Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2021 18:17:18 -0700
From: Boris Chen <borischenaz@gmail.com>
Subject: Response Team Chapter 16 (Revised)

Chapter 16.

As we drove past the parking lot gate arm David said he would handle things
at our office, I parked near the door but left the motor running while he
grabbed the cases and letters and walked quickly inside. He came back empty
handed five minutes later with a worried look on his face. He told me it
was Lieutenant Evans at the desk. He said he slid the Tylenol bottle to the
end of the counter and set down the cases and the letters, turned, and
walked out, never gave him a chance to say anything.

"He had nothing to say?" I asked.

"Well yes, but he was on the phone so I smiled and set down the items and
walked out before he could hang-up." David said with a snicker in his
voice.

We left the employee lot and stopped at a 7-11 on the way down Airway
Boulevard to I-10 and got more bottled waters and some beef jerky and that
officially started our next big adventure. After he got back in the car he
reached in his pocket and pulled out the little box that linked our
Whispernet implants! He said if they called he'd tell them we lost it
somewhere in Mexico, besides it wouldn't work with anyone else's implants.

On the road to I-10 David said our security clearances were probably being
revoked right this second, then we both laughed. We took sips of water and
turned up the radio a little.

Eastward Ho!

With the cruise control set for 80mph on I-10 and a goal of making it to
Fredericksburg we'd stop there for several hours of sleep. That town was
seven hours, two pit stops, and 500 miles away. Our first stop would be
roughly half-way across the huge state of Texas. And that would put us at
the very eastern edge of the Chihuahua Desert too. East of Fredericksburg
we enter brush country, the southern end of the Great Plains. It gets
greener all the way to Louisiana, Cajun Country.

David spent about half an hour closely examining the Whispernet box to see
if we might be able to make it work at home with a variable DC power
supply. As far as we knew it was a stand-alone device that never used
satellite comms, and he said it ran on +5V DC, there were no external
buttons or adjustments, just apply power and stay within range. It had no
other connections or buttons or anything, except an antenna connector and
the power cord.

I asked him how he removed it and he said inside the airport he stopped in
a bathroom and ripped it out of the case and stuffed it in his back pocket,
accidentally.

----

A bit east of Cattleman's Steakhouse near I-10 I remembered something, "Oh
oh, what was the frequency for that religious radio station" I asked.

"They're off the air, two years now."

"I know, I know, I want to see what else is on that channel." I explained.

"Uh... I think it was 670am, I think."

I turned the radio to AM and turned the knob to 670 and heard a faint trace
of a human voice way off in the distance, but that was all. David said it
sounded like Spanish. We could barely make out parts of words here and
there. I also tuned to the adjacent channels (660 and 680) and they were
pretty quiet too, but the sun was still up. We heard KSL (1160) from Utah
and KFI (640) from Los Angeles, of course the stations in El Paso were
still booming in and a few from Juarez too (600, 690, 1150, and 1520 in
Juarez).

----

That night we arrived at a hotel on the interstate (11:05pm) and got a
room. We slept until 9am and stopped for burgers at BK in Boerne, Texas
just outside of San Antonio, then got back on the road while slurping fake
BK shakes. Our next stop would be Houston, possibly to spend the night. We
always chuckled about Houston because it was the location our modified cell
phone GPSs sent to the cell towers that we were constantly driving around
the 610-Loop 24/7.

We stopped at a nice looking hotel with a restaurant on the Loop early to
get one night of proper sleep. After we got our room David was on the phone
talking to the engineer and the broker. He told them we'd arrive in
Deweyville, Texas tomorrow at noon and wanted to tour the radio station and
see documents relating to former licensure, maintenance, and
utilities. They both agreed to meet us at the Stateline Diner which was a
few miles down the street from the station.

This part of Texas looked so totally different from El Paso it was hard to
believe it was the same state.

----

We left early the next day for Beaumont, Texas and then Deweyville. The
three hundred foot wide Sabine River marked the border between Texas and
Louisiana, it was muddy and fast like a junior version of the Mississippi,
we immediately noticed the slower pace of life and the accents were
different the closer we got to Louisiana. The number of churches we saw
also increased. In south Houston it was BBQ shops at every traffic light
but here it was small churches. Many looked like homes converted into
houses of worship.

