Dave Richardson and I went to work at KXA at approximately the same time (on top of Rhodes Department Store). I got the job honestly, Dave showed up before sign-on one morning when the morning man didn’t show up—put the plant on the air and ran it till almost 9am before John Dubuque and the morning man came in the door at the same time. John fired the morning man, I know his name as well as I know mine but can’t remember it, and Dave went to work. KXA sure beat boiling vats of eggs and making egg salad sandwiches for the old Sanders Restaurant around town! Prior to going to work at KXA I was hustling cars and wiping engines on the old Black Ball ferry lines. I have a copy of Dave’s “Puget Sounds” (available for a contribution from NPB) and the incident he attributes to me never happened. There were several other things that would have been much more interesting, much more, but I suppose these things are best left in cobwebs and forgotten. I lost track of Gordie Tuell after he left KWSC. At KIRO he was known as the “last minute entry”. He never showed up for a show before the event on the air.
Norm Runions “Mr. EASY GOING”, never bothered by anything, and Loren Stone chewed me up one side and down the other till I almost begged him to can me. He finally said “If you ever do that again!” I walked out of his office wondering what happened. I’d gone to sleep Sunday morning at KIRO and missed all the station breaks from 6:30am to 1pm.I just remembered, it was Bill Brunner, the “morningman” at KXA when Dave Richardson showed up before going to work at his egg-boiling job and Bill had slept in due to more than he should have had the night before. Sign-on at KXA was then 6:30am. Bill would show up about 5:45, put a kettle of water on the hot plate in the shop, pour a pint of Rum in it and drink the whole thing while he was picking out records for his whole morning shift. By sign-on he was bouncing off the walls but you’d never tell it when he opened the mike. I watched this several times and couldn’t believe how anyone could be so drunk and never tell it on the air.Then I worked with Wheeler Smith briefly at KOL. I never knew a day or night when Wheeler was sober. One day I was looking for him, he was PD at the time, for some copy missing. The gal at the front desk told me he was in the janitor’s locker room down the hall. KOL’s studio was in the basement of the old Northern Life Building. I opened the door to the janitor’s locker room and there was Wheeler, just polishing off a bottle of Scotch. His locker was open and I’d never seen more bottles in my young life. He was unabashed. I told him the problem and he told me he didn’t like care of it and he did. The only thing I didn’t like about Wheeler was his leaving cigarette ashes all over the console. I ran the show from sign-on till Noon and Wheeler did the news every half-hour from 8am till Noon. When I got back on the board I’d need a vacuum cleaner. He never hit an ash tray, he just flipped ashes all over the board.
