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Rock n' Roll Radio Adventures: The Great Emu Caper

Don't say I didn't warn you. Two weeks ago, I threatened to reveal some of the things a collective of truly inventive and somewhat insane group of fun loving, young people did to attract an audience of their peers to KTKT, a powerful AM radio station in Tucson, Arizona. 

They did it by providing free music that the young people wanted and performing stunts - mostly for their own amusement. I quickly learned that the most nonsensical things caused the greatest commotion.  

Looking back some 50 years or so, I now realize that their elders and casual listeners must have feared that anarchists had seized control of a radio frequency. 

I'm not referring only to the music. In less than one decade, "popular music," had gone through a wrenching process. Teenagers were no longer buying recordings by Benny Goodman. Suddenly, it was Fats Domino doing "The Twist," all day and all night. 

I never will forget going at the time into a huge record emporium in Chicago and being told that they didn't sell "Race Records." By then, a lot of young white boys and white girls were practicing a new brand of music in the garage, when mom and dad weren't home. It just happened.

So, it also happened that some absentee owners sent this 33 - year old guy who had three years experience in "Top-40" radio to ride herd on the feistiest group of air personalities in all 50 states. I soon found that no seat belt was durable enough for the ride I was given. 

I hadn't been in town for a few days before the emu went missing from a big cage in front of the Tidelands Hotel, a hip, swanky place just three blocks from the bustling center of downtown Tucson. That's where all of the department stores and major everything were. Day and night, there was hardly room on the sidewalks for pedestrians. 

An emu is a slightly smaller, flightless bird related to the ostrich and is native to Australia. The first thing I remembered seeing when I came to Tucson was this exotic creature looking at me eye-to-eye. It was in a 30-foot diameter cage covered with palm fronds between the front entrance of the Tidelands "Motor Inn" and the sidewalk of Tucson's main drag. By coincidence, the new owners of KTKT had booked me into the Tidelands until I could arrange for a home for my wife and two children. 

I went to work one morning without noticing that the emu cage was empty. When I walked in the door of the radio station, I immediately felt that the atmosphere was supercharged. Later I learned to recognize this suggestion of kinetic energy, for it happened often. 

The staff was waiting for me. Even personalities who were not scheduled to go on the air for hours were there. Somehow, the Disk Jockey and News Director for the early morning shift  had learned from local police sources of the missing emu and the creative juices were flowing. The audience had been fully engaged in the matter prior to my arrival that morning. 

I quickly learned that I had been elected to call the manager of the Tidelands and make an offer. Everything had been arranged. Jerry Stowe, then still an airman at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, had been moonlighting as a D.J. on KTKT. Somehow the commandant of the base had been persuaded to arrange for a furlough (Jerry had only a few days left to serve) and Jerry had agreed to replace the emu, until the emu could be found or another one located. 

Now, I know how George W. Bush must have felt when the Director of the C.I.A. told him that Hussein definitely had WMDs. I bought into the plan,, lock, stock and radio license. Weeks later, I wondered why I had not asked the question: "How is the emu going to be replaced?"

Dear reader: If you must have a tattoo, make it two words: "End Game," or perhaps, "Exit Strategy." 

When I told the manager of the Tidelands that we could be broadcasting around the clock from the emu cage, he was ecstatic. He never asked me how we were going to replace the emu. "Just think of the publicity," was what he was thinking. I later came to realize that he had not cleared this "promotion" with the owner, a rather reticent type. 

When Jerry Stowe entered the emu cage, the campuses of every school and the University of Arizona were suddenly empty. For blocks in every direction it was like the mob scene from the movie "Ben Hur."  People brought Jerry every possible thing you would expect; food, electric blankets (It was November), bedding, and many things you would not expect, such as pets. This went on continually, around the clock. 

One evening, after we were into it for a few days, an entire frat house arrived in hula-hula skirts and arranged for a luau. Aloha, The Universe! Where is our emu?

Well, if it is gone forever, we'll just buy another. We found out very soon that far too few emus were for sale. I called the Australian Consulate - the nearest being in San Francisco, and was told that there was little chance of getting one from Aussie-land. Try the zoos there, we were told,  but it might be months before one arrived. A search in the USA revealed that we had about as great a chance of getting a Dodo - long believed to be extinct. 

Yes, there was plenty of ostriches available, but that would be cheating; false advertising. It had to be an emu. 

Then, we were informed that Stowe was beginning to suffer from sleep deprivation. Gee, never though of that!  I went to talk to Jerry and he was sleeping soundly - on his feet. Babbling nonsense. Oh, that was scary. What if it left a permanent scar on his psyche? (It didn't.) Jerry later became the proprietor of a very successful record store, after becoming a star on the air. 

The manager of the Tidelands was getting desperate. Guests were staying away from the hullabaloo in droves. Plus the ownership, alleged to be a person of obscure foreign extraction, was not excited about the excess of deeply personal publicity. It was suggested in no uncertain terms that I should pull the plug on the promotion. I dreamed often afterwards of owning a pair of concrete shoes - how odd.

It was coincidental that an informant told a friend in the Tucson Police Department who told me that the emu had been snatched by some members of a U. of A. fraternity, but in subduing the poor bird, it became so stressed that it collapsed and died while in their vehicle.

When I took this news to the Tideland's Manager and spoke in terms of restitution, he said to just Forgetaboutit! 

So, I did, until now. 

73,

-Phil Richardson, Observer and Story Teller.

PS: Many who made up the KTKT audience and participated in the nonsense are now grandparents. Some are doctors, lawyers and maybe a few are Indian Chiefs.


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