Beaker Street/Late night On the Road

Island Drive

Otto/Dads College Roommate/Cleveland Browns
Silver Member
How many of you guys remember that radio station?
Came on LATE at night when you were on the road travelin', trying to get to the next gig.
I'm thinkin' it didn't come on till 1 or 2 am. But I did enjoy the production in my youth.
 
Loved it!!! We used to get that station up here in So. Wisconsin. Heard alot of music for the first time on that show.
 
Little Rock Arkansas' Clear Channel -- KAAY -- followed us all over the Gulf of Mexico.
Little Rock followed us all the way west until a station based in Mexico to be unregulated took over from them. I put in many an hour driving commercially or between tables and listening to Little Rock. Early morning, late night, they were often the only station you could pick up. I think they were on the air twenty-four hours but local stations drowned them out during the day. A good thing I liked country gold because I was gonna hear a lot of it between those two stations! I have picked them up in Kentucky when a mountain range or something blocked Little Rock. Listened to Little Rock well into Texas too. Alone, blasting through the cool night on mostly two-lanes and listening to the radio, seemed like the life back then!

I don't know what was the deal that they could get away with it but late night truckers would start winding up leaving out of Houston and not back it down until Baton Rouge. Sometimes pulling a race car coming home from Hub City I tried to catch a draft to slide home in a hurry and a hundred miles an hour wouldn't let me stay behind those trucks. When I got a truck it would do about 90 with the tach needle barely showing in the far corner of the window. I still had more pedal but that was my engine under the cab! I can't remember anything that much better about those days except being young and free and that was a bunch come to think of it! The life wasn't that great but I still miss the sound of that 8-71 Jimmy wailing.

Hu
 
I had a 1971 Volvo 142E Blue two door coupe, with Large from windows :). Ran repair shops for 17 yrs, cut my teeth on an independent volvo shop, still there Import Specialty Auto. drove em 42 yrs straight. till six mths ago.

Anyho/Car....Had it repainted, pulled the engine, did a complete overhaul, new injectors and All, Even new Leather front and rear seats.

So I'm headin' W. back to Colorado after an event in KS or Nebraska probably 1983.

Late at night this Benz/white rolls past me doin' at least 100 on I 70.

My engine now had 30K miles since the build out, sooooooooooooooo I drop the O/D stem into fourth and floored, it. I wanted to see what she'd do going west, up hill in a head wind and the new BENZ had a high tech radar detector. I could see it ''lit up''on his dash also, Dark tinted windows, Hawaii 50 Feel.

''I caught up to em doin' 105 and My pedal was to the firewall for the entire time.

Top speed I found out was 106-7, and I ran that way for 30 miles, doggin the Benz.................gas guage dropped fast :).

Early on the Benz dropped back to ck me out, seeing why/who's caught up to em. :)

And the end of my drive, He then accelerated I then backed off. Burned some fuel that's for sure. Engine ran perfect.

Was a fun Beaker Street car also. I could drive 600 miles to KC one way, and have No Back Pain, the seats were sweet.

Got 16mpg at 105 for 30 minutes.
 
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Listened to them a lot. Even the year I worked on the shrimp boat we could pick them up way offshore. I had the graveyard wheel watch and would listen to Beaker Theater in the wee hours. Fond memories.
 
Yep, the delivery of their programming and topic, between music from one.... into the next moment flowed.... in it's beeker way.
 
Little Rock followed us all the way west until a station based in Mexico to be unregulated took over from them. I put in many an hour driving commercially or between tables and listening to Little Rock. Early morning, late night, they were often the only station you could pick up. I think they were on the air twenty-four hours but local stations drowned them out during the day. A good thing I liked country gold because I was gonna hear a lot of it between those two stations! I have picked them up in Kentucky when a mountain range or something blocked Little Rock. Listened to Little Rock well into Texas too. Alone, blasting through the cool night on mostly two-lanes and listening to the radio, seemed like the life back then!

I don't know what was the deal that they could get away with it but late night truckers would start winding up leaving out of Houston and not back it down until Baton Rouge. Sometimes pulling a race car coming home from Hub City I tried to catch a draft to slide home in a hurry and a hundred miles an hour wouldn't let me stay behind those trucks. When I got a truck it would do about 90 with the tach needle barely showing in the far corner of the window. I still had more pedal but that was my engine under the cab! I can't remember anything that much better about those days except being young and free and that was a bunch come to think of it! The life wasn't that great but I still miss the sound of that 8-71 Jimmy wailing.

Hu
Back in those days, Texas and Arizona had R and P speed limits (whatever is Reasonable and Proper)
don't know what station I was catching, but I recall hearing Glen Campbell singing By the Time I get to Phoenix on them all.
 
