Great Blizzard

Snow had been falling since the day before and I had to be to work at KBUL at midnight. As it would turn out, the power would fail throughout the region and the station would be off-air for about 12-hours.

Throughout the city, there were accidents from people sliding into each other with their vehicles, cars and trucks high-centered on snow drifts or where the snow plow had left a high furrow. Even 4×4 trucks with their enormously high wheel base ended up stuck in snow.

I had no problem with my little front-wheel Hyundai sedan getting from my home on Sutro to the studio on Grove. Only two other people made it in to the station like I had; Dan, the Program Director and the General Manager, Debby.

All we could do was wait the storm out, which I did by laying down on on the floor in the front lobby and falling asleep. My sleep was interrupted when the electricity returned.

Outside the building door was a generator, brought in by the engineers to provide electricity to make coffee and run auxiliary lights in the engineering office. It had been running most night and into the early morning, offering a gentle chugging noise that had helped me fall asleep.

Once the electricity returned, it became a scramble for Dan and Debby to make-good on all the commercials missed in the hours the signal had been dark. As each hour began I was handed a handwritten log with five to six minutes of commercials to play four times an hour.

After nearly 10-hour of being on the air, trying to play a couple songs followed by 10-to-12 half minute commercials, I was exhausted and ready to go home. Never have I ever been so happy to sign off the air.

As I left the building I noticed the generator was no longer on the steps. I figured it had been brought inside and was not in the engineering office, however I was wrong.

But by the time I got home, I had received a call wanting to know what happened to the generator. At first I got the blame for it’s disappearance, until I pointed out the generator was too big to fit in my tiny vehicle.

To this day I still don’t know how a person could get away with a 300-pound generator without being noticed.