HEADLINE OF THE CENTURY

Add for December, 2012: This is the link to PEACEFUL ARIZONA, which was written by Gordon Freitas in the the 1970s: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qTF7KTo0sIhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qTF7KTo0sI

FOR MP3 OF STUDIO ORIGINAL FOR AIRPLAY CONTACT: rj@hawaii.rr.com

Take a listen, please. For full story of the KKUA HOME GROWN album series see:http://archives.starbulletin.com/97/12/01/features/story1.html

Headline of the Century

by Ron Jacobs

In the mid-1930s, Ellen Carroll came on vacation to the Territory of Hawaii from San Francisco. One night, dancing under the stars at the Moana Hotel’s famous banyan tree, the pretty young woman with the bright red hair met my uncle, the tan, suave Samuel E. Jacobs, who had arrived in Honolulu in the early 1930s from New York City to seek adventure and fortune.

“Al Kealoha Perry and His Singing Surfriders were playing. You could hear the ocean. Uncle Sam cut in, we began dancing and it was love at first sight,” remembers my Aunt Ellen, “What a romantic setting!” My parents, who arrived in Honolulu two years later, witnessed the wedding of Sam and Ellen at Judge F. M. Brooks’ house in Nuuanu Valley on March 3, 1939.

My favorite aunt and uncle were avid golfers. Sam was a charter member of the Toastmasters Club and the Aloha Temple of the Shriners. He also belonged to the Honolulu Police Reserve and worked undercover with Army Intelligence to trap the infamous Otto Kuen, a German who spied for the Japanese, flashing signals from his home on Windward Oahu to Admiral Nagumos’s fleet.

In the winter of 1941, Sam Jacobs was selling Cadillacs, La Salles, and Pontiacs for Schuman Carriage. Ellen worked for Riley H. Allen, longtime editor of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

I recently asked my Aunt Ellen, now 76, widowed and living in Hollywoood, Florida, to share her memories of that day.

Dear Ron,

The following are some anecdotes that I remember from December 7, 1941.

Your Uncle Sam and I were living in a rented guest house at 274-B Lewers Street in Waikiki. That Sunday morning I was pouring a waffle when Web Edwards (“Hawaii Calls” radio announcer) issued an announcement with the memorable words, “This is the real McCoy.” Ben Glazer and Harold Davis—“selectees”—whom Uncle Sam and I met at the Jewish Community Center—were in the backyard with Uncle Sam and our springer spaniel puppy, Jakey.

The three of them had planned to go to town and clear a plot of land on which Uncle Sam was planning to open a used-car lot, down on Kapiolani (now the site of the Blaisdell Center). He had talked the Ward sisters into letting him have the area—something which no one else had been able to do.

In any event, they had this planned for after breakfast, which we never had. The radio also said that all servicemen were to report to their posts and that meant Harold and Ben. I remember saying goodbye to them and they scrambled back to Fort DeRussy on Ala Moana.

Then the radio told us to crawl under the bed, which we did, along with Jakey. I guess we were under the bed about 20 minutes when we looked at each other and said, “this is silly” and decided to get busy. I called Riley H. Allen, editor of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, for whom I worked as executive secretary. He was the boss and very much in charge. I enjoyed working for the Starbull and everyone connected with the paper. Back in those days we seemed to have a special camaraderie. Mr. Allen said he didn’t need me, but called back in a half-hour or so and said I had better come down to the paper.

I remember that we drove down Kapiolani Boulevard and then cut over to Ala Moana at the Honolulu Advertiser—don’t ask me why. All I know is we missed the Japanese planes which supposedly bombed the waterfront and we finally got to the Starbull at 125 Merchant Street, downtown. Uncle Sam took me inside, made sure I was safe, and then took off for Schuman Carriage on Beretania Street, which had some broken windows and, we later learned, a death.

Shortly after I got to the Starbull we had an air raid and Riley Allen, Paul McIree (the paper’s treasurer) and yours truly got under the lithograph tables, which they had decided was the safest place to be in case we were bombed. The all-clear sounded and we headed back upstairs. There were all sorts of rumors that had to be checked out. The big one was the destruction of the Japanese Sunday School class at McCully and King Streets. It was caused by falling U.S. Navy anti-aircraft shells. That was awful. Part of the ferocity of the attack was due to the fact that we were “on maneuvers” and had nothing but dummy ammunition. There was immediate censorship. I did what I was told to do until closing.

The 50 years since that day have become blurred details of the excitement, fear and activity. Betty McDonald, our society editor, insisted that Uncle Sam and I stay at her house together with Helen Smith and her husband, Don, a free-lance photographer. The McDonalds lived up against the mountains out at Black Point and figured we would be safer there than at Waikiki.

Sam and I went home, left Jakey with lots of food and water, and then drove out to Betty and Mac’s with our headlights covered with the blue paper they gave us at the Bulletin.

Dinner that night was soft-boiled eggs and toast. We were all fearful and bewildered. It was dark. I can remember getting dinner by flashlight. All the wahines slept together on the living room couch, which opened up. The men were protecting us and had worked out shifts between them. (Don, when it was his turn, paced the “widows walk” with a bottle in one hand and a gun in the pocket of his robe.

I laugh now, but at the time it was serious and we were plenty scared.)

