If you have read my blogs over the years, you know this already. But, if you recently stumbled upon PingWi-Fi.com, I’m just saying, I luvs me sum road trip!
I attribute this to spending hours and hours and hours on a farm tractor as a kid — lots of driving, but no sightseeing. To pass the time I always had a radio blasting rock ‘n’ roll. That accounts for my music thang …
It was in my tractor-driving youth that I won my first radio contest. It was quite silly. Back in the day, there was a nas-tay little novelty song about “The Telephone Man” — who had it going on with all of his customers … There was a suggestive lyric about “tell me where you want it and I’ll put it where I can.” Capitalizing on that “hit,” the biggest radio station in that part of Texas hosted a contest to give away a telephone: “Tell us why the telephone man should give you a new phone and where you would put it …”
Like I said, I had too much time to think on the old behemoth, 4-wheel-drive Case tractor, and I heard that radio contest promo over and over.
Taking on the great minds of a nearby city of 100,000 — as a teenage farmboy — I won the contest.
The winning entry? I told the judges that I should win the telephone and that I would “put the telephone in the bathroom, because the Tidy Bowl Man ran my answering service, when I was in the shower.” (Remember the old Tidy Bowl Man commercials, where the little guy in a boat was cruising around in the toilet tank? … Prolly not.) Based on the guerrilla branding advice of my Mom — too make sure my entry stood out — I pasted together a photo of a toilet, with a phone chord rising up out of the bowl and scribbled my weird idea and mailed it.
I am not kidding. It won.
No, of course the tractor didn’t have Wi-Fi. But I had AM/FM and a two-way radio. My mom hailed me on the two-way to let me know I won and that the radio station wanted to interview me.
I will never forget … the tractor was noisy, so the two-way radio was always turned all the way up — yet usually silent when no one was talking on it. So when my mom blurted out that I won … the sudden radio blast of her voice about scared the hell out of me … I almost jumped out of the cab … I digress.
After winning, the next challenge was to find the most expensive phone available back in the day, because the radio station offered to just give me a blank check. Of course I found the most expensive phone in some catalog, and then used the money to buy my first stereo.
Ha … the radio station ran a commercial for a couple of weeks, about my winning entry. Each time they announced my name, there was a sound effect of a toilet flushing in the background. I guess any publicity is good publicity, right?
To this day, there is an old friend from a neighboring town who still remembers and always mentions that I won that contest — because he heard it on the radio, while he was driving the tractor.
Recently, I won another radio contest. WKQK in Memphis asked an easy trivia question about Devo — you know the band that did “Whip it, whip it good.” Piece of cake … I mean, I had just interviewed the lead singer of Devo a few months earlier for this blog.
My running buddy these days, Steve — another guy on the disaster team here in post-flood Memphis as the “Dirty Gig” continues — dialed the phone while I drove to work. (I support this blog and my travels by doing disaster recovery work, which I affectionately refer to as the “Dirty Gig.”) An easy victory … but more importantly, an opportunity.
Here in Memphis, the KQK radio host asked me how I knew the answer, which of course turned into a publicity pitch for the PWF blog. (I need to get the radio clip to put in the “media hits” PR file …) Media Relations 101 — keep an ear to the ground and seize opportunity, instead of beating your head against a wall and burying reporters with press releases. I digress …
KQK … 94.1 FM in Memphis — by the way — is a great classic rock station … which obviously includes a wide variety of music these days. I found it soon after arriving in Memphis … Hopefully, I can persuade the morning team of Conley & Karen to follow @PingWiFi on Twitter …
So “show the viewers what he’s won.”
Ha … I won 4 tickets to KC & The Sunshine Band by answering a trivia question about Devo! Now there’s some musical diversity — disco meets spud rock. Side note: I never had a chance to pick up the tickets … but being the stealthy blogger that I am … yes … I got inside the concert anyway. Special thanks to Brad Carson of KQK too.
The KC & Memphis Symphony show was the finale of Memphis In May … a great month of barbecue, athletic events and music … more on that later.
Lastly … I put an update on Facebook about my plans to actually attend a DISCO concert — not exactly my cup of tea. An old friend commented on my Facebook post that she had seen KC&TSB … Here’s the irony. She is the sister-in-law of that guy who always recalls the day I won my first radio contest — The Telephone Man.
Life is such a circle.
And now, after all these years, I can say for the record that I have seen KC & The Sunshine Band playing with the Memphis Symphony under the stars on the banks of the mighty Mississippi River. That’s blog-able. (I will post more photos here and on Facebook…)
Know what I sayin?
