Gary Reeder
back a hundred years ago when I was still in radio in
Friday, June 01, 2018, 10:45

Tennessee, the transmitter room was right next to the control room with a big almost full wall glass window between us and the transmitter. Back then the D.J. on the air had to take meter readings every 30 minutes to make sure the transmitter was broadcasting on a specific frequency and not spreading out onto another station's frequency. It was not at all uncommon to walk thru the door into the transmitter room and see a big snake coiled up there. The transmitter emitted a hum that we couldn't hear but it was like the song of the siren to mice and such and that brought in the snakes. The back door of the station opened up into a big field so all kinds of critters were known to come in as we kept the back door open all the time. The transmitter put out 1000 watts on AM and 50,000 watts on FM so it got quite hot in that room, thus the open door to let a breeze in.

We had one D.J. that was deathly afraid of snakes. I had the morning show and got off at 10AM. The snake hater came on at 10 and went til 2 PM. I had a speaker in my office the stayed on all the time. Every once in a while I would hear the 21 minute version of Inna Gadda Da Vida by Iron Butterfly or one of the 15 minute versions of a Cream song. Those were not songs we normally played at midday so I would know something was up. I would walk into the control room and the guy on the air would be out in the front office looking thru the glass into the control room and I knew there was a snake somewhere in either the control room or the transmitter room. He wouldn't come back in until he saw me take the snake out and pitch it in the field. Some folks just don't like snakes at all.