There was a time when you could hear me on the radio, if you wanted to. And if you were in the same town and had an AM radio. I backed into the experience and rode it as long as it lasted.

My “career” in radio comprised two programs in two different states in which I mixed music and discussion. The first was just for a summer, the second for about two-and-a-half years.

The first was on a small radio station in Orange MA. I say “small” to refer to the size of the staff and building, as well as the reach of its broadcast signal. It was AM, as most stations were back then.

I was in town for that summer, as I had been for the previous one, to run a youth ministry supported by five local churches. For the radio station I checked two boxes: trying to appeal to younger listeners and providing some community-service programming.

As part of the attempt to reach community youth, the Saturday afternoon format was called, at least by the program director, “Rap and Records.” In those days “rap” was slang for “to converse” as a verb or “conversation” as a noun. My shift was referred to as “The United Youth Ministry Portion of Rap and Records.” A friend had a slot in which he played and talked about jazz.

My program aired live for an hour. I had one or two guests. The engineer played a recording of a meaningful rock song I had chosen, and my guests and I discussed it. Listeners could call in and join the conversation, though few did.

I enjoyed hanging around the radio station, getting to know some members of the staff and maybe learning a few things.

The one person on duty during my gig was a high school student who had landed a part-time job there. He used an on-air name that was more Anglo-Saxon than his real name. In time, I learned that another high school student I knew had wanted that job. I had the second guy as a panelist on my show one week. At one point, the student employee called in from another line in the adjacent studio, as if he were a listener at home. During the call, I was aware of some subtle digs between the two, though it’s likely listeners didn’t notice.

At some point, I saw a memo from the program director to the limited number of DJs, who apparently programmed their own music. Selections during the day were to be from the vanilla section of popular tunes — my wording, not his. After sundown, however, “rock out, as long as the towers don’t fall down.” These were his words. The music after dark though, was still pretty vanilla.

One evening I did hear something with a little more zip to it. I don’t remember what it was, but it wasn’t the Carpenters. On the other hand, it wasn’t Black Sabbath either. The D.J. quipped, “I hope the towers don’t fall down,” a reference one could get only if they’d seen the memo.

This same DJ also took credit for the urban legend that Jerry Mathers, TV’s Beaver Cleaver, had been killed in Viet Nam. He told me he and some fellow students had floated the notion on their Westcoast college radio station and it had caught on.

One of the few times my show did get a caller, he had a lot to say about that day’s topic. It was a good interchange, but as the top of the hour approached, I kept trying to end it tactfully. Not only was my segment supposed to end on the hour, but there was also the station identification requirement, about which I somehow was aware. The FCC has loosened up some since then, but in those days, you had to give the station call letters on the hour. There were only two minutes’ grace before you were in trouble.

The clock moved to 2:00 as the guy continued to talk. It moved past as I tried to interrupt without seeming to interrupt. Finally, somewhere between 2:01 and 2:02, he took a breath, I said, “Thanks for calling” and said — through the live phone — “You are listening the WCAT, Orange Massachusetts” with about five seconds to spare. I hung up the phone, quickly wrapped up and tossed it back to the high school student DJ/engineer. I’m sure he had queued up a recorded station break, then probably held it for 3:00.

A couple of years later, after I had returned to Chapel Hill NC, I got to know the program director of the local radio station, then also AM. They had recently expanded their broadcast day to 24 hours. The program director said they needed to expand their public-service broadcasting accordingly.

They were interested in something that could fall into the category “religious programming” but wouldn’t be overtly religious. Canned programs were available, but none really fell into this category. Besides, they preferred something with local appeal. I told him about my previous experience. He agreed I could provide what they needed.

Once again, I featured guests and music. This program, though, was a half hour long. It was prerecorded and aired on Sunday morning. I called it “Sacred Space.” In my introduction each week, I identified it as, “a program dealing with our relationship to God and our relationships with each other, with the belief that these two kinds of relationships are inseparable.” I closed each program with these words: “God touches and is part of all aspects of our lives. Sacred Space is where we stop to realize that.”

Usually, I focused on discussion with the guest(s) and used some music to enhance the discussion. At first, a competent engineer recorded and produced. After he moved on the bigger and better opportunities, the quality of the production help I got began a downward slide. Eventually, I did all the production work myself. My work was at least passable much of the time, though occasionally I ventured into the realm of the Peter Principle.

Every now and then, I deviated from the from the format and offered music and my own commentary. A specific topic may have suggested itself to me. I know I did at least one for Christmas and one inspired by the birth of my first child. A time or two, I threw something together because I had trouble lining up a guest.

I got some feedback from time to time that let me know that at least a few people listened. For a short while, an FM station on a nearby college campus used some of my work in their programming. Running the show itself didn’t work out, but some of my interviews fit into an on-air magazine. (Several years later, I was a guest at that station for an interview — by the same guy who had used parts of my program — to talk about a health promotion program I was running at UNC Health.)

Another commercial station in another city asked about letting them get tapes of “Sacred Space” to broadcast each week, but our PD said no. It was a competitor. Also, the person asking was a former employee of his. While I got along well with both of them, I got the idea they were less than friends.

In time, there was a new program director, with whom I also had a good relationship. At one point, he said he wanted to move my program back from 8 a.m. to 7 a.m. I already wondered how many people were up at 8 on Sunday morning to listen in. I told him I wasn’t sure it was worth my effort to produce a program that even fewer people were likely to hear. He didn’t change the time.

All my work for both stations was volunteer. When I sent tapes to the college FM station, I paid for the postage. Eventually, this PD had the station start cutting me a $5 check (about $30 today) each week for “expenses.” It was basically a “tip” for 3-4 hours of work each week.

I didn’t know it at the time, but that may have been the beginning of the end. Several weeks later, he called me at home one morning and said the station was making some cost-cutting moves. One move was to replace my show with one they could get for free from some organization that was not local. It would begin airing that coming Sunday in my slot.

I had mixed feelings. I was getting tired of doing the program. So, there was some sense of relief, along with the feeling of rejection and some anger at the abrupt way it came down. I choose to remember that the program director at least implied some message of thanks, but I still feel it would have been appropriate for the station’s owner to have sent me a short letter thanking me for all I had done for them. But that wasn’t his style.

My radio days ended without a sign-off.