Chapter 16.
As we drove past the parking lot gate arm David said he would handle things at our office, I parked near the door but left the motor running while he grabbed the cases and letters and walked quickly inside. He came back empty handed five minutes later with a worried look on his face. He told me it was Lieutenant Evans at the desk. He said he slid the Tylenol bottle to the end of the counter and set down the cases and the letters, turned, and walked out, never gave him a chance to say anything.
"He had nothing to say?" I asked.
"Well yes, but he was on the phone so I smiled and set down the items and walked out before he could hang-up." David said with a snicker in his voice.
We left the employee lot and stopped at a 7-11 on the way down Airway Boulevard to I-10 and got more bottled waters and some beef jerky and that officially started our next big adventure. After he got back in the car he reached in his pocket and pulled out the little box that linked our Whispernet implants! He said if they called he'd tell them we lost it somewhere in Mexico, besides it wouldn't work with anyone else's implants.
On the road to I-10 David said our security clearances were probably being revoked right this second, then we both laughed. We took sips of water and turned up the radio a little.
Eastward Ho!
With the cruise control set for 80mph on I-10 and a goal of making it to Fredericksburg we'd stop there for several hours of sleep. That town was seven hours, two pit stops, and 500 miles away. Our first stop would be roughly half-way across the huge state of Texas. And that would put us at the very eastern edge of the Chihuahua Desert too. East of Fredericksburg we enter brush country, the southern end of the Great Plains. It gets greener all the way to Louisiana, Cajun Country.
David spent about half an hour closely examining the Whispernet box to see if we might be able to make it work at home with a variable DC power supply. As far as we knew it was a stand-alone device that never used satellite comms, and he said it ran on +5V DC, there were no external buttons or adjustments, just apply power and stay within range. It had no other connections or buttons or anything, except an antenna connector and the power cord.
I asked him how he removed it and he said inside the airport he stopped in a bathroom and ripped it out of the case and stuffed it in his back pocket, accidentally.
A bit east of Cattleman's Steakhouse near I-10 I remembered something, "Oh oh, what was the frequency for that religious radio station" I asked.
"They're off the air, two years now."
"I know, I know, I want to see what else is on that channel." I explained.
"Uh... I think it was 670am, I think."
I turned the radio to AM and turned the knob to 670 and heard a faint trace of a human voice way off in the distance, but that was all. David said it sounded like Spanish. We could barely make out parts of words here and there. I also tuned to the adjacent channels (660 and 680) and they were pretty quiet too, but the sun was still up. We heard KSL (1160) from Utah and KFI (640) from Los Angeles, of course the stations in El Paso were still booming in and a few from Juarez too (600, 690, 1150, and 1520 in Juarez).
That night we arrived at a hotel on the interstate (11:05pm) and got a room. We slept until 9am and stopped for burgers at BK in Boerne, Texas just outside of San Antonio, then got back on the road while slurping fake BK shakes. Our next stop would be Houston, possibly to spend the night. We always chuckled about Houston because it was the location our modified cell phone GPSs sent to the cell towers that we were constantly driving around the 610-Loop 24/7.
We stopped at a nice looking hotel with a restaurant on the Loop early to get one night of proper sleep. After we got our room David was on the phone talking to the engineer and the broker. He told them we'd arrive in Deweyville, Texas tomorrow at noon and wanted to tour the radio station and see documents relating to former licensure, maintenance, and utilities. They both agreed to meet us at the Stateline Diner which was a few miles down the street from the station.
This part of Texas looked so totally different from El Paso it was hard to believe it was the same state.
We left early the next day for Beaumont, Texas and then Deweyville. The three hundred foot wide Sabine River marked the border between Texas and Louisiana, it was muddy and fast like a junior version of the Mississippi, we immediately noticed the slower pace of life and the accents were different the closer we got to Louisiana. The number of churches we saw also increased. In south Houston it was BBQ shops at every traffic light but here it was small churches. Many looked like homes converted into houses of worship.
