Reeder Custom Guns - speaking of food below (Moon Pie) reminds me

of what we had growing up. There were no McDonalds anywhere around Nashville, maybe none in the country (1961 and '62). No Burger King, No Arbys, No Jack In the Box, No Sizzler, very few of the fast food places we have now. We had the Krystal Burger (those little 2" square burgers that were 10 for $1) which was the same as White Castle Burgers, Shoney's Big Boy and Whataburger. Before I started driving, we looked forward to going "into town" on Saturday afternoon and going to the Whataburger. The Shoney's was where all the kids hung out in the evenings. We would drive around the drive up section endlessly. The girls wore shorts that were risque at the time (these days women wear shorts that short to church. The girls also wore roller skates. We would order the Shoney's Big Boy (which was about the size of the Whopper these days. If we left the girls a 25¢ tip, we were big spenders. Driving around and around Shoneys for hours on end, I don't remember exactly what we were looking for, it was just cool to drive around in our Mother's car. Good times back then.

In Nashville there was a day old Colonial bread company and my Grandmother raised pigs as everyone did. I would drive her pick up truck with the high sideboards into Nashville and go to the day old bread building and they would pile up probably 500 lbs of day old bread into the truck. I think it cost $5. They also gave us those chocolate muffins, and the solid marshmallo Snowballs with the white sprinkles on top. They also had the frosted Fried Apple pies. The day old chocolate muffins tasted as good to me as the fresh ones. I would pick out a large handful of each of these and pitch them into the front seat of the truck and eat them on the long 20 mile trip back to Granny's house. Our kids these days don't know what they are missing.

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in South Texas which is the home of Whataburger. I remember in the early 50's going there with my dad and brother. It was on Ayers street near Del Mar College and we lived on Trenton drive which was about 8 or 9 blocks to the best of my recollection. I thought those burgers were the biggest and best and did not like Big Boys. My wife loves them so we always stop whenever we go to Birmingham to pig out. Back then we used play cowboys and indians and infinitely repeating cap guns. Biggest fights were on who shot who first...LOL Can you imagine that happening now, hell the police would be at your door if you let your kids run around with a cap gun. Of course, you have to get them to quit playing video games to get them to go outside and play. I used to go fishing on the Nueces river at the age of 9 and fish all day and my parents did not worry about me or if they did they never let on. I think there was a neighbor that lived along the bank of the Nueces that probably kept and eye on us. Back then if an adult told you to hop you just hopped and hoped it was high enough. If you didn't you were libel to get your butt swatted and it reported to your parents who would really bust your ass when you got home for not doing as you were told. I really miss those days.

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I remember going to a new hamburger joint in Denver with my Mom to meet my Dad for lunch the day that President Kennedy was assassinated. We heard it on the radio on the way there. I will have to ask my Mom but i believe it was the to the first McDonalds to open there. I remember her crying in the parking lot! I was 4 at the time.

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the time in McCook Nebraska. I had just turned 18 and had been in radio since mid summer. In radio all news, weather, local stories etc come in over the teletype machine. It is a big machine that types 24/7. We cleared the machine every 30 minutes or so, saved the good stuff and chucked the rest. The ribbon on the teletype machine was a standard typewriter ribbon, typing purple in color. We got them in boxes of dozen or so. We also used them on our regular typewriter (manual, no electric typewriters at that time, at least not in our station). The girls up front in the front office liked to type up weird stories and bring them back to the control room and hand them to me as a bulletin. After being caught a few times I learned to say thanks and when they walked out of the control room, I would throw it in the trash.

The day Kennedy was shot in Dallas, one of the office girls brought it back to me and quietly slipped it on the control board as I was in the middle of giving the hourly news (DJs did that back then, 5 minutes of news every hour). Anyway, after she left, I read it, laughed and pitched it in the trash. A bit later I walked up front to refill my coffee cup and both office girls were crying. I asked why and they said because Kennedy had been shot and they thought at the time he might have been killed. Real quick I shuffled my young ass back into the control, broke in over the middle of a record and mentioned "As we mentioned earlier President Kennedy was shot today in Dallas. More Information as we get it". And that saved my bacon as the story was close to an hour old when I broke in with the "bulletin".

Later that afternoon one of the girls up front was young and had the hots for me, (only because I was a DJ) and I told her what I did and really made it sound like it was all her fault. She started crying and I told her it was all OK that I had covered up the whole thing and wouldn't let anyone know what she and the other girl had done, so their jobs were intact. She was quite thankful and expressed her thankfulness that evening in my apartment (or pad as they called it back them).