Wow, it's fun that you guys know this stuff! I was heading home from LA, across Nebraska. Had it pinned for the last hour. Pair of headlights shows in the rearview. Takes 20 minutes for him to get there. I glance over and it's the Nebraska State Police! He never looked my way, I never lifted, what would be the point? He just walked on by.
 
I seem to remember a DJ, Chris Checker, who would introduce songs speaking 19 words per minute, interspersed with long pauses, while space music twinkled in the background -- I may not have known exactly where I was at, but I had a damn good idea of where I was going and what the trip was going to be like.
 
I choose the am sports talk stations. Pete Franklin I seem to remember, our of Cleveland.

I scuffled up a steak dinner on a trip to Ft Lauderdale. Bet I could listen to a Tarheel basketball game on 11.10 WBT am out of Charlotte! They had a top notch signal after dark.

Sent from my SM-G970U using Tapatalk
 
I seem to remember a DJ, Chris Checker, who would introduce songs speaking 19 words per minute, interspersed with long pauses, while space music twinkled in the background -- I may not have known exactly where I was at, but I had a damn good idea of where I was going and what the trip was going to be like.
In the 70s out of Madison Wi late night early morning can't remember the station, but the dj played jazz the whole program and called his
show "The Dark Side". He spoke really slow like your guy. He would take 2 minutes to name a song and all the musicians playing on it.
I still remember his intro: "Good evening…Ron Kusner is my name… This is "The Dark Side"… the dark side of Saturday (whatever date)".
Almost Dracularian delivery. Loved it.
 
Wow, it's fun that you guys know this stuff! I was heading home from LA, across Nebraska. Had it pinned for the last hour. Pair of headlights shows in the rearview. Takes 20 minutes for him to get there. I glance over and it's the Nebraska State Police! He never looked my way, I never lifted, what would be the point? He just walked on by.

A friend of mine was cruising close to ninety in west Texas, with a posted speed on a two lane. Topped a hill and meets a super trooper doing about the same speed going the other way. Bill thinks what the hell, I'm nailed, and pulls over at the first available spot. This happens to be just past the crest of another hill. As he is sitting there the cop tops the hill 120-130, whatever the cop car would do pedal to the metal. He sees Bill on the side of the road and jams the brakes a bit hard. Lots of swerving and didoes but much more by luck than sense the cop keeps the car on the road. He stops and comes back to Bill. Bill looks at him, "You know that wouldn't happen if you didn't drive so damned fast!" The cop wasn't amused. Paper time!

Hu
 
Texas cop tale I heard...Cop pulled over a Caddy rolling well past the century mark. Walks to the window, window rolls down, and it's LBJ!
"oh my God!" says the cop.
"Don't you forget it." says LBJ, who rolls up window, takes off again...

Don't have a clue what radio station was on. Probably not the Wolfman howlin' out of Chula Vista, California though.
 
Texas cop tale I heard...Cop pulled over a Caddy rolling well past the century mark. Walks to the window, window rolls down, and it's LBJ!
"oh my God!" says the cop.
"Don't you forget it." says LBJ, who rolls up window, takes off again...

Don't have a clue what radio station was on. Probably not the Wolfman howlin' out of Chula Vista, California though.

They wrote Huey P Long a ticket in Pineville LA. When a new highway was built long before interstates it went almost due north to Alexandria, the sister city to Pineville on the south side of the Red River. Made a hard left at the river and turned Pineville into a backwater for the next fifty years or so. You didn't mess with Huey either! Smart son of a gun, he also basically blocked the Mississippi River just north of Baton Rouge, the state capital. Ships could have went up the river several hundred more miles but by insuring all cargo had to swap from ship to barge at Baton Rouge he also insured the capital would always be a prosperous river city. Huey ran Louisiana like it was personal property which resulted in a lot of good and some harm!

Hu
 
Have a good friend that worked the gulf, shipmate deckhand outta NO. He had a WD 40 can he showed me, that would unscrew from the bottom, where he kept his Ganja inside, the WD did work!
 
Wow, it's fun that you guys know this stuff! I was heading home from LA, across Nebraska. Had it pinned for the last hour. Pair of headlights shows in the rearview. Takes 20 minutes for him to get there. I glance over and it's the Nebraska State Police! He never looked my way, I never lifted, what would be the point? He just walked on by.

In the 70's, my Mom was going 56 on the interstate and passed a HiPo doing 55, in South Dakota. He pulled her over and gave her a ticket. The only other car somewhere on the interstate might have been in danger, I suppose.

Such things leave an imprint.


Jeff Livingston
 
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