I had heard about the job through Bob Gay, my high school broadcasting instructor, who thought it would be a good starting position for me. I had been volunteering at KABF a few months by then and was hoping to get a paying radio position somewhere. Apparently the station manager of KBBA had called my school looking for cheap talent and hired me along with two other students.

The station broadcast from a strip mall behind a large furniture store on Military Road, the main drag in Benton. When I walked into the place for my job interview, I was immediately stunned by how old and outdated the equipment was. At a time when CDs had taken prominence, KBBA was still playing 45 rpm records. The turntables, control board and cart machines looked like they were several decades old.

I was also surprised that there wasn't a receptionist, but rather the middle-aged DJ came out of the control room to tell me station manager John Riddle was still out on a sales call. I waited at least a half-hour before he called to say he wouldn't be able to make it because he was busy trying to sell ads to a specific client. We talked on the phone a few minutes, with him telling me what the position entailed and I started the next night.

My shift was 5 to 10 pm, when I'd sign the station off and shut down the transmitter. I followed a tight format clock, playing a mix of current and classic country music, along with national news from the Mutual Broadcasting System, state news from the Arkansas Radio Network, and I'd anchor local newscasts during my first two hours. We also carried state sportscasts from a company called the Creative Sports Network in Conway and would sometimes air local high school championships, with Riddle doing the play by play. I think local sports broadcasts were some of the few times we had many listeners or any significant advertising.

The station also aired a peculiar show endemic to small town radio called "Tradio," in which listeners would call in and announce things they had for sell, how much money they wanted and give their phone number. KBBA aired "Tradio," which I also heard go by the name "Trading Time" on other stations, weekday mornings from 8 to 9 am. It was almost surreal to hear one caller after another trying to sell what was usually junk. A typical example would be, "I've got a 10-year-old, 19-inch TV. The color doesn't work anymore so I'll take $5 for it," and would then give the phone number. Or sometimes I heard people call to say they had a litter of kittens that were free to good homes. It was like classified ads on the radio and people seemed to love it. For the entire hour there would be one call after another.

When I started, the station had a news director who wrote local stories and gathered sound. He also took cuts and reports from Arkansas Radio Network feeds. During the first week I was there the big local story, which was stretched over several days, was about a letter carrier being attacked by a dog. We had sound bites every day from a postal spokeswoman detailing the injuries, updating the carrier's condition and making calls for dogs to be secured so they couldn't attack mailmen.

I really enjoyed doing these local newscasts, in which I would make big stacks of carts with actualities and carefully coordinate them with pages of copy. At first I'd read every single story we had, sometimes doing 15-minute newscasts. I was told to try and keep the newscasts to 5 minutes, because they were coming after hearing state, then national casts. Also we had been running the same stories since the morning. But local news stopped after the news director left because, like me, he was not getting paid.

KBBA was struggling because our audience was tiny. Little Rock stations were booming in with stronger signals and much better programming. And it was the same story for all other small town stations surrounding Little Rock, especially AM stations, to which fewer and fewer people were tuning in. It was just impossible for these small stations to compete.

I would receive periodic requests, almost always from residents of a nearby nursing home. One person in particular named Berta would call almost nightly, sometimes several times in one night, always requesting the same handful of songs: Willie Nelson's "Blue Eyes Crying In the Rain," Mark Gray and Tammy Wynette with "Sometimes When We Touch," Mark Gray's "It Ain't Real If It Ain't You," and Kenny Rogers with "Daytime Friends and Nighttime Lovers." I even recorded her once and used it for a station promo. I asked her if she would say something good about the station and without further prompting she said, "I think KBBA is the best radio station in the world." I'm sure she meant it and I guess I was glad someone thought so.

I was excited to get my first paycheck for a couple hundred dollars, but quickly learned how bad things were at the station when it bounced. My parents, who deposited the check in their account and had given me cash didn't tell me until my second check was also returned for insufficient funds. But I kept working, thinking eventually I'd get paid. I also knew I wasn't alone. None of the other employees were getting regular pay. I would frequently come in to find program director Bill Haywood, whose airshift was 9 am to 5 pm, fuming about needing money to pay his bills. But he would get some pay here and there or would be enticed with whatever would keep him showing up for work. In particular, once he showed me a gold Gruen wristwatch he had been given, which the station had gotten free as a promotional item by the company. In fact KBBA even plugged Gruen whenever we gave the time, saying, "It's 5:10, Gruen Precision Time."

Another promotional item the station would get free was boxes of macaroni. And, epitomizing how meager this station was, we would try to give away individual serving size boxes of macaroni as prizes for contests. Listeners would call in and win the stuff, but rarely did anyone actually come to the station to pick it up. The macaroni would just remain stacked up in an office. I guess it wasn't even worth the drive to get a prize that's worth less than a dollar.

