Category Archives: Friends

Interviews

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This is a little housekeeping post. A list of people with whom I have done interviews. A search by name should take you to these. This link will pull them all up.

2024-2014

2010-2009

2008-2003

Miss Martha Turner

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In 2009 Joe Bankhead retired — at the age of 92 — from a 60 year career in and around radio. One of the first things he did was bang out a 20 page history of his time at KBOA in Kennett, Missouri. It’s a long read. A twenty-page core dump of Joe’s recollections. He apologizes a couple of times for his rambling, haphazard style but Joe wrote exactly the way he talked. (Lots of exclamation marks!)

I don’t think Joe really expected anyone to read 20 pages of memories (nor do I) but there’s some good stuff, especially for anyone interested in the early days of radio. So I’m going to share some of those stories here from time to time.

“I’ve got to tell you about Miss Martha Turner. Martha was a clean cut black lady from Hayti who purchased a 15-minute segment to be aired each Saturday morning. On her program she would sing an a cappella song and read all the cards and letters she would receive during the week. She’d arrive at the station three or four hours before her airtime and type out her dialogue (word for word) that she’d recite while on the air I kept a copy of Martha’s script on hand for years and I’m sorry I can’t provide it for you now. That it was unique and entertaining is a huge understatement. Miss Martha Turner deserves her spot in the history of KBOA. I don’t recall her ever trying to sell anything, or ask for donations from listeners. It appears she just wanted to be on the air and accommodate her fans by reading their letters.”

Joe died in 2011 and took with him a lifetime of great memories. I’m still amazed at his ability to recall so much detail at the age of 92. Joe’s son, Jim Bankhead, was kind enough to let me include Joe’s history on KBOA383.com (as a PDF). I transcribed the original and added a few links. It’s also searchable.

RepublicTigerSports.com

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During the early days of what we then called the “World Wide Web,” there was a mood of “digital entrepreneurism.” Anybody with a minimum of technical skills could create a website. Later, when blogs became a thing, it got even easier. You could start your own newspaper or magazine or — when the bandwidth got better and the tools easier — audio and video. Anyone could create their own “content” and do so for fun or profit. That was the dream and a few made it a reality.

One of those was my friend David Brazeal. David grew up in Republic, Missouri, a small town just outside of Springfield in the southwest corner of the state. He earned a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and then reported news at a radio station in Jefferson City, MO.

That’s where I met him and then worked with him at Learfield Communications. David started in the newsroom but migrated to some of Learfield’s early, digital businesses. He was very good at what he did but eventually grew restless and longed to strike out on his own. His idea was to create a website that covered high school sports in his hometown.

With his wife’s blessing, he quit his very good job at a very good company and started RepublicTigerSports.com in 2009. David has defied the odds and made his “micro-site” a critical and financial success. I think it’s safe to say he covers high schools sports in Republic better than any traditional media outlook could or would. The town does not have a radio or TV station but does have a weekly newspaper.

I don’t think I could begin to describe the breadth and depth of the content on his site. If you are even remotely interested in what he’s doing, spend 10 or 15 minutes on the website. If you’re still interested, you might enjoy listening to the interview below. Runs about 35 minutes.

The ravages of time (class reunion)

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The photo above was taken last September at the 50 year reunion of the Kennett High School Class of 1966. Richard Peck and Larry Mullen standing; Joe Browning, John Robison and another guy seated. I attended my ten year reunion but skipped all the others. I’m glad I went to this last one. Got to spend a little time with Joe whose energy was released back into the Universe this week.

I took the other photo in 1968 in Richard Peck’s basement. A place to drink beer and be as young as we would ever be. L-R: Richard Peck, Jim Bob Green, John Robison, Jane Marshall and Lynn Strickland. Charlie Peck and Joe Browning down front. This photo became (for me) iconic of that wonderful time. How we came to be the old men in the class reunion photo is a mystery.

Joe Browning: 1948-2017

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Joe Browning was always an artist. He became an architect. And accidental intellectual. He’s the only person I know that looks good with a beard. He only speaks when he has something worth saying. I’ve held Joe upright while he peed next to his back door. (“No, there’s no problem Mr. Browning…Joe will be right in.”) Joe used to run away when he got drunk.

Henry

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The following images were created using the Prisma app.

I took this picture a few days ago while on a walk with my friend +Henry Domke. Curious what the Prisma app would do with it, I ran it through a few filters (below). While looking at one of the resulting images it occurred to me that someone with the necessary skills and tools could create such an image from scratch. Either digitally or in some more traditional medium. Seeing the image, one might reasonably describe it as “art.”

If that is so, when does the “art” happen, and by whom? I’m reluctant describe a common smartphone photo as art. At least not this one. So did the art happen on the Prisma servers as their secret algorithm turned my photo into something art-ish? If yes, who’s the artist? The smart kids who wrote the code? They never saw my photo so I can’t comfortably call them artists in this instance. Can some lines of code create art (or anything)? Must there be an artist before we can have art?

Did social media kill graffiti?

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Jane Marshall, Joe Browning, Larry MullenI’m not talking about spray painted tags on the sides of rail cars, rather those pithy little observations on the walls of restroom stalls.

This was a big thing (at least in my circle) during the late 60s and 70s. My first recollection of this art form was in the hall bathroom outside Dr. Peck’s TV room. This was hangout #1 for our tribe (we didn’t call it that back then). Someone (Richard or Charlie?) had tacked a piece of poster board to the bathroom door with a Bic pen hanging on a piece of string. Someone would scribble something clever and others would comment in endless strings of puns and nonsense.

I don’t recall these ever being discussed face-to-face, the conversation was limited to the poster board. When it was so filled there was no room for one more witticism, the poster was replaced and the old one archived somewhere.

In the photo below you see what I believe is a piece of sheetrock leaning against a wall in the living room of the house where AJ and I lived (Church Street, Kennett, MO). There was a party nearly every night and it didn’t take long to completely cover a piece of poster board.

If there was a zeitgeist for this golden age of my youth, it was scrawled on these graffiti boards. Today these bon mots are tweeted or IM’d Instagrammed but surely something is lost.

50th High School Class Reunion

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30 or 40 eighteen-year-old ghosts trapped in ravaged, aging bodies shuffling around the room desperately trying to recognize people you knew half a century ago. The time-honored tradition of name tags featuring photos from the high school yearbook was honored. So we smiled and shook hands and looked down at the kids we once were, unable to conceal the “what the fuck happened to you” horror.

We only lost 30 or so classmates (from a class of about 150) which is sort of amazing given that we all grew up eating nothing but fried food and breathing crop dusting chemicals and the toxic plume that was sprayed every summer night to battle the clouds of mosquitos.

I went with some trepidation (I went to the 10 year reunion but none after) but wound up enjoying myself. I can’t speak for others but the person looking out of my eyes was/is that 18 year old who went to school with all of the old people in the room, with their titanium knees and heart stints. I couldn’t see the old me they were seeing. I hope and assume it was the same for everyone.

No, what I thought would be a depressing shuffle down memory lane turned out okay. Maybe a little “survivor high” if there is such a thing. We made it! We’re still here! “Fuckin A!” as we said in 1966.