[BC] the old board op mentality

[jpotter at jpotter.com]

Oh, yeah... cleaning the 'wire' machines.  Rippin' and readin'.  Worse than the paper jam was the need to install a new black ribbon. It took weeks to get that ink off your hands, and there was never soap or paper (either kind) in the indoor outhouses they had back then, particularly the co-located studio-transmitter ops.  To this very day I carry a coffee can filled with toilet paper and liquid hand soap in the event I need to 'use the facilities' and there isn't soap or paper.

I worked for a right-wing Christian station in the south of Philly back in the late 1960s. Sign-on was important, and we played the National Anthem.  One day, the cart was found spilling tape, so I sang it live on the air.  Got a lot of respect for that stunt.  I was a True American, by golly!

Regards/Jim Potter
 
>Don't forget if you were the sign-on jock clearing the AP (or UPI) wire. This was especially fun in the winter if >you were a daytimer and had signed off at 4:30 the previous afternoon. Seemed almost every day the paper >would bunch up and jam the teletype machine so the last 12 hours of copy were all printed on one line.
>