It seems that we have been waiting forever for Fall to arrive. I know the calendar says it’s been here for over a month but in South Carolina it does not arrive until the week of the State Fair in the middle of October. It did cool down for a while but then it got warm and rainy for the rest of the month. I guess that was our Indian Summer this year.
But this week, I have to pull the trigger and put up all my Ban-Lon golf shirts and pull out my woolies and long sleeved shirts; something that doesn’t usually happen until Thanksgiving week. One could make the case that it is me that has changed and not the weather as I approach my curmudgeon years. Indeed I will be sharing the campus tomorrow with some guys in short sleeved t-shirts and ladies in their oversized shirts and short shorts. But I think, the guys are probably from the north. The ladies are more interested in looking good than feeling warm, so their geographical origins are less obvious.
My long suffering central air conditioning system will be breathing a sigh of relief later today as I lean over the hearth in the living room to light the pilot light and change the batteries in the remote control for the gas logs. The central heater has been warming up and stretching its muscles for short periods of time in the mornings during the past week or so. Its marathon will start next month.
Right on cue, the generator in the back yard has just started up for its bi-weekly test. The light on its side is still green so it is ready for the winter weather. The service technician will be by next week to make sure all the ones and zeros in its mechanical brain are in the right place. The yard guy is coming tomorrow to clear the pine straw off the roof and spruce up the yard. One last thing is to schedule the Fall maintenance check on the furnace and I’ll be all ready for Old Man Winter.
I wonder if we will get any snow this year. Snow is not guaranteed in the Midlands of South Carolina. It seems that we get a nice snowfall about once every five years and a dusting every couple of years or so. With the gradual increase of the overnight lows year round that we’ve seen in the past couple of decades, winter weather events have come around fewer times than they have in the past. The winter events that I can do without are ice and freezing rain. I’m hoping we get lucky this year and dodge those icy bullets.
As a broadcaster, ice is the worst!
When the roads get icy it is harder to get to the radio station to do your show. Back in the day, before automation, this was critical. There had to be a DJ on duty to play the music and operate the transmitter. Sometimes, we would have to work double shifts because the next guy or gal on the schedule couldn’t get to the station because of the bad roads. The overnight DJ usually suffered the most because wintery travel was the worst just before dawn when the sun would rise and melt off the ice.
During my television years, it was worse because you needed an entire crew to operate the station. I remember one icy morning in the early 70s, Bob Bailey, who was the “talent” for the 6:45 AM Farm Report and I were the only ones who could get into the station. I was the “engineer” responsible for the operation of the video tape machines and the microwave transmitter and being the video operator for the two color cameras in the studio. The master control switcher who punched the cameras up, operated the audio board and directed the show was not able to get in. Neither was the one member of the floor crew, who was responsible for setting up the lights and microphones and operating the cameras in the studio.
Fortunately they had both called me to let me know that they would not be to the station on time so I had plenty of warning. I lit the studios, set up the microphones, and cameras. Then had Bob sit in his normal location and locked one camera down on his “head shot” and another on the “wide shot” and ran back up the stairs to master control. The night projectionist had left the sign on film reel on the projector so all I had to do then was to thread the film and set up the one videotape commercial we had on the log that morning. At precisely 6:43:30 AM I rolled the national anthem film and switched it up on the air. At 6:45 the show started with a reel to reel tape introduction over a slide and then I faded the tape out and faded the camera and microphone on the air. While Bob did his thing, I spun up the quad head on the video tape machine and got everything re-cued for the 6:57:45 break before joining the Today Show from NBC. I was so glad to see Barbara Waters smile that morning.
It was right after I asked Bob to leave his lavalier microphone draped over the back of his chair through the “squalk-Box” that the floor crew guy and the master control switcher arrived looking rather sheepish. All I could say was “Really!?!”
It still takes more than one person to do a live show these days on television but during other times, especially overnight, there is often no one actually present in the station. Many of the corporate owned television stations now operate several stations remotely from a central location.
I know, this sounds like some old curmudgeon talking about having to “walk to and from school in six feet of snow.” But I’m not complaining, they don’t have as many good “war stories” to tell as I do. Not only that but they never got to hear all the good rock and roll bands either. Oh MY!
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