Sunday evening, December 7. All night long we could hear the movement of troops and ammo. In addition, from our location up against the mountain we saw what we took to be Japanese planes returning Sunday night. ‘Thank God,’ we thought. They didn’t bomb us, but flew in quietly and secretly. They exited the same way. We actually saw the planes from the “widow’s walk.” I remember going out there and keeping very quiet—we were scared even more deeply, if such could be possible.

It was terrible trying to wrestle with the unknown while we were really in the dark in more ways than one. There is so much you know and so much you don’t. Don’t ask me why but the Army’s censorship bureau was in charge and all I know is that, at the time, nothing was said other than there were “sporadic raids.”

We later learned that a friend, Eddie Harris, had been talking on the phone during an attack, with one hand holding the phone and the other hand in his pocket, when an unexploded anti-aircraft shell hit his shirt. A fragment struck his hand that was in his pocket, leaving him not only with a constant memory of the day, December 7, 1941, but with his masculinity intact.

On Monday, we all headed for the paper as usual. Uncle Sam and I stopped at the house, checked on Jakey and then went on to work. I distributed gas masks until nearly 5 o’clock and remember wishing I could go home at 4 like everyone else.

They put barbed wire on the beaches because we didn’t know whether or not the Japanese would return. One night somebody got a finger stuck on a machine gun. What an eerie sound, especially in the middle of the night with it being so black and everyone under curfew.

The war sure played havoc with all of our plans and wishes for the future. Pearl Harbor taught us one thing though; and that is we must plan for the future. No one but the Good Lord has the final say and it is going to be done His way, come hell or high water. Looking back, in spite of the ruthlessness of the assault, we were able to organize and ultimately win the war.

I hope this letter helps you to remember Pearl Harbor.

Love and aloha,

Aunt Ellen

© 1991, 2011 Ron Jacobs (Originally published in HAWAII MAGAZINE, December 1991.)

December 7, 2012

We, who were here on the most infamous day of the Twentieth Century,

REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR

ALOHA AHMET

The Biggest Kahuna

Everyone's been buzzing about the new biography of Ahmet Ertegun, released earlier this month: The Last Sultan: The Life and Times of Ahmet Ertegun by Robert Greenfield. Amazing Amazon lets you search to see if you are in a book! DNS (Digital Narcissism Syndrome.) Let's face it: who does not do that thing first off with the arrival of a book and new ink smell?

There are two paragraphs about how our KHJ "exclusives" had radio people from all over the country screaming at him and Atlantic. He always acknowledged that KHJ launched Sonny & Cher just after they were Caesar & Cleo. Ahmet mentions Bill Drake once "because he was fun to drink with" or some such.

When Charlie Greene and Brian Stone took me with them to NYC at the peak of the S&C craze; FIVE hits on Billboard charts. We spent a week a week at The Plaza and who knows how much those guys spent in Manhattan’s jewelry district alone. Not to mention wine-women-and-song.

Or how Nesuhi Ertegun and I were the only haole (Caucasians) at the debut introduction of American Top 40, which Tom Rounds and I crashed as unregistered guerrilla ops. We had snuck into a convention in Majorca in the summer of 1970 and did our pitch (using Wollensak tape recorder in the basement of a little Catholic church with a handful of young girl students in their uniforms our audience. The name Casey Kasem might have been only thing that they could comprehend. To them it probably sounded like a food dish.

Ahmet was most intense genius record guy I ever knew. And he always credited KHJ and his hours drinking with Drake at Martoni's for much of Atlantic Records mid-60’s rise to the top.

This excerpt is from my book KHJ: Inside Boss Radio (2002.)

Sonny & Cher and The Real Don Steele. KHJ 1965.

Ron Jacobs: In the beginning, we had no superstar group to endorse the station by association. When I arrived from Honolulu in 1965 a friend from there, Judy Moll, told me that her bosses Charlie Greene and Brian Stone were down to selling their office equipment to keep going. So, Caesar & Cleo became Sonny & Cher. We did little promotions and they would do whatever we asked them to do. Sonny was confident that if he just came up with something good, KHJ would give his record his shot.

Sonny Bono: Actually, the song came to me quickly, as did most of my songs. Sitting at the kitchen table, I began scribbling lyrics on the back of a sheet of cardboard from some laundry just back from the cleaners. When it was half done, and I completed the song in about an hour, I sprung it on Cher, who grabbed the cardboard from the piano and grinned, “I’m going to save this forever.”

Sometimes you write a song and don’t think much of it. Then, surprise, it explodes. But other times, you know absolutely that the song is solid gold, waiting to happen. That’s the enthusiasm Cher and I had about, “I Got You Babe.” We couldn’t race to the studio fast enough. At the sessions, the electricity flowed at even higher voltage. Everybody from Charlie and Brian to our pianist, Leon Russell, was blown away. When everyone, from the artists to the writers to the musicians on down to the studio receptionist can’t stop singing and dancing when hearing a song being created, it’s amazing! But Ahmet Ertegun, head of the record company, disagreed on which song to release as the single. He really loved, “It’s Gonna Rain.” I liked, “I Got You Babe.” I tried to persuade him otherwise, but he wouldn’t change his opinion. After arguing unsuccessfully with Ahmet, I decided to go out on a limb and prove I was right. Atco was already promoting “Rain” when I cut acetate of “Babe.”

