KBLA – Humble Harve – October 23, 1966 – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
October 1966. If you had the gross misfortune of graduating Junior High (or Middle School) before the Summer of the year, 1966 for example, Fall or September for you meant starting High School – a lot of new kids and being at the absolute bottom rung on the social ladder. That would be the extent of your 10th grade. Everything was out of reach; respect, the opposite sex, a drivers license, clothes that fit. It was awkward for you. You see the older ones and you realize that eventually you will become them. For the time, that eventuality seems like an eternity off. Now it’s just dread and that unmistakable feeling that life as you knew it is over.
Only a few months earlier you were It; wizened elder of the 9th grade, one of the Cool People. Now you’re back to Square One. And even though a lot of your friends you went to Junior High with are in classes with you, there’s the bigger population of students who see you as a hood ornament or a virus. Girls, especially the 12th graders, view you as an annoyance with a boner because they catch you staring at them all the time. The older guys now get a chance to put you through what they went through when they were 10th graders – and the results are more embarrassing than lethal.
But the good news is, you still have your radio – the 12 transistor Hitachi Special you got at White Front with your allowance last year is your go-to place for tunes and reassuring words. And every time you hear Tobacco Road by The Nashville Teens or Gloria by Them you get all nostalgic and misty eyed for last year, when you were a big deal. 1965 was your year – 1966; not so much so far.
And to plug you into the World of 60s Teenage Angst, here is Humble Harve from 1500 KBLA on Sunday Night from 10:00 to 10:40 – October 23, 1966.
Editors note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Absolutely fantastic! Harve at his best! Thanks very much. The hour just before this was the STONES! special. If you have that, wow, what a post that would be! I have a scoped version, but there is nothing like unscoped air checks.