Naps And The Loop

The following is a true story that is mostly about a man I used to work for. I posted it a long time ago, but I've since decided to give him some anonymity by changing his name. I've also removed it from any comments. After reading this story, you'll probably think I should have left his real name here. You're probably right.

It was the summer of 1995, and I was working at 93 KRO fm, a miserable sounding radio station in Daytona Beach. Actually, we weren't in Daytona at all. We were a half hour south of Daytona, in a doublewide trailer that sat off a crisscross of dirt roads in, yet nowhere near, the town of Edgewater. I was the station's overnight dj, as well as the closest thing to a technical expert they had. It was a job I'd gladly quit a few weeks later.

The sky was crystal clear on the afternoon of August 2nd as I sat in my apartment pondering what I should do. Hurricane Erin was expected to make landfall within 12 hours somewhere in central Florida, and I was trying to figure out what I needed to try to save, and what could be lost to the inevitable flood.

It wasn't a fun decision to make - but it was even less fun when the phone rang with a call I'd been dreading.

"...yeah?"

"Hey Rob, it's Les."

Les Williams is a name that will forever send a shiver up my spine. Les was my boss at the time. He was also an idiot.

[tangent: Les loved the sound of his own voice so much that he was once struck by lightening while talking on the radio, yet he kept on talking. Was the trailer on fire? Had our transmitter been blown up? These questions would be answered AFTER Les decided to shut up... till then, he kept on talking even though he could no longer hear himself.]

"What's up Les?" I knew damn well what he wanted.

"The storm is supposed to make landfall tonight."

"...it's a hurricane Les."

"Right..."

"So what's your plan for the station?" I already knew: Les had a plan, and the plan's name was Rob. Oh fuck.

"Well, I was thinking, we have that reel to reel sitting in the air studio. I want you to go to the station and record an hour of music and loop it."

This is what a reel-to-reel tape deck looks like. Don't let the pic fool you - this thing is huge.

This idea managed to out-stupid his not shutting up after being struck by lightening episode.

• First of all, the radio station was in a trailer a half hour south of Daytona Beach, which put it even closer to the eye of the hurricane than we already were. The trailer was hoisted off the ground by little more than cinder blocks. Hurricanes love that shit. [Les: "Yeah, that's why I'm not putting you on the air tonight." Gee thanks]

• Second, it's illegal to NOT broadcast the Emergency Broadcast System alerts during an emergency. You either broadcast it live or turn your station off - both options are impossible when you've abandoned the building, leaving a giant tape deck to play the same recording over and over. [Les: "Oh yeah. You should really drop in a few of those alerts too. Just drop 'em in 'em between songs." No Les, we should shut this radio station off as the law demands since those emergency alerts would be out-dated by the time they'd air. This idiot was worried about playing Stone Temple Pilots during a hurricane?!?]

• Third, it's a giant tape deck. It can, technically speaking, play a loop - but it was never designed to do this. So, if someone was listening, they'd hear what was recorded, then they'd hear an hour long tape rewind itself for five minutes. "WWrrRRw RrrWRrrw wrrrRRRrrrw RWrwrwrrRr wwwWRrrww rwrrWWrrr!!!" [Les: "Well ya do what you've gotta do, y'know?" Brilliant]

Lucky for me, I had listeners who cared. I'd received a better call the night before while I was on the air - a call that would prove to save my lame ass.

"93 KRO fm, hello?"

"Rob...?"

"That's me - what can I do for you."

"OK don't freak out or anything but I know where you live."

OH FUCK. ...stalker? "...aaaand I shouldn't freak out because...?"

"No no no no no... I'm not some kind of psychopath. You talked about your crappy apartment the other day, and I'm pretty sure I drive by there all the time on my way to work. If you live where I think you do - dude - you're screwed. If that place doesn't get knocked down, it'll definitely be flooded."

Yep. It's the sort of conversation that really cheers a guy up.