Charlie Greene: I remember the first time I heard “I Got You Babe” coming out of KHJ. Shit, man, it sounded so fucking good. It sounded incredible and that was it, the ballgame was over. The next day it virtually was a hit. The KHJ switchboard lit up and we weren’t doing it! We had everybody ready to start calling in when they heard it, you know, everybody call. But we couldn’t get through to the switchboard, man. KHJ was getting absolutely swamped with requests. Sonny and Cher became the Beatles of Boss Radio, so to speak. They would come down to the station whenever KHJ wanted them to. Any time. We would do all kinds of shtick ’cause Jacobs was coming up with new ideas that somehow included Sonny and Cher. They were impressed with everything about the station. Loved The Real Don Steele. I mean, they were happening and Boss Radio was happening. It all broke loose with KHJ, I’m telling you. There’s no question about it. As far as I’m concerned, KHJ helped make, or made, Sonny and Cher.

Ron Jacobs: And so Sonny and Cher — of course it was really Charlie — were standing by with a bunch of people ready to call KHJ the first time we played the record. The lines lit up so much legit that their callers couldn’t even get through! So Charlie and Brian and Sonny were going nuts and all of a sudden, ba-boom!

And KHJ went all out to establish the Sonny & Cher-Boss Radio connection. We commissioned Sandy Barron, the hip graphics designer, to do a special KHJ Sonny & Cher-KHJ logo and we ran those on bus benches all around town, you know, the kind that advertise funeral homes. Sure, “I Got You Babe” was a dynamite commercial hit. But the big push nationally came after KHJ got on the record. And that happened only because Sonny Bono and Charlie Greene would not take “no” for an answer. And, I like to think, because Drake and Jacobs could hear a hit.

Dexter Young: I remember when Sonny and Cher came to the studio to do on-air interviews. Jacobs had brought them directly from LAX where they had just returned from a European tour. Jacobs asked Sonny to get rid of a briefcase he was carrying and he said no, that it contained the cash, their percentage from the European tour.

Ron Jacobs: In the beginning, we had no superstar group to endorse the station by association. Judy Moll told me that her bosses Charlie Greene and Brian Stone were down to selling their office equipment to keep going. So, Caesar & Cleo became Sonny & Cher. We did little promotions and they would do whatever we asked them to do. Sonny was confident that if he just came up with something good, KHJ would give his record his shot.

Sonny Bono: Actually, the song came to me quickly, as did most of my songs. Sitting at the kitchen table, I began scribbling lyrics on the back of a sheet of cardboard from some laundry just back from the cleaners. When it was half done, and I completed the song in about an hour, I sprung it on Cher, who grabbed the cardboard from the piano and grinned, “I’m going to save this forever.”

Sometimes you write a song and don’t think much of it. Then, surprise, it explodes. But other times, you know absolutely that the song is solid gold, waiting to happen. That’s the enthusiasm Cher and I had about, “I Got You Babe.” We couldn’t race to the studio fast enough. At the sessions, the electricity flowed at even higher voltage. Everybody from Charlie and Brian to our pianist, Leon Russell, was blown away. When everyone, from the artists to the writers to the musicians on down to the studio receptionist can’t stop singing and dancing when hearing a song being created, it’s amazing! But Ahmet Ertegun, head of the record company, disagreed on which song to release as the single. He really loved, “It’s Gonna Rain.” I liked, “I Got You Babe.” I tried to persuade him otherwise, but he wouldn’t change his opinion. After arguing unsuccessfully with Ahmet, I decided to go out on a limb and prove I was right. Atco was already promoting “Rain” when I cut acetate of “Babe.”

Charlie Greene: I remember the first time I heard “I Got You Babe” coming out of KHJ. Shit, man, it sounded so fucking good. It sounded incredible and that was it, the ballgame was over. The next day it virtually was a hit. The KHJ switchboard lit up and we weren’t doing it! We had everybody ready to start calling in when they heard it, you know, everybody call. But we couldn’t get through to the switchboard, man. KHJ was getting absolutely swamped with requests. Sonny and Cher became the Beatles of Boss Radio, so to speak. They would come down to the station whenever KHJ wanted them to. Any time. We would do all kinds of shtick ’cause Jacobs was coming up with new ideas that somehow included Sonny and Cher. They were impressed with everything about the station. Loved The Real Don Steele. I mean, they were happening and Boss Radio was happening. It all broke loose with KHJ, I’m telling you. There’s no question about it. As far as I’m concerned, KHJ helped make, or made, Sonny and Cher.

Ron Jacobs: And so Sonny and Cher — of course it was really Charlie — were standing by with a bunch of people ready to call KHJ the first time we played the record. The lines lit up so much legit that their callers couldn’t even get through! So Charlie and Brian and Sonny were going nuts and all of a sudden, ba-boom!

And KHJ went all out to establish the Sonny & Cher-Boss Radio connection. We commissioned Sandy Barron, the hip graphics designer, to do a special KHJ Sonny & Cher-KHJ logo and we ran those on bus benches all around town, you know, the kind that advertise funeral homes. Sure, “I Got You Babe” was a dynamite commercial hit. But the big push nationally came after KHJ got on the record. And that happened only because Sonny Bono and Charlie Greene would not take “no” for an answer. And, I like to think, because Drake and Jacobs could hear a hit.

