A DJ Christmas-R

It's Christmas Eve, 1969 and I've got to work the midnight to 6AM shift at the radio station. I don't really want to work the shift. I'd rather be at home in bed awaiting Christmas morning with my family, but this is the shift I've been working for the passed few months. It's the shift of the low man on the dj totem pole of radio. It's my second year in a row to be on the air at Christmas. This shift's going to be a real bore, playing the same songs over and over again, maybe six or seven times in the six hour shift. In country & western music, there aren't that many versions of the Christmas songs and listeners just tuning in will want to hear their favorite song, which means some songs may be played eight or nine times. I settle down in my chair, surrounded by my tools of the trade. There are two seventeen inch turntables on either side of me, a stack of three audio cart machines to the left of the turntables on my right, a good size control board in front of me with a microphone dangling in the middle. LP albums and 45rpm records are all over the place.  Beyond this "U" shaped set up, is the news room where news is written and broadcast.  There's a manual typewriter, a microphone and a teletype machine. The teletype machine is the station's link to the Associated Press and furnishes state, national, and international news. It's like a big electric typewriter in a big black box and is connected by telephone wire to the AP's Dallas bureau. When there's news, the machine types on a big roll of paper. The newsman will pull the stories for direct airing or rewrite them. And there's a bell inside that dings when something important is being sent down such as breaking news or a weather alert. So, here I am. A cup of coffee and a pack of cigarettes and my first four records on the turntables, ready for the network news to end and my show to begin. The show starts and I'm getting into the music. It's going smooth. Then, about one, the teletype goes crazy! The bell is dinging, but it's not a normal ring. I figure there's a problem, but it's going to have to wait for a while. I've got a show to do. It stops, but a few minutes later, it starts again! There seems to be a pattern and I listen as it goes "ding-ding-ding,,ding-ding-ding,,ding-ding-ding-ding-ding". I go in the news room and the machine is printing the words to "Jingle Bells". Okay, that's fun, but it starts again every fifteen minutes or so, typing out another song and sometimes making figures with "X's",,,Christmas trees, snowflakes, Santa, wreaths, ornaments. Well, I start telling my listeners about what's going on and I get a flood of phone calls accusing me of having too much Christmas "cheer" before I came to work or I'm high on something. It got so bad that I turned the microphone on in the news room to let my listeners hear it to prove it's really happening. I called the AP and asked they guy there what the H,,l was going on. He asks if I there by myself. Yeah. So is he. And it seems the world has stopped making news and he got bored and decided to send the songs down the line. Well, it continued the rest of the shift. A little bit of Christmas for the all-night dj's, spending Christmas Eve alone. Not as bad a Christmas as I had expectd. Thanks to a lonely guy in Dallas.(You can see the studio in my photo section.)