Saving Magnolia - The Back Story

It has been a little over a month since Saving Magnolia has been in release as an e-book on Amazon Kindle. Sales have been slow. The few sales I have at the moment have been mostly to close friends and fellow travelers. I have a print version (on demand) pending, waiting for me to find the time to come up with a back cover and a spine. Some will blame procrastination on my part. They're probably right. Too, I have been busy writing on a couple of other ideas while at the same time trying to figure out if the third book in the Magnolia series (The Magnolia Connection) sounds plausible.

Anyhoo, it's time for a little self-promotion on a Saturday afternoon.

I have classified Saving Magnolia as a piece of general fiction. Not really a good place to be when selling a book (according to the many third parties who are willing to give out generous advice for a fee), especially when the audiences are looking for romance, or an adventure, or a techno thriller. Part of the reason I sat on the book for so long is that I couldn't decide what niche to put it in. My daughter told me that because the hero and the heroine get together at the end, my story could be considered a romance - but the thrust of the story is not about the romance.

It's about radio.

People who know me know that I spent roughly twenty years of my life working as a radio announcer/disk jokey in southern Ohio and western West Virginia. The title to this blog - And all the records you can eat - comes from one of my co-workers in West Virginia who stated (truthfully) that jobs in local radio paid minimum wage and all the records you could eat.

Despite the pay scale, I stuck with it for far longer than I should have - finally leaving after the encroachment of satellite automation and relaxed ownership rules which have led to much of radio being run by mega corporations (read Clear Channel - now I (heart) radio). The radio station where I both started and ended my broadcasting career is now owned by the aforementioned mega corporation, as are all of the other independent radio stations in the same town. They're all crammed into a small building just off the Ross County courthouse, next door to where there used to be the state liquor store.

I don't begrudge the people who are there their due. Dan Ramey (current morning personality at WBEX) and I have had several conversations about the current state of radio in the past year and a half - he certainly has prospered in the business in a way that most of us who passed through the doors of that station and others like it could have hardly dreamed of doing. He has a retirement plan, a medical plan and job security. In the past, most people left radio with no prior notice... usually being handed their license and their final paycheck while being kicked out the door.

I am, however, a romantic. I loved those old days, as tenuous as they were. I met with numerous interesting people in the business and elsewhere who make appearances in the book. Some of the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Maybe I'm rambling a bit. Point is that the business of radio is changing, but it's not changing as much as some of the big corporations think it is.

Saving Magnolia is set in a small town with a small town radio station. What makes it different from other stations in the general area is Zeke. Zeke drives the radio station and drives the town. He's older than dirt. Everyone knows him personally from having listened to him or having seen him while he worked his magic in the front window of Zeke's Cafe.

Zeke is a charismatic character based on a couple of radio people I have known. One, Bill Spahr was the morning radio announcer at WBEX when I worked there back in the early seventies. For all intents and purposes, Bill hired me. Once or twice a week, Bill would take a remote transmitter down to the Big Bear supermarket in Chillicothe's Central Center, set up a table and spin records. His presence attracted a loyal customer base for the store and recognition from the community.

(At one time, the company which owned the store attempted to move the store manager out so that they could give another manager a shot at running what was supposedly the most profitable store in the chain. When word of the transfer got out, shoppers set up picket lines - essentially shutting down the store until the local manager was re-instated.)

Another radio personality in Portsmouth, Ohio, Zeke Mullins, was the other inspiration for Zeke Collins. Zeke never wanted for work the entire time he rattled around the Portsmouth area. One of the fellows I worked with in West Virginia, Steve Crabtree, got his start working radio in Portsmouth. He told stories about Zeke and Zeke's following. There was certainly quite a bit of charisma surrounding the man - charisma I transferred over to my fictional Zeke.

I manufactured a back story for Zeke Collins involving a building much like those I have seen both in Ohio and in Texas. Part of the story had to do with a woman from Bristol, Virginia who left her home when she found out that her husband had cheated on her while he was in Italy during the Second World War. She built a successful business which lured the radio personality to the small town of Magnolia. He bought the business when she decided to go "back home" and maintained it and her recipe for home-made biscuits and sausage gravy until the day he died.

Saving Magnolia is the story involving the death of Zeke Collins and the uncertainty in the days which followed.

Zeke knew what was coming and he prepared for the inevitable. He chose an heir and it would be up to that heir to take over what Zeke had built so Magnolia would continue to prosper.