Dexter Young: I remember when Sonny and Cher came to the studio to do on-air interviews. Jacobs had brought them directly from LAX where they had just returned from a European tour. Jacobs asked Sonny to get rid of a briefcase he was carrying and he said no, that it contained the cash, their percentage from the European tour.

OOPS: IGNORE PREVIOUS BLOG!

I am NOT dictating this into any software or to a human stenographer. All the wowsie stuff about Nuance turned into a hellish 72-hours when the DragonDictate software turned softer than a day-old manapua. Blew the top off the Snowy Leopard.

Before I could even type this onto another limp software program - Blogger - which is 100-years-0ld in MacYears. Like turning a crank in front of the radiator to start your car engine. But first The Wrong Brothers of posted programs requires that I reset my password each time I compose a new post. But - before doing that one must type in those "security words" to prove that you are not a bot. Words like fleezrty and nortish and bwplyph and zazzzltu. Who doesn't enjoy going through that shit?

Then after the umpteenth email to me allowing me to Change Your Password I do that drill. I am

typing this one letter at a time. Nuance is an oxymoronic name for a company that looks slick online but whose customer service (extreme oxymoron!) call center offers one the chance to wait on hold for any hour - or more. If one is fortunate to reach someone whose English than Ilocano at their Manilla boiler room.

Affable and sincere reps are polite and eager to help - if they only knew something about their products. If NASA operated like this bogus company they would never been able to launch Walter If NASA operated like this bogus company they would never been able to launch Walter

Cronkite himself rather than send rockets to the universe.

Mabuhay: We have a problem. I better stop this before Blogger craps out or my password changes faster than Clark Kent in an iPhone booth.

I read the first chapter of Walter Isaacson's best-selling bio of Steve Jobs. Sucked in for a while until it occurred to me that the dude was on a roller coaster - never leaving the track. Yes he could be boorish and impossible in his attempts to deal with others and the comparisons with Jobs to Einstein/Edison etc. are absurd. It was their building an electronic DNA that allowed them to grow Apples in Job's garage.

Most "radio people" have never even read a biography of Guglielmo Marconi who actually followed in the footsteps of Tesla/Faraday/De Forest and others. Steve Jobs rat-in-a-cage

"focus" certainly contributed to the ways and means by which you are reading this? You are seeing it right? Have you noticed yet that their are no commas in this text? That is because the keyboard will not print a comma - hence the hyphens.

Jobs loved to pull tricks both digital and on people. So now thanks to a whiz-bang tech who came here to straighten things out after an Apple Support guy in North Carolina spent an hour with me on the phone (after waiting on their sonorous hold for 45-minutes) informed me that he and no one there had heard of what happened to my iMac desktop: I could hit the keys but only hear them click. Nothing came up on the screen - just the clackety-click of keyboard sound effects.

Imagine inserting the key in your car's ignition but the motor won't move; instead the speakers blast stereo sounds of the vroom-vrooming vehicle. Or putting a pencil to paper and while nothing appears on the page you hear the scratching of the pencil. Cute little trick Steve-O.

From my earliest days in radio 60 years ago I posited: "The biggest problem in the communications industry is Lack of Communication." So what else is new?

WARNING: Stay away from this dictator stuff. Worse than Hitler or Mussolini or Saddam Hussein.

OLD DOG, SEMI-NEW TRICKS

This is my first “writing” using the DragonDictate™ software program from Nuance. It allows me the time to actually get out my thoughts much faster than I can “talk” them. Having dropped out of typing class during summer school in ninth grade, my hunt-and-p-p peck method has yielded several books and many magazine articles since I started to write for money. The death of radio was so obvious while outlets for writing for print and publication somehow managed to appear––and may stuff bcame somewhat well received.

You are looking live at my first dictated blog. Playing while in the big leagues of corporate radio I always had access to someone who could "take dictation”---the best of whom was my administrative assistant, Mrs. Shelly Morgan, when she was Shelley Gordon— someone every bit as responsible for the success of 93/KHJ Boss Radio as any of those more publicized players.

So here I sit looking like millions of folks wearing a headset with microphone attached just like your basic customer service rep, phone operator or someone dictating orders about where and when the next drone strike should occur.

I have been fortunate to know and associate with noted writers, authors, journalist, etc. And I’m amazed at their productivity considering that they most often use a typewriter, word processor or pencil and paper (like Cameron Crowe has always done). Plus whatever it took to produce the Dead Sea Scrolls or carve Hawaiian petroglyphs. Wow! This thing actually typed out the word “petroglyphs” correctly and without my looking it up for the umpteenth time.

There are good things to be said about Nuance, the company that distributes Dragon Dictate. Some thoughts are quite good; others involve the non-nuanced, nightmarish experiences I have endured since attempting to use this thing back in October. This software is not particularly friendly, even to myself, someone who began using computers in 1979.

How do these ultra-prolific writers do it? One can go back to Prof. Marshall McLuhan’s works and read his 1960s distinction between oral and aural. Shoot, if this thing can distinguish between the last two words in the previous sentence it is indeed pretty amazing. Yeah, considering I have only been at this for thirty-minutes. Sorry about any typos but at least they are being “typed” almost as fast as I think and pronounce them. And surely easier and more direct–from-the brain, which is why broadcasting, MC work, one flawless Bar Mitzvah speech and hustling on the street never have been a problem. Those of you who have dealt with my interminable telephone rants, raves and redundancy know this well.

