Life in a small, rural Southern town has a charm all its own.
You cannot seriously compare it to any other place in the entire world.
When I was just a child, we had a couple of AM radio stations that broadcast country, bluegrass and local news and happenings with all the gravitas of national news. It had to be important because it occurred in Limestone County.
There was a distinct local flavor that came from these programs and the advertisers who helped support the local culture and society events that kept a poor community one cohesive unit.
"Sick call" was a broadcast dedicated completely to the announcements of the death and funerals and the roll call list of patients in the Athens-Limestone Hospital decades before HIPAA Privacy Acts prevented the indiscriminate revelation of what got herniated and who had a baby and the funeral details for the service that was being held at Beulah Baptist on Saturday.
The program is still being broadcast today, thought the station upon which it was aired has changed.
There are radio listeners who won't make a move without starting their day with the "Sick Call" program nor will they turn their radio off without listening to the "Swap-n-Shop" program, which now bears the title "WKAC Classifieds".
For those uninitiated in Limestone Lure and Lore... the "Swap-n-Shop" program of bygone days was a way for the folks all over the county on party lines and private phones to buy, sell and trade items with other Limestone Countians who likewise had their ear glued to the radio each morning.
You can call in and advertise goats you want to sell, chicken eggs that are from your flock of free range birds, old clothes that you no longer need and the yard sale you are holding the last Friday of the month.
The funny thing is, after you listen to the programs for a while, you can slip into a laconic state of slack-jawed country fried complacence that comes upon you as you hear the voices and their varying accents that are the unmistakable mark of being raised in certain sections of the county where dialect is a matter of a few miles along a country road.
While not perfect, I can mimic several of these dialects and have employed them from time to time.
Sometimes, they are used in my yard sales to boost revenues. Sometimes, I have used them to share the special flavor that is Limestone County to someone who wasn't born here, but got here as fast as they could.
I must admit though, when people hear their own voice on the radio since it IS a live call-in program, they suddenly sound stupid. I know, because I've had it happen myself. The odd way your voice sounds to your own ears through the radio prompts the host to remind the callers to 'cut off your radio until after your call'.
I.Q. points dribble right out of your ears as you hear the hick talking and then realize that hick is YOU. Quasi-horrified to hear just how 'country' you sound, you stumble and stutter over the announcement of whatever you need to advertise on this one free source of shared information left in a day of corporate greed.
Thanks to the sponsors of the program, namely drug stores, funeral homes and grocery stores, we are also reminded of the varieties of life. We are born, we eat, we drink, we sicken and we die. It's the circle of life played out to a mournful strain of Wurlitzer organ music while Kay Hudson tells us who has passed on.
Cory Hudson tells us about the swapping and shopping that goes on and tactfully reminds listeners that you can't advertise a permanent business for free on their show.
Then, the phone calls begin and the truth of who we are behind our mask of supposed sophistication falls away like autumn leaves. We ARE country folk and we want to make do the best we can and resent the changes that are rushing us ever closer to the brink of liberal, hippie-style living where no one cares about their neighbor and wouldn't feed their cows for them on a bet.
I admit I listen to the programs from time to time. Not so much because I am a 'faithful listener' but usually when I want to get rid of something I no longer need. During those times, I find myself thankful that my parents chose to live in a pedestrian world filled with farmers and whittlers, tobacco spitting, overall wearing, plain cotton house dressed and wrinkled, calloused handed men and women who make a pretty rich palatte of colors in my hometown.
You just can't get radio programming like this in the big city. They are more interested in 'causes' than in people. But here, we still have a low watt local station that believes local radio should be about local people.
Tune in.
1080 AM call sign WKAC.
It's worth the listen and the laugh.
Who knows how much longer it will be around before some damnYankee comes and takes it over with talk radio and liberal causes?
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