The restaurant we were going to was two hours east of Houston, where I-10
crossed into Louisiana then north ten miles was the area we were
going. That entire area was having hard economic times, part of the reason
why the radio station shut down two years ago. And the trees were totally
different compared to 50 miles west of Houston. We also noticed in this
area the way to pronounce Houston changed, in the city the H in Houston was
silent, they called it You-stin.

We found the Stateline Diner on Highway-12 in Deweyville and met the two
men to tour 670khz, KYAZ-AM, a former power house Christian radio station
on the AM band with a huge coverage area. He showed us a map created in an
airplane of the signal pattern prior to their shut down two years ago that
put most of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi in the daytime
footprint with enough signal to make it sound like a local station on car
radios and portables inside homes. The station had been used as a direction
finding beacon for a (defunct) nearby Army Airbase for bombers patrolling
the Gulf of Mexico for German subs during the 1940s. That's why it was
licensed with such a powerful signal, so it covered the entire Gulf of
Mexico and most of the Caribbean day and night. An article I read about the
station said they had listeners in Columbia and all the way up to Iceland
and over to Barrow, Alaska too.

The tower site was on Highway-12 between Deweyville, Texas and Starks,
Louisiana, about two miles east of the river on a patch of high
ground. This place was so heavily wooded all there was to see on Highway-12
was trees, water, and super tall utility poles. The entrance to the
property was just a weed covered gravel driveway that disappeared into the
dense trees, you couldn't even see the tower from the road, might see the
tower lights at night. It looked like nobody had been here in months.

We turned onto the soft gravel driveway and stopped near a tall chain link
gate with barbed wire along the top, he said it sort of dispelled the rumor
that Texas was isolated from the national power grid because here was but
one example of how that wasn't true. He pointed to the super tall wood
power poles with three sets of thick wires that ran along the highway. I
heard them hiss and crackle from the humidity and the high voltage.

He unlocked the gate and we walked onto a large field about one hundred
yards on each side. Outside the fence was nothing but odd looking trees,
tall weeds, and standing water. Inside the fence was grass and weeds. The
standing water outside the property was about twelve feet below the ground
inside the fence. The property looked man-made because it was perfectly
square and level.

The five hundred foot steel tower proudly stood in the center, brightly
painted red and white with guy wires that ran down to fenced-in anchors. At
the bottom of the tower sat a large steel box on stilts. The transmitter
building sat near the gate and looked like a steel shipping container
(painted white) they set on a steel platform with welded wide steel stairs
outside the windowless door. The box by the tower and the transmitter
building sat almost six feet above the ground. The entire site looked very
hurricane proof, I saw nothing but steel.

He said the steel box beside the tower contained the antenna matching
unit. There was a thick black pipe that ran (8ft above the ground on poles)
from the transmitter building to the matching unit shed. The realtor dude
unlocked the wide steel door and swung it all the way open until it latched
fully back.

We climbed the steps and went inside the building and saw four wide metal
cabinets, a small work bench, and simple light bulbs screwed into ceramic
fixtures on the ceiling. Each cabinet was connected to a vent tube that ran
to a heat exchanger mounted on the wall.

He turned on a flashlight to show us the equipment. David took dozens of
photos with his cell. The first thing David wanted to ID was the
transmitter brand and serial number, then he photo'd all the gear in the
racks, front and back. We never saw any signs of bugs or critters inside
the building. The amplifier sections of the transmitter said Continental
Electronics, 100kw, 480v 3ph, serial number 100109. The exciter wasn't
original, it sat in a rack with some other electronics for limiting volume
and for the EAS tones and the modulation monitor.

One of the engineer guys said these three big cabinets were amplifiers, the
part that made the actual signal was a small box called an exciter, then he
pointed it out. It was marked Harris. He said the exciter was new in the
1980s. There was another box that controlled the entire machine so it could
operate in stages and had switching to route the signal to the tower from
different sections of amplifier because some AM stations reduced power at
night. He said it would be like varying the speed of an airplane by how
many jet engines they ran.

Looking inside the cabinets we saw huge glass vacuum tubes in the final two
amp sections. They sat inside perforated aluminum boxes with heavy black
cables running to a cap on the top. In the bottom were several large
transformers and bundles of big capacitors. This was the part of the
transmitter that could easily kill a careless repair technician.

