"and that little boy who nobody loved grew up to be ... roy cohn."

bloch bros., wheeling, w.va., originally uploaded by pr9000.

One of my favorite memories of growing up in the Ohio Valley was listening to WWVA. I think my love affair with AM radio started there -- that, and my pop having two transistor radios on the front porch at dusk, listening to the Indians on one, the Pirates on the other ...

WWVA was something special. It was 50,000 watts of pure power. I could see the broadcast towers from my front yard. When I was older, dad was forced to add extra phone jacks upstairs. His homemade wiring brought more than phone calls -- WWVA broadcasts came over the wires, and any calls I made after 7 p.m. was accompanied by hellfire and damnation from its religious broadcasts.

Two things about the station stick out. First is the afternoon mine report, where someone from WWVA's mighty news team (and it was mighty back in the day) read out the shifts at local mines that were working. It would be an anachronism today; nobody would understand what a McElroy or a Powhatan #6 is.

The second (and probably most important) thing: the daily ritual of listening to Paul Harvey at lunch.

I would make myself a bologna sandwich and turn on Paul Harvey precisely at noon, at which time I would stand by for news! He had the smoothest baritone in the business and a decidedly midwestern sensibility. You could hear his eyebrow raising as he read the latest bit of political news from Washington. It was different than Tom Brokaw or Dan Rather or Walter Cronkite. He allowed opinion to color his reporting, but not so much that you'd call him a shill or a partisan. He was down to earth, translating what happened on the coasts into language a midwesterner could understand.

Paul Harvey's word was bond. If he endorsed a product, it was as good as Moses bringing down the tables with "Neutrogena" as the Eleventh Commandment. As we were cleaning out my grandfather's house last summer, I came across a desk drawer full of Wells Lamont gloves. Wells Lamont was one of Harvey's best sponsors.

Why? Because Wells Lamont is stuuuuuburrrn about quality.

See? I remember that. I remember all of it. I dare you to name me anyone else in radio who colors kids' memories 30 years later. You can't do it, probably because you're not a radio nerd like I am.