I think Riddle was trying hard to sell commercials, but just couldn't get any big accounts. He even started selling 15 second spots for a dollar apiece, or as we called it, a dollar a holler. Spot breaks became more and more difficult because we only had two cart machines, and the 15 second spots would run out before the previous spot would cue and you could get in another cart. And they were all for these tiny businesses, dry cleaning, piano tuning and the like, many of which Riddle claimed wouldn't pay after their first month of advertising.

He cried poverty, and it was clear the station was struggling. I remember one night in particular he and his wife spent several hours working on the station's accounting. Then, when leaving, they stood together outside the station, talking in what seemed like a very serious, depressed state for quiet a while. I knew there was no way the station would survive much longer. KBBA had been created by John Riddle's father and had been very popular for several decades. I think he wanted to try and keep it going for the sake of family, but just wasn't able to make a profit or even break even.

About once a month Riddle would give me a little bit of cash, maybe a hundred bucks or so. And toward the end of my six months there, I went a couple of months without being paid anything. Eventually he gave me a hundred dollar bill, which I photocopied to mark the rare occasion. That's it to the right. Yes, I saved it all these years. I was only being paid a tiny fraction of the minimum wage salary I was owed. But I took some solace knowing I was doing better than the two other people Riddle had hired from my radio class.

One, Paul Benton, worked 12 hours shifts both Saturday and Sunday, 6 am to 6 pm, and I think hardly got a penny. And he was very angry about it. Eventually he stopped following the format at all and was playing whatever music he brought in with him. He was also airing "wacky" phone calls and was even sometimes abusive to the elderly listeners who would call in. What could the station do, fire him? When he's not being paid? They were just glad he was still showing up.

Another co-worker, Gene Moran, was promised equipment so he could DJ dances, but never got a thing. But he had a great voice, was ambitious and smart. Not long after I left KBBA he was hired by KKYK, FM 104, which at the time was Little Rock's top-rated pop station. He started part-time there, but quickly worked his way up to evening jock, making pretty good money. And he picked up the radio tradition of moving all over and worked at some big stations. Gene joined me a few times on my alternative rock show on KABF, and we would even work together for a short time at another station several years later in Jonesboro, Arkansas. The last I heard he had taken a job in Guam.

After a few months of hardly getting any money, my dad, concerned that I was being ripped off, called John Riddle. I'm sure he was very diplomatic, but also very direct in asking why I wasn't being paid. He was concerned that I, a 17-year-old, was having to drive 45 minutes on the interstate each way, including during I-30's miserable afternoon rush. Also, I was working five nights a week while still a junior in high school. My dad, I'm sure, felt that if I was making this kind of sacrifice I needed to be fairly compensated. When I saw Riddle a few hours after my dad called, he said he understood my dad's concerns and would try to pay me more regularly. But he also reiterated the station's dire financial situation.

Realizing that KBBA wasn't going to work out, I started sending tapes and resumes to other stations. One was to the other radio operation in Benton, KAKI, which was a low-power FM oldies station. I met with the program director, had an on air audition, with me pulling a two hour air shift, and thought everything had gone well, but I wasn't hired. I learned two weeks later that the entire air staff had been let go so that the company could raise money to upgrade the signal, which the FCC had apparently just approved. A few years later, after jumping from 3,000 to 50,000 watts, it became a full-fledged Little Rock station.

From there I applied to and interviewed at KLRA in England, Arkansas, which was an AM/FM simulcast. I was offered the job, so I gave KBBA what I felt was a very generous one-week notice that I was leaving. John Riddle said he would try to get together some of the money I was owed before leaving, but it seemed he spent the remaining week trying to avoid me. On my final night I called his home, but only got his answering machine. I left a message but didn't get a call back. I wasn't really surprised.

I was never especially angry with him because it seemed like he was working hard and trying to get advertising for the station, but just couldn't make a go of it. I was, however, bothered by how he misled the staff, especially high school kids. Still, I know that was his way of simply trying to keep the station on the air. But KBBA's era had passed. By this time few people even in Benton were tuning in because the stronger stations from Little Rock were so much better. Also, by this time not many people were willing to listen to music on an AM station.

I know I had to start somewhere and looking back I would say that this was starting at rock bottom. But listening to an old aircheck, I realize how bad I was. I'm glad I didn't start at a bigger station because KBBA gave me room to make mistakes, learn and get better. It also made me appreciate later jobs where I at least always got paid.

Within a year or so of my leaving, KBBA went dark. It would remain off the air a couple of years until I saw one day in the trade paper Radio & Records that it had been sold for a mere $7,500. It would change call letters to KEWI and eventually return to the airwaves under the ownership of a large car dealership. I'm glad and even surprised that AM 690 is still alive.