"How hard would it be to make this analog stereo?" David asked the
engineer, who was an older guy, overweight, nerdy looking, maybe 45 years
old.

"Well the studio feed they used was a special telephone line, you'd have to
address that but using the internet now the feed from the studio wouldn't
be a problem. You'd have to swap out the exciter but the transmitter and
antenna typically don't need adjustment for that conversion, I'd say about
nine or ten grand to make it C-Quam, Motorola still sells them, they're
gaining in popularity. I hear GM and Toyota will re-start including C-Quam
in all their 2023 model cars with the upgraded entertainment package and as
standard equipment by 2025. But the public really needs to be encouraged to
ask for it. Digital signals on AM were never very popular with the general
public like they were on FM, which wasn't very much because FM sounded fine
to begin with."

As we looked at every square inch inside the transmitter building we saw no
signs of water leakage or damage of any kind, the broker said the old owner
was `religious' about maintenance, which was part of why they turned it off
and put it up for sale. They switched to internet distribution instead." We
chucked at his pun. David searched closely and said he never saw even a
single spider web or ant on the floor.

I asked the engineer, "So there's digital on AM and FM, right?"

"Yes, basically what they do is use part of the channels above and below to
send digital data which the radio decodes into multiple audio channels. If
you transmit HD on 670am the digital signals are actually on 660 and
680am. HD stands for Hybrid Digital, and on AM it really never worked well
although stations still run it, but sales of AM gear stopped years ago, I
think HD came out in 2003."

David added, "My truck has it but every time I go near a bridge or a tall
building or high voltage power line the radio jumps back and forth between
analog and digital but they're not sync'd so it's like jumping forward or
back thirty seconds in a song. The stupid radio has no setting to shut off
HD. I quit listening to HD AM stations, erased them from my car radio, it
was super annoying. Every time I drove under a bridge during a commercial
you might hear it four times because it kept repeating as the radio jumped
between the signals. 690-am in El Paso runs it and I had to stop listening
because the constant switching back to analog was super annoying."

The engineer told us that since the HD AM signals occupied three channels
if you lived in Austin but wanted to listen to an AM station in Galveston
it might be jammed by a digital signal from Dallas, it's horribly wasteful
of spectrum and offered very little advantage."

He took in a deep breath then explained, "When it first became legal the
company travelled the USA promoting digital radio because it gave the radio
station the ability to flash advertising on every radio touch screen but
once stations started doing it the public was outraged and most stopped
doing it except a few in New York City. That's why all the HD receivers had
big displays so they could flash ads at you, they could even re-program
your station presets. It also gave them two potential medium fidelity sound
channels for secondary radio programs, but regular FM had that all along,
those were the old Muzak signals that played music-only for stores and
shopping malls."

The engineer said he'd heard all the complaints and was glad to see many
stations bought those HD systems then eventually shut them off and went
back to analog stereo AM. Motorola's C-Quam system won the AM stereo war
even though it was far from perfect.

Then he showed me their electric bill from two years ago for one month of
service, May 2019: $6,451.33 to run the AC, the tower lights, and the
transmitter at full power. We looked at each other, then I asked about the
feasibility of adding photovoltaic solar power here and he said its cloudy
for part of almost every day here so that needs to be taken into account,
but yes if someone had the cash they could run this place during the day on
solar, then he suggested wind power might work better than solar only 45
miles from the Gulf but there were obvious engineering problems to overcome
being so close to an AM broadcast tower.

The broker told us, "If I wanted to buy this station I'd form a non-profit
corporation tomorrow. Then I'd apply for the license and an upgrade to
maintain its defacto clear channel status. You see just by coincidence all
the radio stations on this channel went out of business here and in
Canada. With a good FCC lawyer you could snag the rights to this channel
nationwide and with one hundred kilowatts you'd be heard from Iceland to
the Bering Sea, down to Baja and over to Trinidad, but not in Mexico City
because there's a thousand watt station down there on this channel but they
go off the air at night."

David glanced at me again, I knew exactly what he was thinking.

He asked why the station was built on this very rural spot, we saw lots of
farm land for sale east of Houston.

