Voices: Radio memories

June 21, 2009 08:27 pm

— The recollections of Globe columnist Mike Pound about WHB radio station, a station of the ’60s and ’70s, are about like mine. I also look for a little bit different music now.
It was interesting to me, even a couple hundred miles away, that on Sunday evenings, music yielded to an hour or so of “Town Hall,” a call-in program featuring Mayor Harry Wiggins. He fielded the usual political questions, but also had running conversations, usually with “little ladies,” concerning more mundane issues like residential speeders, low water pressure, and unresolved/unrepaired potholes (funny, the spell-check suggested “unprepared” — I’m sure the callers thought the potholes to be fully prepared) on neighborhood streets. Some of these discourses dragging over several weeks. He was a model of patience and amiability through it all.
Anyway, if you liked “Maggie May,” “Sylvia’s Mother,” “Lucky Man,” and various Beatles tunes, WHB would have been your station too. These days, there are “Click and Clack,” the Tappet Brothers auto repair men, “Lake Wobegon,” and others on National Public Radio, besides the Bavarian Glockenspiel and Old Gourd players, maybe Maria Callas or whatever.
I run more towards CSN (Christian Satellite Network) and such these days.
Bill Hawkins
Joplin