It might be difficult for you to believe, but I have not always been the serious, poker-faced, brooding person who stands before you today. In fact, there were a few decades of my life when this deadpan and humorless shell of a man didn’t exist.
When I lived in Nashville, Tennessee, from 1980 to 1990, rarely a stretch of days passed when I wasn’t actively involved in some sort of practical joke, some form of tomfoolery that kept me almost always on the precipice of trouble—trouble that, to me, was merely a minor, pesky nuisance and certainly not a deterrent to the fun I was having. I figure God has a sense of humor. Genesis says we were created in his image, and if we humans have the ability to see and express humor, then so does God.
I drove everyone crazy. I never made jokes or performed pranks that would hurt or humiliate people. In fact, even as a child and later in college, I let my friends come up with the ideas. They always said, “Go get Holder. He’ll do it.” And they were correct. I’m assuming it was my weird way of feeling accepted.
Over the years, I’ve finally come to grips with the reality that I enjoy engaging in crazy capers. Somehow, I knew my practical jokes would eventually become great stories for future generations.
Early on, I landed a job at WWGM radio station as a disc jockey. I would put the vinyl on the turntable, set the needle on the record, and pull the stop-latch until it was time to release it and let the tune travel through the airwaves.
As a gospel station, WWGM only occasionally played music. I worked nights and weekends. I spent most of my time occupied with threading reel-to-reel tapes of fifteen-minute to hour-long sermons by famous pastors of the era. Though wonderful people, the owners and managers of the station were not necessarily cool people hip to the new contemporary Christian music scene coming out of Nashville studios.
While more progressive stations were playing Farrell and Farrell, Amy Grant, and Russ Taff, WWGM hung on to tried-and-true gospel favorites, such as Yolanda Adams, the Kingsmen, the Gaithers, and the Happy Goodman Family.
I attempted to move the station forward by introducing the manager, Lorna Harrison, to Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, and DeGarmo and Key but with little success. So as revenge, I would regularly find ways to make Lorna laugh while she was on air. Lorna, a beautiful, Jesus-loving, sweet mahogany-skinned lady, always came into the office impeccably fashioned and accessorized. She was gifted with a radio voice that melted butter, and I’d stop whatever I was doing to listen to her deliver the news. I would have been just as intoxicated if she had been reading a stock market report from the newspaper.
WWGM occupied an older building in an older section of a Nashville subdivision. A huge, ancient oak tree protected the two-story white clapboard home better suited to somebody’s grandparents. The second story housed the owner’s office. Small, cozy bedrooms on the first floor had been converted for administration and recording.
When you walked up the concrete steps on the right side of the house and through the front door, you found yourself in a large reception area, which I assume was formerly a living room. The receptionist’s desk ran down the right side of the room, giving her a perfect view of anyone approaching through the front door to her left. The control room was to the receptionist’s right. Separating the reception area and the control room was a huge pane of glass beginning about three feet off the ground and climbing to the ceiling, looking directly into the control room. From the reception area, you could clearly make out the back of a counter crowded with control panels. The disc jockey or newscaster, on the opposite side the control panels, faced the picture window and, therefore, anyone coming in the front door or loitering in the reception area.
Curtains in the control room could be pulled shut if the DJ didn’t feel like being sociable. It was weird. I suppose the arrangement was so the disc jockey could see any artist coming for an interview enter the station and could wave excitedly, setting the celebrity at ease. The curtains were usually open, allowing everyone some sort of contact.
I usually worked from around four o’clock in the afternoon till midnight, and frequently, I was the only one there.
But on one particular night, Lorna was hanging out to do some catch-up projects and needed to be in the control room. She said she would just do the DJ stuff until she finished with her other work.
So I waited my turn, watching TV in the reception area. I heard Lorna say on air that she would be right back with the news after a commercial break.
Unfortunately, at that moment, my ADHD kicked into overdrive. I glanced at the receptionist’s desk. My eyes landed on an extensive array of pencils and pens methodically organized by color and length.
I have no idea what came over me, but the next thing I knew, I was crouched down outside the picture window with a pencil stuck into every possible facial orifice I could find. I waited until Lorna was about a minute into the newscast before I slowly raised my head into view. I looked something like this:
I don’t know. Maybe slightly reminiscent of a character in Hellraiser. At any rate, the ultimate reaction far outdid my initial hopes.