There's a little more involved, though.

In my next installment, I will introduce you to the hero and the heroine of the story. One hint, I saw the female lead of Saving Magnolia for all of a minute, one time, in a home improvement store here in Texas.

I promise the next installment in a matter of days.

Be Seeing You!

bdharrell

Inventing a Monster

Generally, I keep my television viewing to a minimum - limiting my choices to the local news, PBS and re-runs of The Big Bang Theory (which I watch from "Sheldon's spot" on our living room couch).

Last night I was watching an advertisement from one of the local mattress companies telling me that my eight year old mattress needed to be replaced because of something called dust mites. They assured me that if I paid attention to their pleas, I would be rid of the scourge that are dust mites forever... or at least for another eight years.

I'm not really sure that dust mites live, other than in the imaginations of copy writers who need people to believe in the existence of the little critters in order to sell more mattresses.

I went out and purchased a premium mattress some years back with the idea that a better grade of mattress would obviate the need to purchase a new mattress in a matter of just a few years. The dust mite people went and killed the idea that I could purchase something with better materials and expect it to last longer than just about any pedestrian product.

A monster was invented - a monster by the name of dust mites.

Those very same types of monsters are invented every day for a variety of reasons.

Monsters have become a very pervasive and a very effective way of frightening some of us to do things we might not necessarily do otherwise.

In the past couple of months, for instance, we have been told of the evil Obama monster who will with the stroke of a pen (in the form of an Executive Order) ruin any chance we have of evicting the monster of illegal aliens from our fair shores.

"Unfair!" "Dictatorial!" come the cries of the monster makers, diverting attention from the fact that if they had been doing their jobs in the first place there would have been no need for the Obama monster to take action on his own. Instead, they've been out creating and exploiting new monsters in order to get elected by the small minority of people who even bothered to vote in the last election in the first place.

I wonder how many monsters kept people away from the polls.

The monster of possible vote tampering factored into the mix as did the monster of "liberals" in our midst. "Liberals" = "Blacks" = "The Jews" = "Communists" = "Socialists" = "Nazis" just to name a few of the monsters paraded in front of us so that we could have a focus. "The government", "ISIS", "Islam", "Ebola", "Benghazi", "The Illuminati", "The Bilderberg Group", "Zionists", "Palestinians", and the list grows longer.

Now, my local mattress merchant wants to sell me on the notion that there is a monster called "Dust Mites" infesting my perfectly good mattress.

Right.

And I have some oceanfront property in Arizona to sell to you.


Be Seeing You!

Requiem for a Math Teacher

There was a discussion on Facebook the other day about an incident which I witnessed when I was in the ninth grade. The family had moved to Chillicothe, Ohio from the Cleveland area less than six months previously. While in Cleveland in the seventh and eighth grade, we were taught math from a curriculum developed in one of the local school systems. When we moved to Chillicothe, I eventually came to the conclusion that we were being taught the equivalent of Algebra II in our classroom in Cleveland.

So, I was assigned to take Algebra I in a classroom in an older junior high school along with people I knew little about. One morning, the teacher dropped dead. Plain and simple. The teacher dropped dead. Here, forty six years later, the incident came up on Facebook. I left a link to the first chapter of a book I had written which dealt with the incident. Since the link to Tumblr didn't pan out for some of those people, I am re-posting the story here on my blog. Enjoy:

The Seed

Dreary.

Except for the prospect of attending the annual football grudge match between Magnolia and Pomeroy, Dan Stevens’ morning was dreary. He was already having trouble understanding Mr. Tate’s introduction to algebra class and it was only the first week of school. Dan copied some incomprehensible scribble on the blackboard while his teacher was on his way to explain the problem one on one with him.

Dan didn’t quite understand why Richard Tate was face down on the floor next to his desk, his body twitching while life ebbed out of it.

Dan sat helpless while the world around him swirled into action. Jim Carter almost immediately bolted from his seat and running pell-mell to the school office to report the emergency. Several screams erupted from different parts of the room. In moments, most of the students were out of their seats, either leaving the room or gathering transfixed at the body in the middle of the classroom.

In less than two minutes, students were being ushered out into the hallway while the school nurse and several of the other teachers rushed in, only to be just as helpless as Dan and his classmates. Sirens from the squad were heard, coming in from the firehouse on the north end of Magnolia.

Dan closed his eyes. “This is death,” he thought. He took a deep breath. It seemed to him that somehow the spirit of the man lying next to him touched him momentarily. “It’s okay to let go.”