The restaurant we were going to was two hours east of Houston, where I-10 crossed into Louisiana then north ten miles was the area we were going. That entire area was having hard economic times, part of the reason why the radio station shut down two years ago. And the trees were totally different compared to 50 miles west of Houston. We also noticed in this area the way to pronounce Houston changed, in the city the H in Houston was silent, they called it You-stin.
We found the Stateline Diner on Highway-12 in Deweyville and met the two men to tour 670khz, KYAZ-AM, a former power house Christian radio station on the AM band with a huge coverage area. He showed us a map created in an airplane of the signal pattern prior to their shut down two years ago that put most of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi in the daytime footprint with enough signal to make it sound like a local station on car radios and portables inside homes. The station had been used as a direction finding beacon for a (defunct) nearby Army Airbase for bombers patrolling the Gulf of Mexico for German subs during the 1940s. That's why it was licensed with such a powerful signal, so it covered the entire Gulf of Mexico and most of the Caribbean day and night. An article I read about the station said they had listeners in Columbia and all the way up to Iceland and over to Barrow, Alaska too.
The tower site was on Highway-12 between Deweyville, Texas and Starks, Louisiana, about two miles east of the river on a patch of high ground. This place was so heavily wooded all there was to see on Highway-12 was trees, water, and super tall utility poles. The entrance to the property was just a weed covered gravel driveway that disappeared into the dense trees, you couldn't even see the tower from the road, might see the tower lights at night. It looked like nobody had been here in months.
We turned onto the soft gravel driveway and stopped near a tall chain link gate with barbed wire along the top, he said it sort of dispelled the rumor that Texas was isolated from the national power grid because here was but one example of how that wasn't true. He pointed to the super tall wood power poles with three sets of thick wires that ran along the highway. I heard them hiss and crackle from the humidity and the high voltage.
He unlocked the gate and we walked onto a large field about one hundred yards on each side. Outside the fence was nothing but odd looking trees, tall weeds, and standing water. Inside the fence was grass and weeds. The standing water outside the property was about twelve feet below the ground inside the fence. The property looked man-made because it was perfectly square and level.
The five hundred foot steel tower proudly stood in the center, brightly painted red and white with guy wires that ran down to fenced-in anchors. At the bottom of the tower sat a large steel box on stilts. The transmitter building sat near the gate and looked like a steel shipping container (painted white) they set on a steel platform with welded wide steel stairs outside the windowless door. The box by the tower and the transmitter building sat almost six feet above the ground. The entire site looked very hurricane proof, I saw nothing but steel.
He said the steel box beside the tower contained the antenna matching unit. There was a thick black pipe that ran (8ft above the ground on poles) from the transmitter building to the matching unit shed. The realtor dude unlocked the wide steel door and swung it all the way open until it latched fully back.
We climbed the steps and went inside the building and saw four wide metal cabinets, a small work bench, and simple light bulbs screwed into ceramic fixtures on the ceiling. Each cabinet was connected to a vent tube that ran to a heat exchanger mounted on the wall.
He turned on a flashlight to show us the equipment. David took dozens of photos with his cell. The first thing David wanted to ID was the transmitter brand and serial number, then he photo'd all the gear in the racks, front and back. We never saw any signs of bugs or critters inside the building. The amplifier sections of the transmitter said Continental Electronics, 100kw, 480v 3ph, serial number 100109. The exciter wasn't original, it sat in a rack with some other electronics for limiting volume and for the EAS tones and the modulation monitor.
One of the engineer guys said these three big cabinets were amplifiers, the part that made the actual signal was a small box called an exciter, then he pointed it out. It was marked Harris. He said the exciter was new in the 1980s. There was another box that controlled the entire machine so it could operate in stages and had switching to route the signal to the tower from different sections of amplifier because some AM stations reduced power at night. He said it would be like varying the speed of an airplane by how many jet engines they ran.
Looking inside the cabinets we saw huge glass vacuum tubes in the final two amp sections. They sat inside perforated aluminum boxes with heavy black cables running to a cap on the top. In the bottom were several large transformers and bundles of big capacitors. This was the part of the transmitter that could easily kill a careless repair technician.
"How hard would it be to make this analog stereo?" David asked the engineer, who was an older guy, overweight, nerdy looking, maybe 45 years old.