It took two months for the correct "nuance"product to arrive after three misses. Today, following a record one-hour wait on hold, I connected with Gavin in Manila who talked me through the entire process as if it were NASA giving instructions to the astronauts. Now, I can finally say, “Houston, we no longer have a problem!”

Kindly indulge my desire to post a blog straight from my mouse (not my mouse) to your monitor. It is an otherworldly experience for someone who began with carbon microphones, shortwave and 78-RPM records. The original intent of computer dictate programs was to assist people with physical disabilities, some of which are happening to me, like difficulty reading and typing. I have a kilo of ideas about how to apply this thing to my future work.

I am, by the way, dictating directly into a word processing device called Scrivener™, which can be difficult to learn. But is the choice of many professional writers because of its versatility. I have been working since 1994 on an autobiography entitled “From Doo-Wop to Duopoly.” I doubt that it will ever see the light of day or the glimmer of its contents on a computer screen or an-book, but I visited audio-dictate from time to time. Some of it strikes me as well done and arduously researched while other sections seems like they were written by a dummy.

That reflective manuscript, only takes me through the 1970s. It is on the burner behind my treatise on the death of radio, which hopefully will be concluded and my conclusions will be seen by those who pontificate and kvetch about the sorry state of a medium that many of us love as much as life itself. This is painful to someone whose FCC license is dated Christmas Eve 1952 and has seen so many changes it boggles what is left of my mind.

While hoping and praying that this thing actually would work I contemplated how I would do things that have hereto been impossible. My initial application of Dragon was to send an e-mail to Gavin thanking them for teaching me something that is deeper than Excel, more refined than MegaSeg™––the best kept secret in radio––and all the other stuff that I began learning with my 1979 purchase of the notorious RadioShack TRS–80, now the equivalent of a hand-cranked ice cream maker or images captured on Edison reels.

“Running at the mouth,” has been my problem since the moment I was born and the doctor asked me, “ What is your mother’s maiden name?” Thereafter I lived and several times nearly died by the tongue. Now, using a combination of mind-boggling soft and hardware, I am able to DLOG or whatever you call dictating into a computer. Steve Jobs rest in iPeace.

This post begins with the photo of me strapped in and ready to Dragon taken after the installation was successful and I can send it to Gavin, the tech rep in the Manilla. Ever been there? Hi-tech amidst low-tech. Growing up in Hawaii, I respect those who arrived from the Philippines for their diligence, grace and respect for authority. There would be no Aloha State without their soul and strength. RAMBLING!

Perhaps most of you this is just more high-tech razzmatazz, but my fellow writers and/or folks with disabilities should at least know of this option. Sure, I went through digital Hell to get this far. The time I put in to reach this point will pay dividends as I learn how to rap into this THING. I calculate that I have read 930 posts, reviews, comments and all da kine rabble/babble about using the confusing Dragon Dictate. But hey now, it is slowly learning Hawaiian pidgin English, my first language. I will dictate, “Hello, how are you today?” in pidgin. Let’s see what comes out! “ House and knowledge you doing how you stay today line that.” Well they only advertised English not our unique and wonderful local slang talk.

Never could I have produced what are now 1200-plus words in this short a time. Thanks to all who encouraged me to see this through; there is still so much to get down before I make, which is Hawaiian for “ death or dying.”

I recalled how in 1951 Jack Kerouac took a continuous 120-foot roll of teletype paper (above). jammed it into his manual typewriter and began to write his masterpiece, "On The Road." How about the most amazing chapter on sports ever published, “Ice,” from the David Maraniss classic, “ When Pride Still Mattered.” It was produced by him non-stop, fueled on coffee, in a day and night marathon. If you've not read the book then dig up a copy of this fantastic piece and perhaps you’ll see why I am so stoked about Dragon––and I don’t mean my street racing days in the infamous 1958 deviously souped-up draggin' Pontiac Bonneville!

All I just said was “new paragraph” to begin this one. Being neither Jack Kerouac nor David Maraniss I decided to resume my autobio by word-of-mouth, so to speak. Perhaps it will sometimes see the light of day a glint of a pixilated screen. Mega-mahalo to Todd Hewitt, world’s greatest equipment manager and the one who convinced me that this is a winning program, unlike a certain NFL team that ignominiously let him go––he and his dad served the team for 44 seasons. Ah, Todd is now with a winning program, head equipment manager for the California Golden Bears.

For old times sake I’ll sign off with my standard DJ show closing riff: “Keep your lukewarm spoon adjacent to your electric bowling bag, bunkie.” Tell me what that means and I will tell you Tina Delgado’s middle name! Meanwhile I must learn not to speak to people in this manner. One ends up sounding like a computer, barking out commands.

Happy Birthday to my oldest off-island friend, Mitch Fisher, KHJ accomplice and the real Zelig. What times we had, brother.

The previous blog goes on and on about me and written words.

BOOK 'EM

The first piece that I wrote was published during eighth grade in KA PUNAHOU, the school's paper. Sadly, it was an obituary for my lifelong friend, and one of the few Jews in the place, Donald Milbauer. It was a shock to us all; Donnie being the first of my young peers to pass away. Before that I drew juvenile cartoons In the elementary school paper NA OPIO .

