Thursday, October 15, 2009

FUN WITH ELECTRICITY !

If Dave Montgomery views this Post in the next few days, maybe he can expand on this story:

This took place in maybe 1969 or 1970.  I wasn't in the building when it happened, but heard about it that afternoon when I came in to my office.

There had been some work in the Main Control Room, rewiring, putting in new pots or something.  Whatever the case, Tom Rusk (who was a great guy, and had a sweet little wife, whose name I think was Mary) had done the wiring, or, at least some of it. The work that was being done was on the Console. 

WELL, as luck would have it, something didn't get "grounded" correctly.  Barry Wood (Mike McCormick) was on the air doing afternoon drive (Barry also had an engineer's license as I recall).  Barry sat down at the Console and proceeded to grab both handles on the ends of the Console, was immediately zapped with a Trillion Volts of Electricity, got knocked out of the chair on his rump, and was lucky to be among the living !

Poor Tom was in the proverbial "doghouse" for awhile, but was young and had just not insulated/grounded a connection, wire, or cord somewhere...from what I could gather.

And "Woody" (as we called Barry), had another close call as my friend Dave Treadway told me.  This was many years later and Barry had a brain aneurism and lived to tell about it.

ATTENTION: DAVE M.  Do you remember the incident I just described ?  And, did my memory serve me well on some of the details ?  Lemme know, Amigo.


PS: I'll be announcing the Official Launching of my Personal WebSite soon.  Maybe by next week. It's a look at my career through the years, with pix, airchecks, memorabilia, etc., involved. It'll be a work-in-progress, but I hope you enjoy it.

As always: stay safe & well,

Jonnie King

1 comment:

  1. Hi Bud--

    Jonnie's post about Tom Rusk and Barry Wood reminded me of a Barry Wood 'factoid'. I worked with Woody in Pine Bluff after his KAAY days, just before he left PB to start KLAZ. He had great pipes and was one of the most quick-minded on-air guys I ever worked with. But, before he became Michael J. McCormick at KAAY, Woody was in the U.S. Air Force and worked in a missile silo.

    Jim

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