"Well the studio feed they used was a special telephone line, you'd have to address that but using the internet now the feed from the studio wouldn't be a problem. You'd have to swap out the exciter but the transmitter and antenna typically don't need adjustment for that conversion, I'd say about nine or ten grand to make it C-Quam, Motorola still sells them, they're gaining in popularity. I hear GM and Toyota will re-start including C-Quam in all their 2023 model cars with the upgraded entertainment package and as standard equipment by 2025. But the public really needs to be encouraged to ask for it. Digital signals on AM were never very popular with the general public like they were on FM, which wasn't very much because FM sounded fine to begin with."
As we looked at every square inch inside the transmitter building we saw no signs of water leakage or damage of any kind, the broker said the old owner was `religious' about maintenance, which was part of why they turned it off and put it up for sale. They switched to internet distribution instead." We chucked at his pun. David searched closely and said he never saw even a single spider web or ant on the floor.
I asked the engineer, "So there's digital on AM and FM, right?"
"Yes, basically what they do is use part of the channels above and below to send digital data which the radio decodes into multiple audio channels. If you transmit HD on 670am the digital signals are actually on 660 and 680am. HD stands for Hybrid Digital, and on AM it really never worked well although stations still run it, but sales of AM gear stopped years ago, I think HD came out in 2003."
David added, "My truck has it but every time I go near a bridge or a tall building or high voltage power line the radio jumps back and forth between analog and digital but they're not sync'd so it's like jumping forward or back thirty seconds in a song. The stupid radio has no setting to shut off HD. I quit listening to HD AM stations, erased them from my car radio, it was super annoying. Every time I drove under a bridge during a commercial you might hear it four times because it kept repeating as the radio jumped between the signals. 690-am in El Paso runs it and I had to stop listening because the constant switching back to analog was super annoying."
The engineer told us that since the HD AM signals occupied three channels if you lived in Austin but wanted to listen to an AM station in Galveston it might be jammed by a digital signal from Dallas, it's horribly wasteful of spectrum and offered very little advantage."
He took in a deep breath then explained, "When it first became legal the company travelled the USA promoting digital radio because it gave the radio station the ability to flash advertising on every radio touch screen but once stations started doing it the public was outraged and most stopped doing it except a few in New York City. That's why all the HD receivers had big displays so they could flash ads at you, they could even re-program your station presets. It also gave them two potential medium fidelity sound channels for secondary radio programs, but regular FM had that all along, those were the old Muzak signals that played music-only for stores and shopping malls."
The engineer said he'd heard all the complaints and was glad to see many stations bought those HD systems then eventually shut them off and went back to analog stereo AM. Motorola's C-Quam system won the AM stereo war even though it was far from perfect.
Then he showed me their electric bill from two years ago for one month of service, May 2019: $6,451.33 to run the AC, the tower lights, and the transmitter at full power. We looked at each other, then I asked about the feasibility of adding photovoltaic solar power here and he said its cloudy for part of almost every day here so that needs to be taken into account, but yes if someone had the cash they could run this place during the day on solar, then he suggested wind power might work better than solar only 45 miles from the Gulf but there were obvious engineering problems to overcome being so close to an AM broadcast tower.
The broker told us, "If I wanted to buy this station I'd form a non-profit corporation tomorrow. Then I'd apply for the license and an upgrade to maintain its defacto clear channel status. You see just by coincidence all the radio stations on this channel went out of business here and in Canada. With a good FCC lawyer you could snag the rights to this channel nationwide and with one hundred kilowatts you'd be heard from Iceland to the Bering Sea, down to Baja and over to Trinidad, but not in Mexico City because there's a thousand watt station down there on this channel but they go off the air at night."
David glanced at me again, I knew exactly what he was thinking.
He asked why the station was built on this very rural spot, we saw lots of farm land for sale east of Houston.