Lorna, the quintessential professional, never wavered in her ability to keep her composure on air. She kept reading the news as though she were a nightly news anchor—for about a minute. Then there was an arduously, painstakingly long pause that ended with a button click going straight into a commercial for Joyce Landorf’s newest book, ironically titled Your Irregular Person.
Lorna flew out of the control room, alternating every fifteen seconds between howling laughter and attempts at professional anger. Howling laughter won out in the end. It always does. I think she gave up trying to do any work, and we just sat around and talked for another hour between taped sermons and commercials. Bonding comes in a lot of forms. It was a good night.
I’m usually a bit anxious in the moments before I actually go in for the kill with my practical rascality. I guess I hope it ends up as a good story rather than with me in jail or sporting a black eye.
WWGM was one of the first stations to connect to cable. The format changed so that we went off the air nightly at 7:00 p.m. and switched over to cable. I was a little miffed about that. I was the night person. In order to hear the station at night, you were required to have a cable hookup at your house, and you paid for the cable service. As much as the gospel artists were loved, who in his or her right mind was willing to pay for a cable hookup to listen to a gospel AM radio station? Realistically, at that time, the prelude to the techno era, no one did.
One night—I don’t know what came over me—I cued up an hour-long reel-to-reel tape of a popular pastor who sounded remarkably like Linus’s school teacher, Miss Othmar. I wasn’t listening. I went to the reception area and started watching a documentary called The Secrets of the Baobab Tree.
I was frustrated. I saw the evening as a waste of time. When the reel-to-reel had almost finished, I went in and, out of spite, cued up “Stubborn Love” by Kathy Troccoli.
I’d been strictly forbidden to play that particular song, even though it was off Kathy’s first album. Apparently, the song didn’t actually say the word God anywhere in it, so it didn’t meet station’s standards.
Anyway, I cued it up. As soon as the pastor said, “Good night,” I came on with a couple of commercials. Then I said—and it was like an out-of-body experience—“When we come back from the commercial break, we are going to have a huge contest, so stay tuned.”
My mind raced as I thought of the possible ramifications of what I was about to do. But somehow, I felt the punishments would be worth it and would be wholly justified.
After the break, I went on air and set up the colossal event. “Okay. Let’s do an instant contest. When you hear the brand-new hit single by Kathy Troccoli called ‘Stubborn Love,’ be the first person to call into the station, and you’re going to win a huge prize! You’re going to completely own WWGM radio! Yes, it’s true. If you’re the first person to call in, this station is yours! Just come into the station Monday morning. We will have all the contracts ready, and you just put your John Hancock next to the space marked with an x, and you’ll own your very own gospel radio station.”
Then I went to some commercials and a couple of songs. My palms were sweating as I waited to release the play button. I took a deep breath, and I don’t think I inhaled for the next four minutes and thirty-seven seconds.
I released the stop-latch button.
“Stubborn Love” started.
I sat there with my eyes glued to the push-button phone, with all five yellow buttons for outside lines blankly staring back at me.
It seemed like forever. Obviously, no one was going to call after the first two minutes of the song. I let my breath out with a long whoosh. I got up and threaded the next fifteen-minute pastor reel-to-reel on the spindles.
As the song slowly began its last chorus, I looked at my watch and knew there were only about thirty seconds left. No one, of course, was listening. Point made.
Then, at four minutes and twenty-seven seconds, the first line lit up. There was no sound from the phone in the control booth, in case someone called while we were on the air. But it was there. The unmistakable steady blink of the silent yellow light was deafeningly loud to my psyche.
I felt every pump of blood as it drained out of my head, into my face, and down into my chest cavity, rendering me incapable of any rational thought. My brain no longer functioned as it swirled somewhere around the center of Dante’s third level of hell. You know what they say happens just before someone dies. I saw my third-grade class.
My mouth went completely dry as I picked up the receiver and choked out, “Hello. This is WWGM radio. How may I help you?”
After a slight pause, the guy on the other end of the line said, “Uh, isn’t this Pizza Hut?”
My body, which moments before had been a two-by-four plank of fear, slowly became a massive pile of poured-out, gelatinous flesh. I sank into and became one with the cushioned seat of my swivel chair. I choked out, “No, this is a radio station. And by the way, it’s eleven o’clock. Pizza Hut closes at ten.” The phone went dead.
I must have sat there for a good fifteen minutes in the silence before I realized it was, in fact, silent. I’d never pushed the button to start the next reel-to-reel pastor.
But then again, who cared? Nobody was listening. No one!
