WMAK

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 WMAK was WKDA"s biggest competitor in the 1960's. It would finally become the top rock & roll station in the late 1960's. Coyote McCloud would be a popular DJ there. The thing that I remember most about WMAK were their request lines. There were four or five lines if I remember right and they were always busy. Over the busy signal you could hear girls and boys talking and if you were lucky could get a girls telephone number. It was a chat room before computers. I was very shy and I didn't ask for that many numbers. This was about 1965 just before I met Debbie. I managed to get the number of a girl that had one of the sexiest voices I ever heard. We arranged to meet one afternoon and I found out that she lived on West Greenwood Avenue near my Aunt Catherine and Uncle Doug. They lived right across the street from Hattie Cotton Elementary School. Her parents were also my customers on my paper route.

  As I rode my bike toward her house I saw her standing in her front yard and it dawned on me who she was. I just kept right on peddling past her house as fast as I could go. Being a typical teenage boy let's just say that she was too much woman for me. Then I met Brenda who I can say was my first real girlfriend. She was in the old Memorial Hospital on Due West Avenue when I managed to get her number on the request lines. She had surgery to remove a cyst from her leg. I rode the bus from near Eastland Baptist Church on Gallatin Road to Due West Avenue. From Gallatin Road I walked all the way over to the hospital to meet her. Then I walked all the way back to Gallatin Road that night. We began dating after that. Every weekend I would walk all the way from our house on McKennie to her house near the Inglewood Theater and walk to the theater from there. Then I would take her home and walk back to my house. As I said I was shy and I could not bring myself to kiss her. We dated like this for weeks and with every ounce of courage I could muster I leaned over and kissed her one night. The next day she broke up with me. That was an ego crusher. I met Debbie shortly after this and as they say, the rest is history.

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