"Do you have somewhere to go?" he continued. "You need a safe place to ride this thing out because your place is bad news."

Not-A-Psycho-Stalker ['Naps' since I've forgotten his name] offered to drop by & help me lift important things as high as we could - onto tables, shelves and such ("...because you really are screwed..."   "Will you stop saying that?!?") - and then we'd all sit through the storm at his place since he lived on an upper floor of a tall concrete apartment building.

Before heading to his place, however, we had to make the half hour trek to Edgewater so I could pre-record the loop. This took hours since the cheapass radio station I worked for didn't even HAVE an hour of tape. This meant I had to splice shorter lengths of tape together while the hurricane neared landfall.

Shortly after midnight, I played my last song on the radio before starting the tape loop. As we left the radio station, there wasn't much to say. There was not a single star to be seen in the sky because the storm had begun to roll in. We listened to the loop on the radio as we drove away.

A few of the pre-recorded songs played... and then a pre-recorded (and by now out-dated) emergency alert began...

"This is an activation of the emergency alerrrrrrrrrrmmpt... rrrrrrrrmmmmrrr rela ycnegremeeeeeeeeee hjerkwrtjhjghkmfglmlkvh wrrrr RRRrrrRRRRrr WWWwwWWwwrrrrR!!!!!!!!

FWAP!!!!

Bweep!!! Bweep!!! Bweep!!!! Bweep!!! Bweep!!!!"

The tape had somehow snagged, and the machine kicked itself into reverse when it got confused. This was followed up by some kind of oh-shit tone that is tape-deck-speak for "Oh fuck, I'm broken!"

Naps & I looked at each other and laughed. What else could we do? The hurricane was expected to make landfall soon & we still had 20 minutess of driving ahead of us. There was no way we were turning back. "Fuggit!" As we made our way from Edgewater back to Daytona Beach, it started to rain... softly at first, then SMACK SMACK SMACK!!!! Then softly again, and then SMACK SMACK SMACK!!!!

By the time we reached his apartment, the storm had knocked my station off the air. The silence of nothing happening on the station was replaced by static, which, to be honest, was for the best.

Naps' apartment felt like heaven. It felt safe. Yes, definitely THE place to ride this hurricane out. He apologized as he served me wine from a box, but it was somehow EXACTLY what the situation called for. During the night, the eye of the storm made landfall one county south of where we were. Catastrophe was only a few miles away, but we'd been spared.

I returned to my apartment later that morning to find it mostly intact.

This is where my story should end... but it doesn't. This final part of the story is for anyone who has ever worked on the air and had the pleasure of sitting through an aircheck session (where your boss listens to a tape of your show to critique you). For reasons I'll never understand, Les felt the need to aircheck me less than twelve hours after Hurricane Erin made landfall.

I know what you're thinking, but it gets worse: the radio station had no electricity and probably needed to be inspected to make sure it was safe (the station was in a doublewide trailer after all). So, clearly we weren't going to listen to my aircheck there. The electric had been knocked out at my apartment as well... so... where did Les decide to aircheck me? In his pickup truck, in the parking lot in front of my apartment.

My apartment sat less than a hundred feet from a canal that led to the Halifax River. At the end of the parking lot in front of my front door there was a boat loading dock.

As Les listened to my aircheck tape in his pickup truck's stereo so that he could offer up a brilliant critique, the storm surge continued to roll in off the Atlantic. The water was rising in the canal. It was slowly rising up the boat loading dock. When water began to spill into the parking lot, mere steps away from my first floor apartment not to mention the tires of the pickup truck we were sitting in, Les turned off the tape and said "Well, I guess this isn't the best time for this."

Oh.
My.
God.

A few weeks later, I quit that job. I should have resigned while sitting in Les's truck, but I needed to find a new job first. And that's what I promptly did.

::::: | Friday, Sep 03 2004 at 12:26 PM
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