The engineer guy answered that one. "In the USA there are several AM stations with huge signals that blanket the lower 48 states, most of them, like WSM in Nashville are only five thousand watts, the reason they perform so well is the ground under the tower. This ground is wet and with high iron content it conducts very well. What that does is with the buried copper wires that run out from the base of the tower it squeezes the radio signal to keep it focused toward the horizon instead of up into space. This gives them much better coverage with less power, that's the main reason why this station was built here." Then he added that this island in the swamp was built by the Corp of Engineers for the war effort, it`s like two football fields, 300 feet by 300 feet.
We stepped back outside and noticed the cattails growing beyond the fence around the property, it really was a Louisiana bayou. We stared up at the tower again while he the locked the heavy steel door.
We stopped when he said he wanted to show us the platforms beside the transmitter building. He said they used to have a propane fueled generator out here for times they had big storms come in off the Gulf and lost power, they could run the transmitter on the generator for a week with a tank of propane. The mounts for the propane tank and the generator were sitting there ready to be used again.
We walked around the side and saw four tall concrete pillars with mounting bolts on top next to the windowless steel building, and near them sat the heat pump to cool the huge transmitter, also elevated above the ground. Even the bolts were greased to prevent rust.
After he took photos they exchanged business cards and David (reluctantly) gave them his cell number and told them we were also looking into residential properties. The broker told David he saw a small farm for sale down the street (on Highway-12) it had ten acres, a barn, and a 1,800 square foot house on a crawl space. He pointed toward the river and said it was about two miles west of the state line on the right side, look for the realtor sign.
Then the engineer said the tower was 80 years old and stood through several major hurricanes without any damage, it was built to last another eighty years with proper maintenance, then he said it needed painting soon and one of the tower lights was out. We shook hands and slowly drove back across the bridge and into Texas.
David called our lawyer in El Paso for a referral to a Washington, DC lawyer that specialized in complex FCC applications.
Next, we stopped at the farm with the for-sale sign and walked around the property. It looked like nobody had been there for months, or maybe the weeds grew fast here, it was hard to tell. We called the realtor on the sign and he said he'd be right out. While we waited we explored the property but not back into the trees. The barn was a large pole building with a dirt floor and signs of lots of oil having leaked from vehicles. David said it looked like they worked on vehicles in here.
This realtor, also an overweight man with white hair said his grandson was the former owner, the lost it in bankruptcy last year, he handed us the printout of the previous inspection (16 mos. ago). It was an 1,800 sq ft one story home on a crawl space with a four inch well, 1000 gallon septic, 200 amp electrical service, central AC, and the barn had 220v power and lights, he said it was priced to sell ($105k) and had no termite damage because it sat too high for termites and the roof was one year old. He handed David an inspection printout and pointed out the house was built in 1940. It had been through dozens of storms and flooding but was probably too high to flood inside or in the crawl space.
We toured inside, it smelled musty but was empty, clean, and partly carpeted. We offered to put money down to have an independent inspection done this week, he said he could have it done in a day or two, but the last one only listed the septic field in need of replacement due to age. He said that was two thousand bucks for a totally new system, and half a day of backhoe work. He asked where we were from and David said El Paso but we were originally from the south Houston area.
Then the realtor mentioned the radio station across the state line, some people didn't like living within four miles of a high power radio station, if we intended on setting up a recording studio it might be hard to keep their signal out of the wires, we never mentioned we just toured the radio station.
Then he asked how we knew each other, where was the rest of the family. I told him we've been married for eight years. He said he was fine with that, but he wanted us to be aware the small towns around here were very religious and had more churches than gas stations and grocery stores combined. Then he paused briefly and said this was a very Baptist-type area. He said the churches here filled Sunday mornings from the front to the back and people ran the aisles waving their hands in the air.
David looked almost upset, and trying to be totally honest the realtor said that probably the worst that would happen was some of the locals would shun us, as in look away and not speak to us, but most locals wouldn't care. Then he said the times have changed and as long as we didn't fly a rainbow flag in the front yard most people in town wouldn't care what we did. Then he added, "The only reason I brought it up was I believe in full disclosure, I'm Jewish and the locals sometimes react to me like my grandfather killed Jesus!"
We handed him three hundred dollars and got a receipt, he pulled out his cell and immediately ordered a new inspection. David gave him his phone number before we left for Houston, a two hour drive to the west.
