For the first seven months of 1960 and while in my last semester at tech school, I was a combo-man at a commercial radio station, WBUX in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. [In 1955, four weeks before a spring vacation, I decided to study for the FCC second class radiotelephone license. Didn't get any schoolwork done, but at fifteen, I passed the test the first time. Four years later, I took the much easier first class test, and so was qualified for the commercial broadcast position.]
Combo means do everything. Back in those days, every radio and television station was required to have a licensed operator on duty at the transmitter. I had the requisite first class radiotelephone license, so each Sunday I was a one-man radio station: licensed operator, announcer, janitor, disk jockey, phone operator, news guy, keep-the-station-on-the-air troubleshooter, and who knows what else. Oh yeah, getting calls from the station manager bitching about the music I played and from the chief engineer wondering where the hum was coming from. It was fun. A real kick for a barely
20-year-old.
There was a nice, clean, modern studio in town. But where I worked -- a building which housed the transmitter and a really beat-up old studio -- was in a decidedly rural area. The actual antennas were in the middle of a cow pasture. Every Sunday morning I walked to the 'doghouses' at the base of each
tower
to take RF current readings, so it was dodge the cow crap or track it into the studio on your shoes.
