Lake City is located at the intersection of I-75 and I-10 in north central Florida. It’s ground zero for a clash between Florida State Seminoles and University of Florida Gators.

Country 1340 WDSR and 94Q WNFQ were paired together in an old Quonset hut on the edge of Alligator Lake. Take note that alligator comes first in the name. It wasn’t the kind of spot you’d want to swim in..or fish. I think the gators ate all the fish and anything else that got too close to the water.

The broadcast antenna tower was on a small island in the body of water. The support guy wires were anchored on the lake bottom. A wooden catwalk led to the island and the transmitter building on it. At one point, I saw our Chief Engineer, Mark Schmucker, doing what I thought was an Irish jig on the walk. I said to myself, he must have gotten some good news. It turned out that there was a wasp’s nest below one of the boards he stepped on. It was not so good news. I did see the biggest lightning bolt in my life hit the top of the tower on my way in one day. When I got there, there was smoking equipment all over the station. We were off the air for something like three days.

Country 1340 was a Traditional Country formatted station in 1979 and sister station 94Q was a mainstream Top 40 that was semi-automated, meaning that it was run on a machine that played the music on big 15-inch reels of tape. Much of the announcing was prerecorded by our old friend, golden voiced Cochran Keating from WJAX-AM in Jacksonville. The DJs did weather and other live parts in Mornings and my Afternoon Drive time slot.   A heavier commercial play in those times required acute attention from the DJ as well. So, if you’re following along, the DJs were essentially operating two live stations at the same time. On the control board, every switch turned left (program for you pro’s) was Country 1340. Everything turned right (audition) was 94Q.  Sometimes the commercial count was 30 units an hour between the two stations. Many radio stations top out at around a third of that number, so it was a lot of button pushing. In many instances, both station’s commercial breaks would collide at the same time. Sometimes I would be talking on air on 1340 and segueing commercials on 94Q by watching the VU meters on the control board. It was a mentally draining experience to operate those stations like that. I tell people that you had to be schizophrenic to work there. There was a Saturday Night Live skit with Dan Akroyd about working at two different stations at the same time. We did it with a Country twang and happy Top 40 sound.

After my first two weeks there, I found myself listening to Moe and Joe and thinking “why did I do this?”  I loved the Rock 95 music and began to miss it after the newness of my latest station wore off. Top 40 wasn’t exactly a prize in 1979 either. There were some gems, but, in my opinion, “Ring My Bell” was not one of them. But, a funny thing happened when Butch brought in two shiny new 45’s to play on Country 1340 one day. The first was “Family Tradition” by Hank Williams Jr. and the second was “He Stopped Loving Her Today” by George Jones. At that specific point, I became a fan of the format. Later, “Good Old Boys Like Me” by Don Williams became my personal number one Country song. I would also go on to do the Top 40 format two more times in my career. As fate would have it, ‘DSR would be my only Country station, unless you’re counting US-99, when I arrived with a wrecking ball crew to change the format after two weeks.

Mike James was the Morning Guy and he showed me a pretty neat trick right away. The bathroom was directly opposite the control room turntables and shared the same wall. If you were on the pot and needed some extra time, there was a particular spot on the wall you could smack to bounce the turntable tone arm back on the record closer to the beginning of the song. If you popped it too hard it would fly off and you would end up with dreaded dead air.

After living at the rodent infested Marion Motor Court, Mike and his brother Gary invited me to move in with them at a charming single wide mobile home in a massive trailer park. The next-door neighbor put up a fence that was made from household string rising about 5 inches off the ground, anchored on all corners with sticks. I made a mental note to avoid him.

Eventually the brothers and I moved to a house closer to the radio station on that same Alligator Lake side of the road.  In fact, it was two blocks from our radio home. Directly across the road was The Rock Lounge. How convenient! Legendary NFL player and TV analyst, Pat Summerall lived in the neighborhood too. We would see him riding around in his convertible Cadillac. Mr. Summerall would also come to the station and record local State Exchange Bank commercials. It was amazing to watch him knock out 10 60 second commercials on tape without stopping. They were all perfect takes.

The other part of this whole arrangement was that Mike and Gary had a popular rock band, named Pegasus. Our living room was filled with band equipment, and they held regular practices there. The band played and the people came.

There were weeks that passed when I never started my car. This place was my golden triangle. I woke up, walked to work, got off work and crossed the street for a Ball Mason jar of draft beer at the Rock. Well..maybe it was more than just a Ball Mason jar. After a hard day of head exploding, two station madness and draft beer, I went home. That routine was rinse and repeat five days a week.

The weekends at The Rock Lounge were the most fun. The featured band would play, go on break and then Pegasus, if they didn’t have a gig, would fire up at our house and The Rock Lounge crowd would cattle cross across the street and stay for a set in our living room. Then everybody would cattle cross back to the lounge for the club band to start their next set. Sometimes, some bar patrons never made it back to the Rock and we discovered them on the front lawn the next morning. At one point, Hijinx, a local band came to the house with their yellow school touring bus and backed it up against the back door that had no stairs and was a perfect height match. They ran an electric extension cord into our place and stayed until they decided to leave. With two rock bands in the house, there was no shortage of jams.

Early in 1980, I somehow found my way to a moonlighting gig as the club DJ at The Glades Lounge at the Holiday Inn over at the Interstate intersection. My uniform consisted of silky shirts with billowy sleeves with three button cuffs, flared bellbottoms, and platform shoes. The pay was 175 bucks cash per week. That combined with my radio pay brought my total up to $300 weekly. Rent on the 3 bedroom house was $210 a month between the 3 of us. With what Mike and Gary were making with the band, we saw ourselves as wealthy.

I learned to make slick dance mixes, scratching vinyl, and keeping the mood up and the disco ball spinning. It’s amazing what money will make you do when you love Rock music the most.

There were some colorful characters who came through that place, being pinpointed at two major Interstates. The one crowd I remember clearly was when The Annual Watermelon Growers Convention came to Lake City. When the head melon farmer entered, Brad, the Restaurant and Beverage Manager, told him he had to remove his massive cowboy hat to gain admission to the club. Melon Head told Brad that under no circumstances would he remove his hat. Right after Brad told him for the last time, no hat, no bar, the Hoss sized melon growing pit spitting menace said he was going to take a Collins glass and make it into an earring for him. Then the real trouble started, and a real live Rugby scrum broke out. Furniture was breaking and I had to stop the music and watch from my DJ pulpit. The Columbia County Sheriff’s Deputies were called to quell the disturbance. It was a hot time in the old Redneck town that night.

Mike and Gary will probably remember another barroom brawl we witnessed in Chiefland, Florida on Christmas Eve 1979 when I accompanied them to a gig they were playing there. A bar patron threatened the Bartender. Then, the barkeep broke off the bottom of a fifth bottle to defend himself just like the old wild west. Three big old boys grabbed a barstool and used it as a battering ram behind the bar against the Bartender, pinning him up on the wall. Pegasus had to stop playing until they could clean up the mess and restore order. It was a fascinating holiday night out.

One night, after my Ball Mason jar night cap, Mike greeted me at home and said “I got a call from a guy named Berrien Sutton in Homerville, Georgia. He said he wanted to hire me as General Manager at his station, WBTY-FM. I told him I would agree to go if you came too as Program Director. They said I could hire Gary on to the Sales staff as well. At 24 years old, I wanted to be a Program Director and I did not care where it was. So, I said to Mike “let's go and talk to Berrien and check this place out."