The engineer guy answered that one. "In the USA there are several AM
stations with huge signals that blanket the lower 48 states, most of them,
like WSM in Nashville are only five thousand watts, the reason they perform
so well is the ground under the tower. This ground is wet and with high
iron content it conducts very well. What that does is with the buried
copper wires that run out from the base of the tower it squeezes the radio
signal to keep it focused toward the horizon instead of up into space. This
gives them much better coverage with less power, that's the main reason why
this station was built here." Then he added that this island in the swamp
was built by the Corp of Engineers for the war effort, it`s like two
football fields, 300 feet by 300 feet.

We stepped back outside and noticed the cattails growing beyond the fence
around the property, it really was a Louisiana bayou. We stared up at the
tower again while he the locked the heavy steel door.

We stopped when he said he wanted to show us the platforms beside the
transmitter building. He said they used to have a propane fueled generator
out here for times they had big storms come in off the Gulf and lost power,
they could run the transmitter on the generator for a week with a tank of
propane. The mounts for the propane tank and the generator were sitting
there ready to be used again.

We walked around the side and saw four tall concrete pillars with mounting
bolts on top next to the windowless steel building, and near them sat the
heat pump to cool the huge transmitter, also elevated above the
ground. Even the bolts were greased to prevent rust.

After he took photos they exchanged business cards and David (reluctantly)
gave them his cell number and told them we were also looking into
residential properties. The broker told David he saw a small farm for sale
down the street (on Highway-12) it had ten acres, a barn, and a 1,800
square foot house on a crawl space. He pointed toward the river and said it
was about two miles west of the state line on the right side, look for the
realtor sign.

Then the engineer said the tower was 80 years old and stood through several
major hurricanes without any damage, it was built to last another eighty
years with proper maintenance, then he said it needed painting soon and one
of the tower lights was out. We shook hands and slowly drove back across
the bridge and into Texas.

David called our lawyer in El Paso for a referral to a Washington, DC
lawyer that specialized in complex FCC applications.

Next, we stopped at the farm with the for-sale sign and walked around the
property. It looked like nobody had been there for months, or maybe the
weeds grew fast here, it was hard to tell. We called the realtor on the
sign and he said he'd be right out. While we waited we explored the
property but not back into the trees. The barn was a large pole building
with a dirt floor and signs of lots of oil having leaked from
vehicles. David said it looked like they worked on vehicles in here.

This realtor, also an overweight man with white hair said his grandson was
the former owner, the lost it in bankruptcy last year, he handed us the
printout of the previous inspection (16 mos. ago). It was an 1,800 sq ft
one story home on a crawl space with a four inch well, 1000 gallon septic,
200 amp electrical service, central AC, and the barn had 220v power and
lights, he said it was priced to sell ($105k) and had no termite damage
because it sat too high for termites and the roof was one year old. He
handed David an inspection printout and pointed out the house was built in
1940. It had been through dozens of storms and flooding but was probably
too high to flood inside or in the crawl space.

We toured inside, it smelled musty but was empty, clean, and partly
carpeted. We offered to put money down to have an independent inspection
done this week, he said he could have it done in a day or two, but the last
one only listed the septic field in need of replacement due to age. He said
that was two thousand bucks for a totally new system, and half a day of
backhoe work. He asked where we were from and David said El Paso but we
were originally from the south Houston area.

Then the realtor mentioned the radio station across the state line, some
people didn't like living within four miles of a high power radio station,
if we intended on setting up a recording studio it might be hard to keep
their signal out of the wires, we never mentioned we just toured the radio
station.

Then he asked how we knew each other, where was the rest of the family. I
told him we've been married for eight years. He said he was fine with that,
but he wanted us to be aware the small towns around here were very
religious and had more churches than gas stations and grocery stores
combined. Then he paused briefly and said this was a very Baptist-type
area. He said the churches here filled Sunday mornings from the front to
the back and people ran the aisles waving their hands in the air.

David looked almost upset, and trying to be totally honest the realtor said
that probably the worst that would happen was some of the locals would shun
us, as in look away and not speak to us, but most locals wouldn't
care. Then he said the times have changed and as long as we didn't fly a
rainbow flag in the front yard most people in town wouldn't care what we
did. Then he added, "The only reason I brought it up was I believe in full
disclosure, I'm Jewish and the locals sometimes react to me like my
grandfather killed Jesus!"

We handed him three hundred dollars and got a receipt, he pulled out his
cell and immediately ordered a new inspection. David gave him his phone
number before we left for Houston, a two hour drive to the west.