The house had three bedrooms, two baths, a large central room that was living-dining-kitchen. The kitchen looked sad and needed lots of work (cabinets, countertops, and the appliances were gone). There was a utility room but those appliances were gone too, the water softener and water heater were there. There was a brick fireplace in the living room, and carpet in part of the living room and the bedrooms. The master bedroom was large with plenty of closet space and the master bath was ugly but large, with a large garden tub but no glass enclosure, just a long curtain rod. David took dozens of photos. We even opened the crawl space hatch in the utility room and looked below the floors before we left.
We spent that night in Houston because it was after check-out time. We found a barbecue place near the hotel, which was hard to pass up, especially because we were both born and raised in this area. We both grew up with barbecue sauce and pork in our veins. At the pool we split the pork ribs and half a chicken, then used the pool shower to clean up before we jumped in the deep end.
The next day it was call after call after call, we also talked to a DC lawyer about licensure, he told us how to get started and we agreed to send him a Paypal deposit of eight thousand bucks and he'd examine the FCC record and see if the Commission would re-issue it and allow it to become stereo and possibly clear channel. He explained the problem with a hemispheric clear channel meant the FCC could not generate money from other stations on the same channel if ours claimed it, so it was tricky to pull off. But with so many AM stations going out of business this might be a great time to try, but the license fee would always be higher than before to be to cover the losses, and there would be fees from neighboring countries to maintain the clear channel status.
That afternoon we checked into a cheaper/smaller hotel in Beaumont with a pool but no hot tub. We hung out by the pool and bought a case of beers and more clothes and extended our stay another six nights as inspections and license research was underway. And talk about a good sign, late that afternoon a guy drove into the hotel parking lot with a mobile smoker! We got two half chickens, and extra sauce (his formula) and a huge stack of paper towels. We were also forced to do two loads of laundry at the hotel's tiny coin-op.
Two days later we got the new house inspection (delivered to us at the hotel) then toured the farm house again (with the realtor), the barn, and the rest of the ten acres and told him we were very interested but were waiting on a business license application before we could say yes. We also called David's parents to see if we could visit them tomorrow evening, after dinner, for an hour.
On Thursday morning he called Washington, DC, and David put him on speaker phone. He laid it out for us and said the station was a go if we wanted it, with our history of working with the Pentagon that would pass the good character requirements with the FCC, we'd have to form a corporation, which was something his paralegal could do quickly (at $300 an hour). He also said the change to stereo did not need to be approved by the commission, only that they be notified by letter after the change.
He said he would negotiate for a lower power level during construction but it would need to remain licensed at 100kw (to justify the clear channel request). He explained that the designation of clear channel could only be obtained if all the other stations in the USA and Canada were gone (property sold and towers taken down), but that could take weeks to verify, he said the station in Mexico City was too far away to object. David told him we would like to go on the air at 500 watts then increase it over time while we built the station and possibly a green energy power source on the site. The lawyer said our requests were reasonable and he was confident the Commission would approve increasing wattage during construction. And he added that they really wouldn't know about the actual status of the signal unless someone filed a complaint with the Commission.
He quoted us a price of $25k (we already paid him $8k) for the representation and said it would take up to three months to finalize everything but licensure alone should be done within four weeks, it was his advice to put money down on the station and begin the purchase, he also said we'd needed to make one appearance in Washington for the clear channel upgrade application, to sign and bow to a Commissioner (symbolically kiss the ring). We agreed to everything and got off the phone, we'd been talking to him for half an hour at $150 bucks every 30 minutes.
Back at the hotel we paid the FCC lawyer again with another Paypal transfer, we also told the realtor in El Paso to list our house, we'd be out within a four weeks. Then we had a debate over how to get our stuff out of El Paso. It was going to be a while until anything significant happened in Deweyville so I convinced David to fly home and pack our house into a shipping container and have it delivered here. That meant another 2.5 hour drive to northern Houston to the airport for a 55 minute flight to El Paso International.
We hung out at the hotel pool again but tonight it was packed with screaming kids and their drunk parents. We left early and went to the room, and spent the rest of the evening with David making a steady dribble of pre-come directly into my mouth.
