Exploding Radio

I was sitting on the balcony of my apartment looking out over Biscayne Bay looking toward the city of Miami.  It was a beautiful calm night in the autumn of 1973 and all across the Florida landscape, the city lights shimmered across the water.

Suddenly, what looked like a flash of lightning lit up the eastern sky and an entire portion of the city went black. An explosion at a transformer station knocked out the power. Shortly after, another explosion happened at a transformer station in another part of the city. The electricians union was on strike and some weird things were happening all across the power grid.

At WMYQ, the station where I worked, the power went off, and then surged on again.  The surge was so powerful that it fried much of the sensitive electronic equipment.  The ballasts in the florescent light fixtures started exploding – the one positioned over the on-air console started dripping hot oil right into the main control board.  WMYQ’s studios were ruined.

The station needed to stay on the air.  But with no studio to do the show, what could be done?  A long-distance telephone line was quickly hooked up to the KCBQ production studio, Bartel’s sister station 2300 miles away in San Diego. What listeners heard for the next few days was truly astounding. They heard a 100,000 watt stereo powerhouse FM station with a poor quality mono telephone signal. Shotgun Tom Kelly and other KCBQ jocks were playing nothing but The Beatles and The Stones.

 Listen to WMYQ broadcast from San Diego

Soon after the equipment was repaired at WMYQ and the station was broadcasting, a power outage occurred at competitor Y100’s studios.  In a similar way, Y100 had to go to the transmitter to broadcast.  What listeners heard on Y100 was a record player with a microphone positioned in front of the speaker.  When music was playing, we could hear the hum of the transmitter and people talking in the background.  When the song ended, the deejay picked up the microphone and talked while he fumbled getting the next record on the turntable.  Then, we heard the needle drop and the deejay would put the microphone in front of the speaker. 

South Florida radio listeners certainly got to hear some wild radio on these two competitive radio stations. Eventually, the electrician’s union strike was settled and the electric grid settled back down and the calm returned to the city skyline over Biscayne Bay.

Making The Donuts

You’ve heard of the Candy Man; I was the “Donut Man.” I learned the secret in making the best cake donuts when I was a teenager.

Our family business was restaurants. One of my Dad’s places was The Patio in the college town of Westminster, Maryland. The Patio was the place where students from Western Maryland College congregated at night and ordered pizza and submarine sandwiches. During the day, families came for hamburgers, French fries, fried chicken and thick milkshakes. 

Sunday was donut day. It seemed as if everyone in Westminster came to The Patio to order a dozen hot donuts to take home on Sunday after church. While I helped out all over the restaurant working the grill, making pizzas and manning the counter, my main role was to make the donuts on Sunday morning.

I’d get started before the sun came up loading up the commercial Hobart mixer with the ingredients to make the Patio’s famous cake donuts. I had the recipe down to a science and knew just the right amount of each of the ingredients to make the dough just the right consistency.

The fryer was a large, shallow unit with a mesh tray at the bottom. I would load up the fryer with vegetable shortening and heat it up. The oil needed to be at just the right heat to make the perfect donut.

The dough was loaded into a large cone-shaped unit that I could swing right above the top of the hot oil. It had a crank on it that allowed me to drop perfectly measured rings of dough into the hot oil.  I could quickly fill the entire fryer with these dough rings. When the underside was golden brown, I would flip each one over as they bobbed in the oil. Once the other side was golden brown, I would lift the tray of the entire set of donuts and let them drain.

 

What started as a flat ring of dough floating in the hot oil was now a plump, golden brown delicious cake donut.

The secret to creating a great donut is getting the frosting on while the donut is still hot. This allows the frosting to melt right onto the hot donut. The frosting also has to be the right consistency so that it will evenly spread over the hot donut. When I pulled out one tray of donuts from the fryer, I would start the next load frying and then would go about the process of putting icing and toppings on the hot donuts.

The Patio is gone. The building on Route 140 as you enter Westminster is now occupied by an insurance office. But the scent of the Patio’s donuts still wafts just down to road to the State Highway Patrol office. Those officers were some of our most loyal customers.

My job at The Patio got me my first job in radio. But that’s another story for later.

If you are a cake donut fan, here’s an inside scoop about cake donuts in Portland. The wildly popular Voodoo Donuts, where the line of customers can stretch around the block, is moving. They will be taking over the space that was Berbati’s Pan at the corner of 3^rd and Ankeny. That will give them more space and a bigger kitchen to handle the demand. They’ve got the process of making great cake donuts down. 

I’ll take mine with chocolate icing and rainbow sprinkles.

Hammer Head

 

I’m ten years old, in my bed after bringing in the New Year at midnight when a dark shadowy figure emerges from the hallway raising a hammer high in the air ready to strike me. 

 

Our annual New Year’s Eve tradition was to open all the windows and doors at midnight, go out on the porch and bang on pots and pans, blow noisemakers and generally make a huge racket.  Other neighbors came out on their porches to see what all the racket was about and joined in wishing everyone a new year. 

Our noises were not just about a celebration of bringing in the New Year, but rather a Greek tradition that was passed down through the generations to let the evil spirits out of the house and scare them away with loud noises.

After bringing in the New Year, we would cut into the Vasilopita (St. Basil Bread).  The bread would be covered with coins and money and ornaments from the tree.  There was a shot glass of whiskey on the bread, which my Dad would joyously partake of.  Inside the bread, there was a coin baked right into the loaf. 

My Dad would cut the bread into pieces.  A piece would be assigned to each of the family members, the business, our automobiles, relatives, with the biggest piece set aside for God to thank him for the many blessings in our lives.  We would anxiously eat our bread looking carefully for the coin baked into it.  Whoever received the coin in their piece was assured a year of good luck.

What does all of this have to do with the shadowy figure swinging a hammer in the middle of the night?  It turns out that one tradition that was passed down in our family from my yiayia and pappou (grandmother and grandfather) had to do with a hammer, holy water and a pomegranate.  Supposedly, the tradition goes back to Byzantine times.  Mom would creep into our room in the middle of the night, hit us on the head with the hammer sprinkling holy water and proclaiming “Σιδηρούν Κεφάλι!” (Iron Head!)

 

It could be why I am such a hard head about things.

Happy New Year.  Χρόνια Πολλά!