The house had three bedrooms, two baths, a large central room that was
living-dining-kitchen. The kitchen looked sad and needed lots of work
(cabinets, countertops, and the appliances were gone). There was a utility
room but those appliances were gone too, the water softener and water
heater were there. There was a brick fireplace in the living room, and
carpet in part of the living room and the bedrooms. The master bedroom was
large with plenty of closet space and the master bath was ugly but large,
with a large garden tub but no glass enclosure, just a long curtain
rod. David took dozens of photos. We even opened the crawl space hatch in
the utility room and looked below the floors before we left.

----

We spent that night in Houston because it was after check-out time. We
found a barbecue place near the hotel, which was hard to pass up,
especially because we were both born and raised in this area. We both grew
up with barbecue sauce and pork in our veins. At the pool we split the pork
ribs and half a chicken, then used the pool shower to clean up before we
jumped in the deep end.

----

The next day it was call after call after call, we also talked to a DC
lawyer about licensure, he told us how to get started and we agreed to send
him a Paypal deposit of eight thousand bucks and he'd examine the FCC
record and see if the Commission would re-issue it and allow it to become
stereo and possibly clear channel. He explained the problem with a
hemispheric clear channel meant the FCC could not generate money from other
stations on the same channel if ours claimed it, so it was tricky to pull
off. But with so many AM stations going out of business this might be a
great time to try, but the license fee would always be higher than before
to be to cover the losses, and there would be fees from neighboring
countries to maintain the clear channel status.

That afternoon we checked into a cheaper/smaller hotel in Beaumont with a
pool but no hot tub. We hung out by the pool and bought a case of beers and
more clothes and extended our stay another six nights as inspections and
license research was underway. And talk about a good sign, late that
afternoon a guy drove into the hotel parking lot with a mobile smoker! We
got two half chickens, and extra sauce (his formula) and a huge stack of
paper towels. We were also forced to do two loads of laundry at the hotel's
tiny coin-op.

----

Two days later we got the new house inspection (delivered to us at the
hotel) then toured the farm house again (with the realtor), the barn, and
the rest of the ten acres and told him we were very interested but were
waiting on a business license application before we could say yes. We also
called David's parents to see if we could visit them tomorrow evening,
after dinner, for an hour.

On Thursday morning he called Washington, DC, and David put him on speaker
phone. He laid it out for us and said the station was a go if we wanted it,
with our history of working with the Pentagon that would pass the good
character requirements with the FCC, we'd have to form a corporation, which
was something his paralegal could do quickly (at $300 an hour).  He also
said the change to stereo did not need to be approved by the commission,
only that they be notified by letter after the change.

He said he would negotiate for a lower power level during construction but
it would need to remain licensed at 100kw (to justify the clear channel
request). He explained that the designation of clear channel could only be
obtained if all the other stations in the USA and Canada were gone
(property sold and towers taken down), but that could take weeks to verify,
he said the station in Mexico City was too far away to object. David told
him we would like to go on the air at 500 watts then increase it over time
while we built the station and possibly a green energy power source on the
site. The lawyer said our requests were reasonable and he was confident the
Commission would approve increasing wattage during construction. And he
added that they really wouldn't know about the actual status of the signal
unless someone filed a complaint with the Commission.

He quoted us a price of $25k (we already paid him $8k) for the
representation and said it would take up to three months to finalize
everything but licensure alone should be done within four weeks, it was his
advice to put money down on the station and begin the purchase, he also
said we'd needed to make one appearance in Washington for the clear channel
upgrade application, to sign and bow to a Commissioner (symbolically kiss
the ring). We agreed to everything and got off the phone, we'd been talking
to him for half an hour at $150 bucks every 30 minutes.

Back at the hotel we paid the FCC lawyer again with another Paypal
transfer, we also told the realtor in El Paso to list our house, we'd be
out within a four weeks. Then we had a debate over how to get our stuff out
of El Paso. It was going to be a while until anything significant happened
in Deweyville so I convinced David to fly home and pack our house into a
shipping container and have it delivered here. That meant another 2.5 hour
drive to northern Houston to the airport for a 55 minute flight to El Paso
International.

We hung out at the hotel pool again but tonight it was packed with
screaming kids and their drunk parents. We left early and went to the room,
and spent the rest of the evening with David making a steady dribble of
pre-come directly into my mouth.