The next day (Thursday afternoon) we drove down to Texas City to visit David's parents. They were workin' folks, she worked at a high school library and he ran a residential/commercial electrical repair shop. Since it was a work day we agreed to arrive after supper (7pm) for one hour. David hasn't seen his parents in three years because they've had a history of sharp edges between them over his sexuality, and now he wanted to visit with his husband (GASP!). This would be the first time I met them, but I have talked briefly with his mom over the phone before. He reminded me most of the problem was between him and his father. He stopped short of specifics and told me, "You'll see. Within minutes after we get out of the car you'll see the problem."
We found their house after getting lost for a while, he called them while we were on the way there, he talked to his mother, she laughed that he got lost in the town where he grew up. David refused to use the GPS and said he grew up on those streets, he didn't need help, but we got lost anyway. He said his landmark buildings were gone or different.
We parked my little Toyota sports car in the street in front of their modest one story suburban brick home and walked up the driveway, his mother opened the front door and welcomed us inside with hugs. I was surprised by how olive skinned she was compared to David. She was tiny but his dad was a big dude, I guessed he was 6'2", maybe 250 pounds of solid displeased redneck. He shook our hands tightly, until it hurt. I thought to myself, `so this is how our visit is going to go?'
We sat in the living room and sipped iced tea and talked for half an hour, he told them we were leaving the DOD and starting a business near Vidor, his dad injected, "Good, you can go to church with us." But David let that comment slip knowing our marriage would not be allowed in their apostolic church. Over time his father got louder, so his mom took command of the gathering and told us to go look at David's old bedroom.
We walked down the hallway and into what looked like a small office. I had a hard time picturing David as a small boy in this room. David gestured towards the living room and rolled his eyes, I smiled back. It was obvious he was embarrassed and disappointed but not surprised. I remembered all the times David told me `You don't get to pick your parents.' Before she caught up with us we heard a rather short and unpleasant conversation between his parents down the hallway, we heard his mom very sternly say: DON'T more than once to his dad. Then she joined us in the bedroom, but his dad walked out the front door. David briefly put his arm over her shoulders and kissed her cheek, which made her smile and lean into him.
She said his father was selling the company and starting a new business designing electrical systems in new construction. Watching David and his mom talk I heard bits of a Native American accent in her voice. This was the first time I saw them together, she looked happy talking to her only child who towered over her. The top of her head came to David's neck.
David pulled out his cell while she was talking and noticed we'd reached the one hour mark and told her we needed to leave, we had a 130 mile drive back to Beaumont in the dark. We stopped in the hallway to look at a few photos of him as a kid, and during high school. One of them was him fishing on the river with no shirt on, I took cell photos of all the pictures.
His mother asked about our red sports car, I told her it was mine, a 2020 Toyota model 86-GT and cost $43k new, we paid cash. She smiled and nodded approval.
David's father walked outside and was looking at my car, when we got outside he said he wondered how anyone could possibly fit in it, or drive across Texas in such a small car. I looked at their driveway and saw his dad's work truck, his mother's 2015 Impala was in the garage. Everyone ignored his father's comments and we could tell being ignored was also making him mad.
The three of us walked down the driveway, he hugged his mom again but his father had gone back inside the house as we drove off. David told his mom the sports car was one of the most expensive vehicles Toyota made. Standing by the mailbox she told him it looked like a high performance sports car. After one last hug we walked to the car, he gestured for the keys and got in the driver's seat. He started the engine with its quiet sound. As we slowly drove away he watched his mom in the mirror standing by their mailbox waving at us, with a tissue in hand.
"She's a sweet lady, I noticed her accent." I said watching him drive while still watching her in the mirror.
"Yep, I heard it too, but growing up with it I never really noticed until I left for college."
"They seemed nice, was it okay for you?" I asked.
"It was okay, he's still an ass but not as bad. Dad can be a real son of a bitch when he wants to, I'm almost surprised she never left him."
"He's a big dude." I added.