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Now a sabertooth hound dog!

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you were into free booze and good lookin' willing women, this was the time of your life. It didn't matter if you were fat and ugly or skinny as a rail with pimples, you were a DJ, so in the minds of the chippies and groupies you were somebody. I never was stupid enough to get into drugs at all, but I sure swashbuckled (whatever the hell that means) my way thru the booze and ladies.

Radio in the 60s and 70s and into the early 80s was not for a married man or a man with a conscience. Way too much temptation and way too little will power. During that time period my lack of will power (and scruples) cost me a divorce or 2, or 3. But all things aside, I loved every minute of it, until '83 or '84 when it all changed and it became all about money. Good DJs were canned when they were putting on a great show, all due to money. The radio stations had taken a hit, money wise, during Jimmy Peanuts Carter's regime and no longer did they have the big bank accounts to put on special things to get the listener's attention. The old days of publicity stunts were over. The days of doing silly ass things on the air to make people say "holy shit, did you hear what he said" were over.

I was building TC barrels and custom XP-100s in my garage shop and early in '85 I had enough of the changes and left radio to do the custom gun thing full time. In almost 35 years I have regretted it very little. And the good thing is now I am too old to change. Too old to try to keep up with the groupies (they are probably grandmothers now). Too old to start drinking again. Just too old. But that's OK.

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My mother had a Model A Ah-ooo-Gah Horn on the back porch that she used to call us for dinner. You could hear it a mile up the river.

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We carried pistols when we were 15 YO, hunted, fished, trapped and camped out while living on the river. My best friend had lots of guns since his grandfather was a Deputy Sheriff. The safe had lots of ammo so he would take a box or two. He once shot a deer with a 38 Super.

By the time we were 16 and got our drivers license, we expanded the area we covered which beat riding our bicycles.
We would ask farmers for permission to hunt on their land and shot pigeons which ate their grain. In some cases the word was NO but sometimes changed when other farmers talked about the groundhogs taken out and our manners. One even wanted to pay for the ammo.

We also learned tracking from the little literature that was available back then. Some summers we would camp out in the mountains for a week and try to live off the land eating frogs, fish, snakes and crayfish from the stream. We would take along some Dinty Moore beef stew just in case.

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the late 60's in central NY we would bring 22's to hunt woodchucks and squirrels after classes. We were supposed to leave them in the dorm directors office. If it was closed no one had a problem with them being in our rooms for a nite or 20.

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I kept my Remington 870 at Va Tech my junior year. Others had rifles and pistols as well.

During hunting season, we would hunt on weekends for rabbits and squirrels.

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Texaco Garage after track practice and having a Pepsi in a spiral glass bottle out of square lift top cooler with 4 rows to the lift up opening after you put you quarter in. When you took off the top the Pepsi would frost. To top it off I would eat cheese popcorn and a payday with tons of nuts. Run home the last half mile, hurdle the pine tree in the front yard and eat a full dinner. That pine tree is 5' at the butt. The sad part is I had to sell my Parents home 2 Mondays ago. That just about sent me over the edge. That really bothered me even though it was the right thing. Sometimes there are no choices. Sorry for my digression.

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Were East Texas staples. The skating car hops were to me the mist beautiful girls in the world! We also went to the day old bread store for supplemental feed for the hogs! Back then when we still had foir seasons down South October was hog butchering time. Got up early while there was heavy frost on the ground. Butcher the hogs, boil and scrape the hide, render the fat for lard, make cracklins in huge cast iron pots. Salt the meat and two weeks later smoke it.

speaking of food below (Moon Pie) reminds me

It would be nice to go back to those days

boys, we're getting old.

I was born and raised in Corpus Christi

Just a wee boy in denver in 1963.

speaking of the Kennedy shooting, I was in radio at

You were quite the swashbuckler back then, now a sabertooth

the 60s and 70s were a great time to be a DJ. If

LOL

Yep

It was a good life

When I went to college in

Shotguns in college

For me that was going to Dale Spiker's

Oh yeah, Shoney's Big Boy and Whataburger

Almost forgot, we had an A&W Root beer stand too

We had an A&W.

1955-56: THE FLAGPOLE. SIGH

Amet.

Amen, fat fingers.