----

The next day (Thursday afternoon) we drove down to Texas City to visit
David's parents. They were workin' folks, she worked at a high school
library and he ran a residential/commercial electrical repair shop. Since
it was a work day we agreed to arrive after supper (7pm) for one
hour. David hasn't seen his parents in three years because they've had a
history of sharp edges between them over his sexuality, and now he wanted
to visit with his husband (GASP!). This would be the first time I met them,
but I have talked briefly with his mom over the phone before. He reminded
me most of the problem was between him and his father. He stopped short of
specifics and told me, "You'll see. Within minutes after we get out of the
car you'll see the problem."

----

We found their house after getting lost for a while, he called them while
we were on the way there, he talked to his mother, she laughed that he got
lost in the town where he grew up. David refused to use the GPS and said he
grew up on those streets, he didn't need help, but we got lost anyway. He
said his landmark buildings were gone or different.

We parked my little Toyota sports car in the street in front of their
modest one story suburban brick home and walked up the driveway, his mother
opened the front door and welcomed us inside with hugs. I was surprised by
how olive skinned she was compared to David. She was tiny but his dad was a
big dude, I guessed he was 6'2", maybe 250 pounds of solid displeased
redneck. He shook our hands tightly, until it hurt. I thought to myself,
`so this is how our visit is going to go?'

We sat in the living room and sipped iced tea and talked for half an hour,
he told them we were leaving the DOD and starting a business near Vidor,
his dad injected, "Good, you can go to church with us." But David let that
comment slip knowing our marriage would not be allowed in their apostolic
church. Over time his father got louder, so his mom took command of the
gathering and told us to go look at David's old bedroom.

We walked down the hallway and into what looked like a small office. I had
a hard time picturing David as a small boy in this room. David gestured
towards the living room and rolled his eyes, I smiled back. It was obvious
he was embarrassed and disappointed but not surprised. I remembered all the
times David told me `You don't get to pick your parents.' Before she caught
up with us we heard a rather short and unpleasant conversation between his
parents down the hallway, we heard his mom very sternly say: DON'T more
than once to his dad. Then she joined us in the bedroom, but his dad walked
out the front door. David briefly put his arm over her shoulders and kissed
her cheek, which made her smile and lean into him.

She said his father was selling the company and starting a new business
designing electrical systems in new construction. Watching David and his
mom talk I heard bits of a Native American accent in her voice. This was
the first time I saw them together, she looked happy talking to her only
child who towered over her. The top of her head came to David's neck.

David pulled out his cell while she was talking and noticed we'd reached
the one hour mark and told her we needed to leave, we had a 130 mile drive
back to Beaumont in the dark. We stopped in the hallway to look at a few
photos of him as a kid, and during high school. One of them was him fishing
on the river with no shirt on, I took cell photos of all the pictures.

His mother asked about our red sports car, I told her it was mine, a 2020
Toyota model 86-GT and cost $43k new, we paid cash. She smiled and nodded
approval.

David's father walked outside and was looking at my car, when we got
outside he said he wondered how anyone could possibly fit in it, or drive
across Texas in such a small car. I looked at their driveway and saw his
dad's work truck, his mother's 2015 Impala was in the garage. Everyone
ignored his father's comments and we could tell being ignored was also
making him mad.

The three of us walked down the driveway, he hugged his mom again but his
father had gone back inside the house as we drove off. David told his mom
the sports car was one of the most expensive vehicles Toyota made. Standing
by the mailbox she told him it looked like a high performance sports car.
After one last hug we walked to the car, he gestured for the keys and got
in the driver's seat. He started the engine with its quiet sound. As we
slowly drove away he watched his mom in the mirror standing by their
mailbox waving at us, with a tissue in hand.

"She's a sweet lady, I noticed her accent." I said watching him drive while
still watching her in the mirror.

"Yep, I heard it too, but growing up with it I never really noticed until I
left for college."

"They seemed nice, was it okay for you?" I asked.

"It was okay, he's still an ass but not as bad. Dad can be a real son of a
bitch when he wants to, I'm almost surprised she never left him."

"He's a big dude." I added.

