WOW

When I was in college, I developed something called The Walter Durst Radio Hour on a fictitious radio station called WOW, which stood for Walter Oh Walter. Originally, it was a weekly taped series that was like a glorified letter to a friend named Sonny Smith. He lived in Columbia, and I was away in school. Instead of writing letters, and long before email, we sent the cassette tapes back and forth. Many were 90 minutes, but most were 60 minutes. Even a few were 30 minutes. They contained music and news. His "station" was SOS, which stood for Sonny Oh Sonny. He turned me on to music by Crosby, Stills & Nash, Carole King, Todd Rundgren, Sonny Boy Williamson, and much more. I would play Chicago, The Beatles, and a lot more. We talked about loves and life. I would type out scripts and time them out, because I tried to make my tapes as professional as possible. The show actually aired on a real radio station briefly, or can we say one time? A radio station behind Anderson College allowed me to do a WDRH on it, but it was determined that it was too controversial and was taken off. I got a little too political about Vietnam. So, I went back to the tapes. I also traded taped letters with my friends Mary Ellen and Karen in Clemson, as well as a few others, but the ones to Sonny were classics. I have a few of them, mostly from the mid-1970's. I was reminded about all of this, because of a dream I had last night, where somebody let me be on the radio and have my own show of talk and music. Thanks to Jonathon Rush. I wish it wasn't a dream. "And now, from studio 235 of the New Dorm of Anderson College at Anderson SC, it's the Walter Durst Radio Hour on station WOW, which stands for Walter Oh Walter. The Walter Durst Radio Hour is brought to you by Irby's Pies and the Post Office. It is also heard in Poland, Chad, Libya, Albania, Lesotho, Madigascar, and it is the official radio station of Outer Mongolia. And now, here's Walter..."