Dan felt the soft touch of a woman’s fingers on his elbow. “We need to go, now. The squad needs room to work. It’s all right.”

Once clear of the confusion in the room, he realized that Miss Elston, the history teacher, had led him out just before the ambulance people came in. “Live life to the fullest,” she advised him later that year. “You never know when you’ll be called home.”

The funeral was held the following Wednesday afternoon. School dismissed early so Mr. Tate’s students could attend. Reverend Kellough from the Community Baptist Church conducted the service. After the funeral, Dan went to the Pastor’s Study to ask the old preacher why.

Pastor invited the young man in.  The room was dominated by a large oak desk sitting parallel to a wall stacked floor to ceiling with books. Off to Dan’s right was a low credenza with a coffee pot along with several cups for visitors to use. To the left was a window overlooking a small parking lot.

“Please, have a seat.”

There was a pair of large chairs framed in wood, upholstered in leather, facing the imposing desk. Dan sat in the chair on the left.

“I understand that you were next to Richard when he died.”

“Mister Tate? Yes sir. I was there.”

Pastor smiled. “He was a good man. He worked hard to provide for his family. Unfortunately, he worked almost too hard. You know that he would teach nights at the prison in Chillicothe, don’t you?”

“No sir, I did not.”

“It’s okay.  It was his time.  You never know when you’ll be called home. You need to live your life to its fullest.”

They talked for the better part of an hour. The only reason they stopped was that the pastor had to preach at the regular Wednesday evening service.

Daniel Stevens took the advice to heart. There was a spark in him which would not quit. He may have earned the reputation of being a hellion during the next four years of his life, but he was also blessed with good sense – perhaps even with better luck. Pastor’s study became his refuge when he was genuinely troubled.

“There are three things in life which will always be true,” Pastor would keep telling him. “For one, there will always be taxes. Second of all, we will all eventually die. Finally, wherever we go in life, we will inevitably come right back here to Magnolia.”

“Right…” Daniel would always reply. “When I get out of high school, I am so out of this burg that it’ll make your head spin.”

The Reverend Ezra Kellough would just smile. He knew what would happen. It was only a matter of time.

(By the way, Mr. Tate was the name of my math teacher at Middleburg Heights Junior High in the seventh and eighth grade before we moved.  Be Seeing You!)

The Homoginization of America

Well, I'm back home after spending a week on the road to attend a wedding up in Ohio. My niece and her long-time boyfriend finally decided to tie the knot. It was a happy occasion, complete with bagpipes, dancing, wedding cake and a free-flow of alcohol. The better half and I spent five days on the road, touching parts of eight states which, as far as I could tell, looked pretty much the same.

I blame it on the homoginization of America.

Two news items caught my eye which seem to reinforce the notion. For one, the company which absorbed the Budweiser people made noises about absorbing the Miller people. For the other, the large radio conglomerate Clear Channel changed its name to I (heart) Radio.

Well, I (heart) radio, too, but I have for years loved my radio stations because they were all quite different from each other. When I got into radio some years ago, there were essentially two local stations in town, WBEX and WCHI. WBEX had an FM counterpart which, when I started there, ran elevator music on a couple of huge reel-to-reel tapes which needed to be changed every once in a while. Not long after I got there, we had a fellow come in who decided that instead of elevator music, we should play "country" music on the FM. The AM stations essentially ran the same programming, except with different people doing the announcing. WCHI was a daytimer - running sunrise to sunset... WBEX ran 1,000 watts in the day and 250 watts at night, usually signing off at eleven thirty or so.

Then, everything changed.

About 10-15 years ago, all of the local radio stations were purchased by Clear Channel, including a stand-alone FM which had popped up twenty years earlier. Now, everything is run out of the same building using mostly the same air talent - two guys - who put on different hats on different times. Efficient, sure. Both men in question still have the same voice they did when I was working with them back in the '90's and God love them both. They're moderately well taken care of and they will undoubtedly enjoy their pensions when they finally retire.

That being said, WBEX and WCHI sound quite a bit like other "local" radio stations run by the group formerly known as Clear Channel. I know, I tuned in similar Clear Channel stations on the way up and on the way back to Ohio. There are certain set formats which are shared, so the radio stations in Chillicothe, Ohio sound an awful lot like radio stations in West Virginia, in Kentucky, in Indiana... and so on and so forth. One format I've heard almost everywhere was something called JACK. Again, the same music is on the same stations from coast to coast at the same time, leading to sheer boredom, especially on long drives. The economy of scale takes away the uniqueness which used to be part of the many small, independent radio stations out there competing for the ear of the listener.

