS radio booth that was in the parking lot of Doug Broome’s Drive In where I broadcast many a “Nightbeat Show” back in the day.

Left: Courtesy Google Maps I missed the body shop driving out, so I pulled over off the street into the empty parking lot of The Medussa Bistro and Lounge. As I turned my car around in the lot in preparation for heading back in towards town, I had the déjà vu moment of all moments. I realized that I was in the EXACT location of that old cinder block building that was my studio for the show. The view out the windshield of my car WAS the view I used to have out the front 4’ X 8’ window of that studio.

As I sat there in my car facing the street and seeing the Burger King, I was transported back in my memory. Day changed to night and the club behind me moved closer to the street and became the main kitchen and dining area of Doug’s. A string of teletrays under corrugated steel coverings appeared in my mind’s eye. The smell of Doug’s “Big Joy” Burgers, french fries, hot dogs and chocolate milk shakes filled my nose.

I could see in my memory cars pulling into the rows of the parking lot, finding the “perfect” open teletray, pulling into it and everybody inside ordering what they wanted. As the car hops rolled out on their roller skates bearing hot food, cold drinks and plenty of napkins, I knew that soon some of those napkins would make their way into my studio covered with mustard and ketchup stains and a few requests and dedications.

I loved getting those requests and dedications, I still do. To me that was real radio! You can have your interactive internet applications but this was real live interactivity where the audience got to “program” their favorite songs into my show. There are some radio consultants today who promote the opinion that requests are a bad thing; they break up the pre programmed sets and they play a song that only one member of the audience want to hear. I say “Hogwash!” If I had a dime for every time someone came to the booth and said “I wanted to request that song you just played but they beat me to it. So please play this other song for me.” To me, that was a win – win!

Earlier in the ‘60s when the WCOS booth was at the older Doug’s on Main at Confederate the audiences were actively cruising between Doug’s and Gene’s Pig N Chick just a few blocks away on Blossom Street where my buddy Hugh Munn spun 45’s on WNOK. But the Two Notch Road location was just too far away to maintain the crusin’ scene. So, most of the folks out in my parking lot came from downtown, Forest Acres and the Dentsville areas, while Hugh split the downtown folks with me and picked up those in Olympia Mills, West Columbia and Cayce. I still had a fair share of the University of South Carolina Students and scored big with the Columbia College crowd. By the way, Hugh and I were close, both being products of WUSC and we knew which of you came to both locations. Don’t worry, it’s all good! Those were good days.

Just off to the left of where I was parked, I could “see” the old A & W Root Beer drive in that was on the corner of Two Notch and Beltline. Occasionally someone would sneak over a request from there despite having to run the gauntlet of Doug’s employees that tried to dissuade them from getting to me. I got to be pretty good friends with some of the A & W car hops who knew exactly when they could get past the watchful eyes and sneak into the back of my booth with apron pockets stuffed with requests. Quite frankly, I believe to this day that Arthur, the manager at Doug’s turned his back on what was happening because he remembered what it was like. In payback I always played a “country crossover” for Arthur; usually a Conway Twitty or a Patsy Cline tune. I lost track of Arthur when I left WCOS in ‘69 but I’ll always remember him as a kind and gentle man who kept me filled with hamburgers, Pepsi’s and fries during those long five hour shifts.

Like so many of our sponsors, Doug’s had a “cash and carry” arrangement with the station. So after signing off the air and hearing Mike Rast start the top of the hour news back in the main control room in the Cornell Arms Building, I would amble across the parking lot to the office and collect an envelope with the payment for the show for the evening. Arthur was much older than I was and it was like spending time with a favorite uncle. I couldn’t stay long because in addition to carrying the cash back to the station to place under our bookkeeper’s office door, I had the collection of 45 RPM records that was the top 40 of that day. The jock that came on when I signed off had about a dozen carts with the top songs of the week to play while I drove the 20 minutes or so back to the station. So by time Mike ended the news, I had better be on my way or the overnight DJ will run out of songs to play.

My mind trip back to the past evaporated in the late morning sunshine and I pulled back out onto Two Notch Rd in search of the body shop. As it turns out, I never found it. I was looking on the wrong side of the road. A quick check of Google Maps revealed that it was on the other side. Oh well, it’s all good, I get to take another trip down memory lane soon. Oh MY!