Back in the phenomenal year of 1974 at one of the cross roads of my life I wanted to be able to combine my love of trucking and life on the road with my love of media and radio. In the fall of that year I met over the CB of course a enterprising youth from Twin Falls who with some help of others had put together a teens CB radio club. In the summer of 1975 I approached my Dad with the concept of constructing a group of teens who wanted to go trucking and wanted to know the reality of that world rather than just the view they saw on TV, or movies. There were many then the 1973 Arab oil pinch along with a mandatory 55 MPH speed limit brought trucking to the big screen. However I knew this was not the real world of trucking. So my Dad took me to see the Gooding County Extension office director to see if a 4-H club could be put together for those teens driving farm trucks. In the spring of 1996 at the OxBow Cafe in Bliss Idaho, what would be called the TeenAge Truckers Association was born. However in the summer of 1977 with prodding of so many head shrinks and others, my Dad and Mom reluctantly had my butt at a gifted youth place in Lewiston Idaho. My other cousin Jeneen lived there albeit through a troubled marriage, but I was able to put my ideas together there. I discovered a high school radio station in Lewiston that allowed me 1 hour a day to be on the air. Through that I learned about such trucking radio pioneers like Bill Mack, Charlie Douglas and Dave Nimo to name a few and I thought what about bringing that out west, where no trucker radio had been based before. So that same high school radio station was selling radio gear. Dad bought most of it, and under the banner of the TeenAge Truckers Association KDSL FM 89.1 out of Hazzard Idaho went on the air. In the April of 1978 my Dad passed away and I got my first(and only) Tow truck. So I put the radio thing on the back burner. It was not until just after my mom passed away in 1983 that the TeenAge Truckers Association became the United American Independent Truckers Association and needed a voice. So KDSL(short for Kay-Diesel) moved up the radio dial to FM 105.1 and became officially KTOW FM 105. A local big station in Twin Falls heard what we were doing and decided to give our program Dixie Diesel a run through what's called in radio syndication. No body had done on any radio program we were doing. Talking NASCAR, talking personal relationship advice through DR. Ruth and so on, but we did it. Soon after many radio people in trucker radio began copying what we were doing but remember we did it first. It wasn't until a slightly larger radio station in Salt Lake City and a guy by the name of Country Joe saw some real value and money making possibilities to Dixie Diesel. In June of 1993 Dixie Diesel became its own trucker radio network. It was just shortly after that , that my marriage to Jan, and a few other things made me for a short while give the command of Dixie Diesel Radio to some others who purtty much ran it into the ground. But the thing had real zip and life in it. Now in 2008 we are reigniting Dixie Diesel not just on radio but also on TV. And to put it simply, Dixie Diesel Trucker Radio is, Trucking radio done Hazzard style, meaning fight the system and not hearing what others say but doing it our way. Soon Dixie Diesel will be streaming over the internet and its flagship station should be on in April of 2009. In 2010 Hazzard County/Dixie Diesel Kountry TV will begin on not as just a weekly TV show as it is now, but its own TV station and the base of a world-wide truckers/rural based community TV satellite and cable network. Where will home plate be? That in my next entry.
Keep it tween the ditches
| Zephaniah 3:17“The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.” Brought to you by BibleGateway.com. Copyright (C) NIV. All Rights Reserved. |
