Storm Watch KADA Like the Obamas I grew up poor, but not in Hawaii or Chicago like them, but in Oklahoma. We didn’t know we were poor and the only time I ever thought about it was during the spring…tornado season. On those nights, with sirens whaling, I knew all the rich people were either in their storm cellars (or bomb shelters) or were on the way. Meanwhile, my family, along with many others, headed for the county court house basement, where we would stay until the all clear was sounded, which was usually several hours later. That was probably one of the reasons we waited so long to flee, we knew once we did, we’d be there for a while. By the time retreat was sounded and the car loaded, including Grandmother, the storm was often near and getting worse. Getting to the court house involved my dad driving through sheets of rain, while peals of thunder and lightening flashed simultaneously all around. It was quite scary. That’s why when I got into radio I didn’t realize that one of my duties would be covering storms. I had grown up running away from storms and yet there I was at the station reporting to our listeners in Ada the latest on the storm conditions. A radio station’s license to broadcast is based on serve to the community. Every radio station takes that duty seriously, because if they don’t they could lose their license to broadcast. Even a small town owner can become rich. Within a year of me being hired there was a complete turn over of on air staff. I went from weekends to the afternoon drive time. Drive time in Ada wasn’t that big a deal, but the afternoon is when the storms were more likely to build up and roll in. And sometimes roll over. That’s why I was manning the microphone on those afternoons that morphed into evenings when the storms moved in. I was going to college and it was a part time job, but I, too, took it seriously. Our neighbors were counting on us. So, we’d stay on the air until we got knocked off by lightening. The antenna was in the backyard of the radio station which looked like a house, except for the radio antenna out back. This one storm was near and it had been tearing up the place for quite sometime, but there had not been any reports of tornados from it. The lightening got so bad that we felt the antenna could be struck at anytime so I started reading the reports standing up and not touching anything. The office staff would had me bits of paper and I’d read the latest. I was reading one of the dispatches about the storm that was now outside my window and I realized my family jewels felt like BBs. I was so scared. I had never been that scared in Vietnam. Finally, lightening struck the antenna. That put a huge hole in the transmitter tube. We were off the air for a couple of days. We’d go to a special music reel when we’d go to ‘Storm Watch’ s so, there would be time to put together storm news and we wouldn’t have to DJ a show. I tried going to The Doors album ‘Riders on the Storm’, but the station manager asked me to stop playg because it was scaring his kids. I was scared, why shouldn’t they be? In Ada my parents lived next to banker and his wife. They had a storm shelter. My parents never had to run very far for shelter ever again.
Posted on: Sun, 30 Jun 2013 21:12:13 +0000
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