Later, I wrote at least 93,000 one-liners for what was then called “radio.” As the form died I became more interested in writing. My heroes were/are Poe, Whitman, Mencken, Hemingway, Mailer, Ginsberg, Roth, Tom Wolfe, Maraniss, Lord Buckley and on and on. I played music on the air ... but the printed word has more meaning than what is writ to be merely heard. Once.

Reminds me of an all-night session while I was at KGB-San Diego in 1972. “Mr. Pipes,” Michael C. Gwynne, and I were stonily speculating about things, specifically radio. I said, not for the first time, that one major head hassle with the medium that bothered me was that once one’s jock shift was over, there was nothing to show for it. Gwynne is both a gifted announcer and also a fine actor. Plus, the man is a suave big band jazz music man, a drummer mostly. He and I were employed in the 1960s by the company that owned KPOI-Honolulu and a few stations in Southern California. Through a series of circumstances that are bizarre albeit nonfiction, Gwynne worked in Honolulu as a "Poi Boy."

Mike first encontered Frank Terry at KMAK-Fresno. Terry’s infamous KMEN-San Bernardino "Drum-A-Thon" inspired KPOI PD Tom Rounds to stage one here in the islands with Gwynne on the sticks. And shticks. Both drew huge ratings. Ah yes, before I made it to Hollywood and KHJ in 1965. More than anyone knows our “Circus Radio” (as Art Laboe called our KPOI on-air shenanigans when he first visited KPOI in 1959).

Back to Mike and me in La Jolla in ’72 and our brain-wired rap. I bitched about radio’s SDS (Simultaneous Disappearance Syndrome.) He said, mellifluously, “Well let me tell you something, Ronny boy.” He told me of radio astrolnomers at the London Royal Observatory, who back in the 1950s were doing round the clock surveys of all they could see and logging that results. About three in the morning the scientists saw and logged something unseen for the record. Several days later during follow up on the records, it was discovered that the “thing” they saw was actually a radio station in Texas… which had signed off ten years earlier.

Hmm, spooky and “chicken skin” (Hawaii slang for “goose pimples.”) Anyone who ever performed on radio should contemplate the physics and universalpuzzlement over this tale told me in all honesty some 40 years or so before,

Mike worked with me on some of my most important works: “The KGB Documentary,” the “Child’s Garden of Grass” album on Elektra, to this day a "cult classic." It is rare to find someone as diversely talented as Gwynne. Mega-mahalo to Uncle Ricky Irwin’s ReelRadio.com, a gift to the future for folks curious about was once called radio much of the best of Top 40, a total labor of love. Go there and check out sample of Michael C. Gwynne’s collaborative work with me. versatile, he once was employed on a “R&B” station in Oakland, the only white dude on the staff. Cool old school radioman.)

Ever since that San Diego flash I always think about permanence vis-a-vis. flashes in the pan. Now, with some of my work is in the Bishop Museum and the Library of Hawaii are preserved for the ages wthin thick cement and lava rock structures. If you get high on a whiff of new ink on a printed page might relate to this sensory sensation.

After doing “stage, screen, TV and radio” I was drawn to my IBM Selectric typewriter and began writng poetry about my days back in Waikiki where I was born before it became Tijuana-Tokyo-Tsurisville. Poetry? Hey, gotta grab it when the muse strikes. Titled “Back Door Waikiki," it was published it in 1986. Now out of print, the slim paperback still brings back fond memories to us keiki o ka ‘aina (child born in the islands). It was composed with the invaluable aid and comfort of Mac Simpson, who produced it on the first Apple computer (Mac’s Mac) in his kitchen. Mac has been with me on my subsequent books.

In 2002, when I was asked 93.000 times to publish my KHJ jock memos, meticulously saved by Carol Williams, wife of Boss Radio’s first all-night man, jovial Johnny Williams. Carol sent them to me in the 1970s when Johnny was at WTAE-Pittsburgh. I had them bound in a leather volume and everyone wanted a peek at “how we did” 93/KHJ during my term as PD, 1965-69. After loaning this volume to a trusted friends, the material became the nucleus of “KHJ: Inside Boss Radio.” When I backed away from radio in the 1980s I became a free lance writer with over 300 pieces published in various magazines here and on the Mainland. The KHJ book, even at $93 for 455-pages it resulted in a second edition, published by Mr. Magic, San Berdoo’s own Don McCoy. Now out of print the boss book sometimes shows up on eBay.

My most ambitious effort, it began in 2008 when Carl Hebenstreit, owner of Trade Publishing in Kalihi (between Republican and Democrat streets) and the first face on Hawaii TV in 1952. He was known as “Kini Popo,” more local pidgin English for “right on,” bought my concept of a heavily illustrated history of Barack Obama’s first 18 years when he was born in Kapiolani Hospital until he left for college in 1979. And yes, this is the first work to pront both the 44^th President’s BIRTH CERTIFICATE and BIRTH ANNOUNCEMENT in Honolulu newspapers. It happened because of dozens of friends/colleagues here and off-island. It became the #1 best-selling nonfiction book in Hawaii, selling out 15.000 copies, mostly all in Hawaii. For more info, reviews, photos, etc., check: http://tinyurl.com/7lnyd9m.