"Yep, sure is." He mumbled with his eyes fixed on the road in front of us. David touched the GPS on the windshield and set it to guide us back to the hotel in Beaumont, we had a lot of stuff to do tomorrow and might need to stay even longer. After a few moments he said she'll probably scold his childish behavior then he'll go to bed early and pout. He said his father was one of those guys that believed the wife should: be barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen, her biscuits in the oven and buns in bed. He added that he totally backed down when she got mad, so his anger is mostly for show.
I mumbled to David that I felt his father should be proud of what he'd accomplished in life; master's degree in engineering, Navy Seal school, coveted and highly trusted job working for the Pentagon, but he's obsessed with your dick. David reminded me he's upset because of how they were treated after it became public knowledge in their church and they got kicked out.
"Were you afraid of him when you were a kid?" I asked quietly.
"You bet I was. I lived in constant fear and had stomach problems to match," he offered with his eyes fixed on the road in front of us. I dropped the subject.
Back in the hotel he transferred more money into Paypal to cover the radio station legal fees, then we called the broker and told him we'd have a formal answer next week but we'd like to put cash down on the radio station to take it off the market temporarily. David told me the broker said this was the first AM station he's actually shown in two years but he had five across Louisiana (and three more in Mississippi) for sale, all of them were off the air. He said in Louisiana and Mississippi, one AM radio station goes off the air every year. The land is sold, towers taken down, and tower supports are removed so it could never be put back up again. In human terms that is the same as a death followed by cremation.
We also got from him the name of a farmer in Starks to mow the field around the tower and the company that had done the past tower work (painting, lighting, guy wires, etc.) too. He said this was the same guy that mowed around the tower for the past fifteen years.
We stopped at a Dollar Store in Beaumont to buy a pack of legal notepads because we were reaching that point with our business plans, we had too much stuff going on to keep in our heads and keep it all straight. Best bet was to start writing stuff down.
Two more days went by, we spent lots of money and hadn't really purchased anything yet but everyone had their hands out wanting a piece of the action.
On Friday we got a call from the paralegal in DC, she said our company was registered in Delaware as `Larsen and Malone, LLC.' Then she said for the formal license application she needed information so we played twenty questions. No arrests or judgments, no indictments, no other applications, no previous licenses of any sort with the FCC, and on it went. Then she said she needed us to text her photos of our driver's licenses and $9,000 more for the broadcast license application, she said they already got an unofficial verbal approval. Since we were applying for it, we also had to put money down on the property too, so we talked to the broker and formalized our wish to purchase KYAZ-AM. We met with him at the diner again and handed him $90k and got a receipt for ten percent down payment. He said this station, priced at $900k was grossly underpriced, but that was today's market for AM radio stations. They're slowly disappearing forever.
Things were happening quickly, so far we spent almost half a mil to: buy the house and farm, apply for the FCC license, upgrade to clear channel, form a corporation, transfer the utilities to our business, activate utilities at the farm, and put a ten percent deposit on the station. We also hired a maid to come clean the farm house ASAP and someone to mow the open yard (about 2 acres around the house and barn). The power got turned on and we stopped in the post office to register the address, he told us the box by the street was knocked down last year, we'd need a new one, so we got a PO Box inside the Deweyville Post Office instead.
After all the forms were signed I drove David to Houston to fly back to El Paso. He hired two guys to help him to pack our stuff into the shipping container they set on the driveway. He worked his ass off for four days then drove his truck to Beaumont, our pod was supposed to be delivered to the farm within nine days. Even though we hadn't closed yet since we paid cash in full for the farm, we also took possession.
As word spread he started getting telemarketer calls for radio stations owners, it seemed our application for licensure was public record and it had his phone number and the calls poured in, about two an hour. Since we were dealing with so many new companies he had to turn off call blocking on his phone and allow everything to ring in. We played the disconnected tones to all the telemarketers hoping some of them were using smart dialers which would hear the tones and delete his number.
Criminal telemarketers dialed every possible combination of numbers from 000-000-0001 to 999-999-9999, then started over. And as long as stupid people answered the phone and gave criminals a valid credit card number then those criminals would never stop calling. Telemarketing exists simply because stoopid people made it profitable.
Contact the author borischenaz gmail