We have become homoginized in our listening habits.

The day of the fellow spinning records on a remote in the front window of a supermarket is gone. Local people getting on the air to sell used household items very seldom get airplay any more. Those days are missed by this blogger. Instead of unique voices for unique communities, radio has become a single voice from coast to coast, owned by stockholders who could probably care less about the communities they supposedly serve.

The fellows I told you about in Chillicothe... I maintain them as friends. I know other people who work for Clear Channel whom I like as friends. I am also loathe to be too critical of I (heart) radio, especially since I was given some air time in the past week to help create a demand for my writing. Those who know me know how I feel about the gradual disappearance of locally owned and operated radio. Saving Magnolia touches on that theme. I would hope that the situation would change sometime in the future, but I ain't holding my breath.

So I guess that I'll attempt to stick out like a sore thumb.

Be Seeing You!

Hello Again!

Hello again.

Here it is, nearly a year after my last entry into this blog and I'm back at it again. I have two blogs, this one and another which has been ignored for an even longer period of time.

I'll stick with this one for the time being.

Let me start by introducing myself. Rather, let me start by introducing myself again. My name is bdharrell. A bit unconventional, for sure, but it is what it is. Legally, I am someone else. For the purposes of this blog I am bdharrell.

It's a marketing gimmick, you see.

Actually, it's a moniker I have used off and on for over 40 years.  Most of that time I have incorporated punctuation into the moniker: b.d.harrell, in the same way that e.e.cummings did and got away with it.

The reason I'm using bdharrell has to do with my writing. I am establishing a brand, you see... something which sets me apart in an increasingly cacophonous world.

From this point, I could go into a full-bore selling mode, telling you about the books and the stories I've written, but there's time enough for that at a later date. What I am doing instead is getting you, the reader, to become acquainted with me. When you get to know me, you may want to know more about what I've written and what I am currently writing. If you are going to make a purchase at some point, you would be more likely to make that purchase from someone you know instead of from someone you don't.

So let's get started.

Hello again.

You might be wondering why the title of this blog - ...and all the records you can eat. This goes back to my days as a radio disc jockey. I worked for many years as a radio announcer at several stations in southeastern Ohio and western West Virginia, struggling to make a living while making a fool of myself. One of the people I worked with, a fellow named Steve Crabtree, described the sort of subsistence radio wages we were receiving at the time as being "Minimum wage and all the records we can eat". Very few of the radio people from my era achieved any measure of stability save from some combination of talent and sheer luck which has served them in good stead. The one thing we did have was a measure of status in the communities where we worked. There's always someone who remembers us, even years after the fact.

Several years ago, I was working as a sales drone at a major national retailer. I was talking with a couple about a large sale when the woman noted that I had a radio voice. I told her that I had worked on the air for a number of years. She asked if I had worked locally (Dallas, Texas area). I told her no.  I worked at radio stations in Ohio. She smiles and tells me that she remembers hearing me when I was on WBEX in Chillicothe, Ohio!  At that point I was at least a thousand miles and a dozen years removed from the last time I had had a gig there.

Anyhoo, I am an ex-radio person doing relatively well for myself and living on the outskirts of Dallas. (As a matter of fact, I am less than 10 miles from the ranch used for the exterior shots for the TV series.) Radio doesn't just disappear from one's blood, though. We tend to listen to other radio people and read what they write. Garrison Keillor and Tom Bodette ("We'll leave the light on for you!) are great storytellers, both with successful books which I have been in the process of emulating. I've also read Jan Karon's stories about Father Tim up in the hills of North Carolina. All three authors use small towns as settings for their stories about life in general. Much of what I'm doing is mostly the same. Instead of Alaska, Minnesota or North Carolina, the stories I've written are centered in southern Ohio in a small town I've name Magnolia.

Now I'm getting ahead of myself.

So, I've explained who I am.  I'll tell you a little more about me in later posts. Yes, it has been a long time since I have been on these pages, but hopefully I will make it up to you by allowing you to walk with me on a journey I am about to take. In the next few weeks, I will be introducing you to Magnolia, Ohio and some pretty interesting people. In the meantime,

Be Seeing You!
bdharrell