Then a funny thing happened on the way to national sales: Litigation regarding the book shut everything down until recently. Now I finally own my own book! "Copyright 2008 by Ron Jacobs."

I won’t go through the hideous mess for two years. Now it's time to tell the world that the book is now available for $20 plus $5 shipping for a BRAND NEW PRISTINE COPY of the book, which I will happily inscribe to you. (Used on eBay the book sells for as much as $108. It is collectible: the first book published about Obama on Inauguration Day 2008. All volumes about our nation’s leaders grow in value. And I am told this is the case with "OBAMALAND: Who Is Barack Obama?”

Payment please by PayPal only to rj@hawaii.rr.com. Kindly contact me with any questions about the book, how you wish it inscribed or group prices.

So, what I have been “saying” in twelve-hundred WORDS is: My book is back and my girl friend’s got it. (See: The Angels, 1963.) And now it is ready for you, a perfect Christmas gift or keepsake for future generations when we are alll gone, Obama included. Nice ending, good karma, after two years of anguish for me. We are now delivering copies arond Honolulu for the huge Obama-hosted APEC Convention (esimated 20,000 coming) starting November 10, 2011, at the Honolulu International Convention Center so please allow one week for delivery. And remember, radio’s past, but OBAMALAND will last.

Warmest regards from Kaneohe, Oahu, Hawaii …currently 77-degrees. Below: your "best-selling author" in action at the Kamehameha Swap Meet last Sunday. Retail, on da street is where it's at! Just ask The Big Kahuna.

Apologies to the hundreds of folks, dead and alive, who have aided, assisted,

put up with and supported me since I started in 1952: you know who you are.

THANK YOU for your invaluable contributions, memories and wonderful creative input.

THE GREAT CHEVY KILLER

By RON JACOBS

CAR & DRIVER, MAY 1999

In this Fifties memoir, the first Bonneville coupe gobbles up the ruling ’57 Chevys. Uh, with a little help from some friends.

It was 1957, and for a guy who was just 20 and a high-school dropout, I wasn’t doing badly. I was a hot-shot deejay on KHVH-AM in Honolulu at the dawn of rock ‘n’ roll, making more money than I’d ever dreamed of. I even owned one of the coolest cars of that or any other time—a ’57 Ford Skyliner, the car whose steel top retracted into the trunk sort of like Mercedes SLK’s.

Fast cars were my weakness. My problem was the shortage of paved streets on our little island of Oahu—exactly 58.82 miles. And the highest speed limit was 45 mph.

Most drag racing in those days was conducted—illegally, natch—in the cane fields far from Honolulu. Although there were no freeways in operation, the first stretch of the planned Lunalilo Freeway in town had been completed. Of course, street lights hadn’t been put in place, so in the late ‘50s it began to be used as a moonlit race strip.

One of my friends at the time was a guy we called “Big Z.” His father owned Kapiolani Motors, the only Pontiac dealership in the Territory of Hawaii (statehood was about a year away), and Z was its general manager.

Some nights, Big Z and I would sit parked in one of his demo cars at the end of the strip of freeway and watch the “power pack” ’57 Chevy V-8s destroy all comers. The growing arrogance of the Chevy crowd was beginning to annoy Z and me. It anyone was going to develop some snotty drag-racing arrogance, shouldn't it be the hotshot deejay? Big Z was annoyed because Pontiacs were cars for dentists’ wives.

Then one day just before Christmas of 1957, an excited Big Z called me at the radio station and told me to get over there immediately. I was soon walking across the marble-floored showroom, and there it was.

I was staring at a 1958 Pontiac Bonneville Custom Sport coupe, decked out in two-tone green, a dark “Darby” color and the lighter “Seaforth” shade. That model year, Pontiac offered four V-8 choices in the Bonneville: two with four-barrel carbs making 255 or 285 horsepower, a 300-hp engine with three carbs, and the fuel-injected Tempest 395 that put out 310 horses and 400 pound-feet of torque.

I know that data today having looked them up but was ignorant of those offerings back then. The fact that the Bonneville before me was the e 285-hp four-barrel version, and not the big fuel-injected version, didn’t put me off at all. Besides, the ’57 Chevy’s fuel-injected V-8 put out two fewer horses, although it was about 600 pounds slimmer than the Pontiac.

But that Bonneville was the coolest. It was big and long—riding on a 122-inch wheelbase—but its curves, like the best hula dancers’, were in all the right places. The recesses in the rear-fender sheet metal suggested Corvette bloodlines and looked as though they were intended to hold rockets. The little chrome ribs inlaid down the trunk were sharp. What gave it real style was its hardtop-coupe design without B-pillars. Its two-tone paint mirrored the tropical foliage steel still generously visible in those days before skyscrapers. It’s amusing to recall that it all ran on skinny little 8.00-by-14-inch white-sidewall tires.

Inside, this ultra-50s masterwork it was a riotous array of chrome and steel and paint. The big two-tone rear leather seats had a center armrest that could be lowered. Chrome, real leather bucket seats wrapped the upholstery and a wire mesh of it was set into the dash. The gas and brake pedals were chromed. On the floors were “loop-pile Lurex flecks carpeting.” And not least of all, the Bonneville had “dual ashtrays” up front. It had 21 miles on the odometer.

