Local Radio and I.Q. Point Falloffs

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?

Holy Flaming Cats!

Let's just get down to brass tacks here...

I hate makeup simply because it makes my face itch.

While I wear it on Sundays and special occasions, I do so more because it's considered a female thing to do than out of some sense of cosmetic devotion.

I like my face with or without the stuff.

However, over the last couple of years, I have been using a 'liquid age defying' potion that allegedly reduces the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles.

Whatever.

I mostly use it so my face doesn't take on the consistency of the dirt in the Sonora desert. I haven't exactly seen age receding from my face by decades like the advertisement claims, but at least my skin is more moist than the leathery penny loafers I wear.

But no story would be complete without tragedy and triumph.


With all the construction and pounding that has been going on in our house, I had put all of the contents of the medicine chest into a small hard side luggage piece and set it alternately on the side of the sink and the lid of the toilet, depending strictly upon what was being used at the moment.

The aforementioned "youth in a bottle" cost about $20 bucks. Anyone who knows me for longer than 5 minutes knows that I don't toss out that kind of coin on makeup or female preparations of ANY kind, much less 'age defying formulas'.

But I did.

Now, my sorrow runneth over due to a crappy shelf in my medicine chest. I was carefully replacing my items since Rick said it was now declared safe to do so. The shelf upon which I put the GLASS bottle of rejuvenation and restoration collapsed. Yep. Right out of the cabinet.

And the stupid bottle not only broke, it shattered.

A million pieces doesn't begin the countdown of giblets and shards that littered the sink, the counter top, the side of the toilet, the wall and the floor. I nearly cried.

Not just because I watched the $20 winging out the window, but because I was barefooted.

I never wear shoes if I can help it, and last night was no exception. But being caught in the delicate predicament of having glass everywhere and goo coating various locations like sap droplets from some exploded tree, I had to call for help.

Rick came on the double and brought my sandals and I cleaned up the remnants of my one vanity beauty treatment and attempted to hold back the stream of expletives that hovered near my lips.

Careful examination said that the bathroom finally was good to go, so I tossed the last dribbly, gooey, glass encrusted tissues into the trash.

That was last night.

This morning... well, let's just say it was a different story entirely.

I had somehow "conveniently" missed a shard of surgically sharpened glass in the night but by dawn's early light I discovered that pesky shard ... with my foot.

Holy flaming cats... that age serum stings like pure alcohol on an open wound with fire attached!!! I think the nerve ending that got fried was connected from my foot directly to my eyeballs and on to my brain.

The tears began to flow. I sat down on the toilet lid and began to pick at the glass Clovis point puncturing my delicate and tender foot. I hate the sight of my own blood and this was no exception. Prying the offending projectile from the pad of my foot, I got a bit woozy just thinking about the continuing wave of pain and red stuff that roared through the seeping hole.

The more I blotted at the blood, the more 'age defying serum' got rubbed directly into the hole. I thought at one point that I was going to have to die to feel better, which would have been kind of embarrassing since I was standing there in my drawers.

It's truly sad to think of that lovely money going right into the trash since nothing was saved of the serum. It's even sadder to think of the vanity induced semi-self- inflicted wound that made my foot feel like a participant in some tribal ritual of purity and fire. The worst part was that I couldn't keep the naughty words from springing forth like dandelions on a summer lawn.

But the good news is, my foot has never looked younger. It appears that the serum has rolled the clock back for the sole of my foot.

I may be wrinkled, lined and flabby everywhere else, but my foot is ageless, timeless and beautiful - at least it is until the serum wears off or I wash my foot...whichever comes first.

I wonder how long I can stand on one foot while I bathe...