I work for the Tuttle Times, and I used to work for the Tuttle Times. We were owned by the Daily Chickasha Star then, before the Chickasha Star and the Chickasha Express merged into one single, beautiful entity.
Although the Star is no more, a taste of its glory can be had at the combined page...
Before I started my lucrative career as a small town journalist, I worked at some of the top stations in Oklahoma City.
KATT, KYIS, and KTNT, all owned by Caribou Communications, was where I got my first taste of the business world.
I got to meet a lot of neat--and some famous--people, and I got a lot of free tickets to stuff.
All in all, it was a pretty interesting way to spend a year of my fleeting life.
KATT and KYIS are still around, but they dropped KTNT. I think that station is hip hop now or something. When I was there, it was smooth jazz.
Before I worked for the KATT, I was employed by Brewer Entertainment, where I had a week-long stint as the devil himself at the Bricktown Haunted Warehouse.
Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. The official drink of Bricktown is allegedly Coca-Cola, but I seem to remember everyone at the warehouse drinking large amounts of Chloraseptic straight from the bottle.
After a week of solid screaming, the KATT called, and I fled.
Before the warehouse, I spent a blissful summer watching cartoons on television and pretending to write.
So the next place I worked before that was at college. At Northwestern Oklahoma State University in Alva, I worked happily at the campus radio station, KNSU. I was the station manager my senior year, but I worked in various jobs there every year I went to school at NWOSU.
Other employment included the incredibly dull School of Nursing, the Academic Assistance Center, and the drama department.
The School of Nursing never had much to do. I spent most of my time studying or staring at the wall. The Academic Assistance Center was just getting started the summer I worked in the office, and there wasn't that much to do there, either. I spent a lot of time reading and cross-stitching. (There's your tax dollars at work!)
The drama department was only a one-month thing, and I made some bulletin boards and ran some copies. Nothing that noteworthy happened, but I remember it as being pleasant work.
Ah, McDonald's. Who among us can say that they have truly lived without that one job in fast food? My summer with McDonald's wasn't a favorite for me; something about burning the hair off of my knuckles every day on the grill top just didn't set well with me.
One of the managers cursed at us all one night while customers were standing there. The owner, who lived in Enid, was there one time and commented how nice it was that I whistled while I toasted buns. He seemed like a nice guy.
I quit to go back to Tuttle when my father died, and that's pretty much all I remember about that job. I guess I blocked it out.
KALV was my first job that wasn't at college or babysitting. I spent a year there; my first day was on July 4, 1993. I worked the 6-midnight shift on Saturday and Sunday.
Several memorable things happened here. I remember shutting off the equipment one night, waiting for Ben to come pick me up, when all of these mice came out of the walls. I guess they knew that when the stuff turned off, the place was empty. They were EVERYWHERE! I took some stale crackers off of someone's desk and played Cinderella for thirty minutes until Ben came.
I also recall the first time I used the microwave. Surprise, surprise! That little baby runs with the door open. Oh, there was also the time my friends and I were playing Monopoly up at the station, since a two-hour show was playing on CD and I was basically just babysitting it to make sure nothing bad happened and the station manager walked in. I about had a heart attack, but it turned out he was cleaning out his desk and quitting, so that was sort of interesting.
You can listen to KALV online now, which is good, because you can't hardly hear it five miles away.
You know, I also babysat two fine gents, Crockett and Cody Ladd, when I was a senior in high school. That was my first job. Favorite memories include drinking cherry ices on Main Street while we sat in the back of the pick-up and watched the cruisers drive by; winning Castlevania on Nintendo; and throwing popcorn at the television when the kids' show host we didn't like came on.