And before I was 22-years-old, I would own it, handing over the endorsed pink slip to my 1957 Ford Skyliner as a hefty down payment. It was a big price for those days: $3481, plus freight to Hawaii. In no time, it would become known on Oahu streets as “da Bonnaveel.”

We took it for a drive on the H-! freeway when it was known as the "Mauka Artial." This innocuous looking baby had great power, but the Hydromantic transmission, and its girth, gave me second thoughts about my chances of becoming the Great Chevy Killer. Big Z and I decided to load this stock car to the gills.

To this day I don’t know what exactly went on in that far corner of the Kapiolani Motors shop where Z’s gleeful mechanics fought to work on “da Bonnaveel.” Z’s father spent considerable time mollifying dentists’ wives and other patrons since work in the shop had mysteriously slowed down.) Parts were ordered from mainland hot rod shops and flown in Special Delivery.

I do know that in the next two weeks, as I waited anxiously, the engine’s displacement of 375 cubes was bored out to “400-something.” Aluminum racing pistons replaced the stock ones. Solid lifters were swapped for the factory hydraulics. What the hell’s an “Isky cam”? The “Tri-Power” package, involving three two-barrel carbs, replaced the four-barrel. Later, even that was replaced by a log manifold, which was the next closest thing to fuel injection at the time. Goodbye, Hydromantic.

Hello, four-on-the- floor. Hello, big stiff truck clutch. And hi to the new rear-end gears, 4.10:1. The Bonneville was lowered a bit and a tach was installed.

The point of all this was to sandbag those Chevy showoffs. I could just hear them when they saw “da Bonnaveel”: “We goin’ keek dis big peeg’s ass!”

Hawaii’s most notorious street vehicle debuted of what would become a Saturday night at Honolulu’s most popular drive-in restaurant. called “Kau Kau Korner” (“kau kau” means food in tourist Hawaiian. The kosher word for food is Meaʻai.)

I hadn’t come alone. With me were Pigsy, Ba-Boo, Bobby Evans, and Big Al, who always threw a loaded Colt .45 into the glove box when he came aboard. After parking front and center at Kau Kau for an hour, nursing coffee, trying to appear aloof—and really enjoying all the commotion we were causing—it was time to pop the hood. And then teasingly close it as soon as anyone ventured near it enough to peek inside. That was tradition. Within the next hour, hot cars from all over the island were arriving for a look-see.

Folks in Hawaii have a unique system of communicating with the arch of an eyebrow, the shrug of a shoulder, the flick of the head. A smirking quartet of local Japanese guys in a turquoise and white ’57 Chevy indicated they’d like to meet us up on the west side of the freeway where the paving was complete. The finish line was about a quarter-mile away at Bingham Street near the UH. This always made for excitement because an overshoot could propel a speeding car into the rear wall of the Varsity Theater.

Those were low-tech days. The Honolulu police broadcast on a high-frequency AM band, a bit past 1550 kilocycles. All serious street racers tweaked their radios to monitor the HPD whose call letters were KUA-205. We knew where they were. And all they knew was where we weren’t. Heh-heh.

Even though I was terrified—days before, Evans had snapped an axle shaft on a test run and the truck clutch was a bitch to work smoothly—it was my duty to drive the Bonneville’s inaugural race.

Headlights at cockeyed angles lined both sides of dimly lit virgin road. I moved up, torquing starboard whenever I revved the monster. Sounds of elephant orgasms. The pavement whizzed underneath at what seemed like Sputnik speeds. King of da Road!

And then in the murky macadam distance, a guy waved a flag. Taking my time with the clutch, the competing Chevy left me like I was a tractor in mud—for the first 100 yards. The only time I saw it again was when I blew past it with still some rpm to go and a lot of third and fourth gear left.

We drove triumphantly back to Kau Kau Korner. It would be the high of my automotive life. Big Z said he felt like his idol: Aga Kahn III, the Mideastern playboy millionaire.

“Da Bonnaveel’s” legend increased; we beat all comers.

Then one night in the summer of ’58,, while we sat parked in another drive-in near the airport, a shabby-looking Triumph TR3 wearing a sloppy coat of primer crept back into the back row of the joint. An emissary arrived with a challenge. How could we have known it was powered by—aarrrgh!—a Chevy V-8. Its driver was one of Hawaii’s top pro racers, Moki Maemori himself, he who raced against the Unser boys in old Honolulu Stadium, which was converted into a racing oval within 24 hours of a football game.

This “make ass” desolate defeat was even more ignominious when I popped that dreaded clutch and gave birth to a puddle of metal on the road. I could hear all the car horns celebrating the demise of the Great Chevy Killer.

By October 1958 I was bored with the car and the 8-mpg it sucked up. Still, I was oh so saddened when the car was stolen, stripped and burned. With the insurance money I bought a stock black 1959 Catalina coupe. We dechromed it, tinted the windows, and lowered it a bit.

It carried “da Bonnaveel”s” reputation. And it never lost a race—mostly because no one ever dared to challenge its successor.

Much mahalo to Paul Maddox of Holualoa on the Kona side of Hawaii island--who has done much of the graphics on various projects together--and who pushed me for ten years to dig up this story and deal with it for use on his terrific site. With photos and other neat stuff, including all the original text, which was updated with this post. Check out http://www.hawaiimotorbeat.com/

TRICK OR TREAT?

I did not purchase the bright orange crotch piece, though.