Ivan Schooley

     Radio.

     A habit I’ve never broken—turning on the radio the first thing in the morning.  Nowadays, I turn on NPR.  In the olden days, it was KOA.

     Morning radio in the olden days meant names like Ivan Schooley, Bob Schreiber, and Pete Smythe.  Weekends were different.  Sunday morning meant Bob Lily who had a children’s church service.  I can’t think of Bob Lily without smelling/tasting bacon and fried eggs, the usual Sunday morning menu.

     Early on, somebody (Bob Lily?) read the Denver Post Sunday funnies.  The idea was the kids could grab the Sunday paper and follow along.  Since we didn’t get the paper (it would have been a day late through the mail) we settled for listening to the funnies while we ate.

      There were other evangelists on Sunday morning, like the Armstrongs father and son, Herbert W. and Garner Ted. They spread their message as we ate breakfast and shared the one bathroom while getting ready to go to church.

      Before television, Saturdays meant Big John and Little Sparky.  I think their theme song was “Teddy Bear’s Picnic” (“If you go out in the woods today, you better not go alone. . . “)  Saturday morning cartoons on television ended a lot of radio programs.

      The television wasn’t on weekday mornings.  The radio was blaring when we got up, continued while we ate breakfast, and while we got ready to go to school or work.  Television requires you to stop, look, and listen.  You can go about your business and still be listening to the radio.

     Perhaps the most memorable name on radio was Pete Smythe.  He had a program called, I think, Pete Smythe’s General Store.  He spun a few disks, played piano, and sang a few songs including his theme song (“put the fruit to the floor and like I said before, we’re open for business at Pete Smythe’s General Store”). 

      Pete was not only the proprietor of the store.  He was the mayor of fictional East Tincup.  He had two regulars in the store, Mote Watkins and Elney Elrod.  Mote had a limited role, asking, “Hey, what time is it?” Pete would give us the correct time.  Elney had a more active role.

      Pete was popular in our area.  He made a couple of appearances, once as the host of a talent show and once as a feature at the county fair.  I don’t remember attending either appearance.  What I do remember is my disappointment when I found out, from the report of others, that he didn’t bring either Elney or Mote with him.  It was like finding out about Santa Claus when I realized Elney and Mote were Pete’s fictional creations. 

      Grandma T. got Dad and Uncle Walter to record a song, “Fifty Years from Now” on a small reel-to-reel tape.  She sent the tape to Pete.  Pete returned it with a letter, thanking her and with another polite comment or two about getting the recording on a disk.  His closing line was, “Keep tradin’ at the store.”

     Pete played the piano and sang some, but he also played records.  He played new releases.  If the record was too wild for Pete’s taste, it nearly always broke East Tincup’s rubber band regulator, which meant the record didn’t get to its end before Pete stopped it.

       Sometimes Pete played records that offended some of his audience.  One such record might have been Phil Harris’s “I know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.”   I liked the record, so I wrote a letter to Pete in support of playing the song.  I wasn’t as lucky as Grandma.  I didn’t get a reply.

      One new release I remember Pete playing was Pat Boone’s “When I Lost My Baby”.  Pete made a lot of fun of that song, especially the slurs and glissandos in the “I-almost-lost-my-mind” part.  That was the first time I ever heard Pat Boone.  It wouldn’t be the last time.  I wonder if Pete ever became a Pat Boone fan.

     Pete went to television in time.  I watched a show or two, but the actual visual couldn’t live up to the image created by the mind in response to listening to the radio.  Besides, Elney and Mote were missing.

     I don’t remember when Pete Smythe left KOA for good.  Another famous announcer’s departure was more definitive.

      I remember Ivan Schooley as a newscaster.  He must have been a disk-spinner too, as a stack of records led to his demise. 

      As part of his newscast, Schooley always listed the previous day’s traffic deaths from the state’s roadways.  A couple of times, it was to our grief that we knew personally those named in his report.  He always concluded the traffic story with the number of deaths during the year, compared to the number of deaths a year ago, and ended with the admonition, “Drive carefully.” 

     For some reason, we didn’t actually hear Ivan’s mistake, but several of the kids at school did.  They were buzzing about what the radio announcer said that morning.  Apparently, he didn’t realize the mike was live—not the last one to get caught by an open mike.  He suffered an accident with a stack of records.  He vented his frustration with a few expletives undeleted, not realizing his comments were being broadcast by 50,000 watts.

     We never heard his voice after that morning.  The FCC was much stricter in those days.  Today, the only word uttered on air that would get you canned would be the “N” word.  Some broadcasters still “bleep” out certain words, but the blanks are easily filled.  Ivan Schooley wasn’t so lucky.  His successful career with KOA was over.

       Under the old FCC rules, today’s rap song would be one continuous bleep.  Come to think of it, that would probably be an improvement.  (I’ll probably be as wrong about the future of rap as Pete Smythe was about Pat Boone.)

     Radio has survived the challenge of television.  Will it survive the onslaught of personal devices like MP3’s and smart phones?

       Long live Radio!