"Yep, sure is." He mumbled with his eyes fixed on the road in front of
us. David touched the GPS on the windshield and set it to guide us back to
the hotel in Beaumont, we had a lot of stuff to do tomorrow and might need
to stay even longer. After a few moments he said she'll probably scold his
childish behavior then he'll go to bed early and pout. He said his father
was one of those guys that believed the wife should: be barefoot, pregnant,
and in the kitchen, her biscuits in the oven and buns in bed. He added that
he totally backed down when she got mad, so his anger is mostly for show.

I mumbled to David that I felt his father should be proud of what he'd
accomplished in life; master's degree in engineering, Navy Seal school,
coveted and highly trusted job working for the Pentagon, but he's obsessed
with your dick. David reminded me he's upset because of how they were
treated after it became public knowledge in their church and they got
kicked out.

"Were you afraid of him when you were a kid?" I asked quietly.

"You bet I was. I lived in constant fear and had stomach problems to
match," he offered with his eyes fixed on the road in front of us. I
dropped the subject.

----

Back in the hotel he transferred more money into Paypal to cover the radio
station legal fees, then we called the broker and told him we'd have a
formal answer next week but we'd like to put cash down on the radio station
to take it off the market temporarily. David told me the broker said this
was the first AM station he's actually shown in two years but he had five
across Louisiana (and three more in Mississippi) for sale, all of them were
off the air. He said in Louisiana and Mississippi, one AM radio station
goes off the air every year. The land is sold, towers taken down, and tower
supports are removed so it could never be put back up again. In human terms
that is the same as a death followed by cremation.

We also got from him the name of a farmer in Starks to mow the field around
the tower and the company that had done the past tower work (painting,
lighting, guy wires, etc.) too. He said this was the same guy that mowed
around the tower for the past fifteen years.

We stopped at a Dollar Store in Beaumont to buy a pack of legal notepads
because we were reaching that point with our business plans, we had too
much stuff going on to keep in our heads and keep it all straight. Best bet
was to start writing stuff down.

----

Two more days went by, we spent lots of money and hadn't really purchased
anything yet but everyone had their hands out wanting a piece of the
action.

On Friday we got a call from the paralegal in DC, she said our company was
registered in Delaware as `Larsen and Malone, LLC.' Then she said for the
formal license application she needed information so we played twenty
questions. No arrests or judgments, no indictments, no other applications,
no previous licenses of any sort with the FCC, and on it went. Then she
said she needed us to text her photos of our driver's licenses and $9,000
more for the broadcast license application, she said they already got an
unofficial verbal approval. Since we were applying for it, we also had to
put money down on the property too, so we talked to the broker and
formalized our wish to purchase KYAZ-AM. We met with him at the diner again
and handed him $90k and got a receipt for ten percent down payment. He said
this station, priced at $900k was grossly underpriced, but that was today's
market for AM radio stations. They're slowly disappearing forever.

Things were happening quickly, so far we spent almost half a mil to: buy
the house and farm, apply for the FCC license, upgrade to clear channel,
form a corporation, transfer the utilities to our business, activate
utilities at the farm, and put a ten percent deposit on the station. We
also hired a maid to come clean the farm house ASAP and someone to mow the
open yard (about 2 acres around the house and barn). The power got turned
on and we stopped in the post office to register the address, he told us
the box by the street was knocked down last year, we'd need a new one, so
we got a PO Box inside the Deweyville Post Office instead.

After all the forms were signed I drove David to Houston to fly back to El
Paso. He hired two guys to help him to pack our stuff into the shipping
container they set on the driveway. He worked his ass off for four days
then drove his truck to Beaumont, our pod was supposed to be delivered to
the farm within nine days. Even though we hadn't closed yet since we paid
cash in full for the farm, we also took possession.

As word spread he started getting telemarketer calls for radio stations
owners, it seemed our application for licensure was public record and it
had his phone number and the calls poured in, about two an hour. Since we
were dealing with so many new companies he had to turn off call blocking on
his phone and allow everything to ring in. We played the disconnected tones
to all the telemarketers hoping some of them were using smart dialers which
would hear the tones and delete his number.

Criminal telemarketers dialed every possible combination of numbers from
000-000-0001 to 999-999-9999, then started over. And as long as stupid
people answered the phone and gave criminals a valid credit card number
then those criminals would never stop calling. Telemarketing exists simply
because stoopid people made it profitable.

Contact the author borischenaz gmail