Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle

Blasting With Boyles

Where Did You Grow Up?

I Think It’s Going To Be Denver

Lately when I’m asked where did I grow up, I respond with: I think it’s going to be Denver. Last month I wrote about when I was a kid listening to radio and the influences that Top 40 radio had on all of us in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s.

So, when I’m always asked, “How did you get into this business?” I generally reply, “I don’t know, because my parents were married.”

Truth be known, I was going to Metropolitan State College, studying hard, actually wanting to teach on a college level and was working part-time in a warehouse, when a classmate of mine told me that the AAA Auto Club on Colorado Blvd. was looking to hire an assistant for their radio traffic reporter. He told me the hours were early in the morning and later in the afternoon. I later found out that’s called morning and afternoon drive, which shows you how much I really knew about radio at the time.

I went that afternoon and for the first time met a man who was about to become one of those lifelong friends — Dan Hopkins — who just recently retired as Governor Bill Owens’ press secretary. (How come everyone I got into radio with is either dead, in an institution or retired?) My hair was down to my shoulders, I had John Lennon glasses and a full beard. Dan thought I’d be a perfect fit for the job if only I’d get a haircut. As Danny often tells the story, I asked him if he had a pair of scissors and I got my haircut right there on the spot, and started the next day as the assistant to the Mr. Announcer Person traffic reporter. Who by the way, for the first two months thought I was a communist hippie (which I was) and wouldn’t talk to me.

When people asked me what I did, I told them I counted cars. Then I figured out that there were people in airplanes over the city doing the same thing with a lot more accuracy. Dick Dillon at KIMN, Art Newman on KOA and Don Martin on KHOW (whose voice you can still hear on the Tom Shane jewelry commercials saying, “Now you have a friend in the diamond business”) were the airplane pilot traffic reporters.

Hopkins knew enough about radio to know that those reports came at certain times of the hour. Now I know that as a format called a clock in the radio business. Hopkins and I got a radio out of a wrecked car and set the buttons to the different radio stations and when the air traffic reports were aired on the other station I would poach (steal) the real traffic reporter’s traffic reports. By this time I think Dan had hired or fired (or they quit) three or four Mr. Big Voice Announcer Persons and so finally I told Dan that I could be the on air guy as well as steal the traffic reports from the other radio stations, save them a bundle of money and then I could become the traffic reporter.

My first on air morning was the morning after my daughter was born and because of that I never call her Shannon, I always call her Lucky. A few months after that, I’m moving along in grad school, dead broke and now a father, and the late Jack Merker was then the Program Director of the Big KAAT of the Rockies which was a 50,000 watt daytime only radio station that was on the floor below the Playboy Club in the old Radisson Hotel. I was doing traffic reports for Jack and he told me that although I had a very weird voice I was smart and funny and he was looking for a weekend disc jockey. He asked me to come down to the studios of KAAT Radio. I walked in, and back in those days, there were at least four turntables, stacked up cart machines and a control board that you could not stretch your arms out and touch end to end. It was all knobs, slides, pods, bells and whistles. I had never been in a radio station before and it looked like the control deck of the Starship Enterprise.

I watched Jack for a couple of hours and he told me to come back the next day when he sat me in the on air seat while he used what was then called the jump mic (the second microphone) and acted as the disc jockey while I tried to run the controls with him coaching. We played MOR (middle of the road) music format. After doing that for about four hours, Jack abruptly stood up, looked at me and said, “Ok, give me half an hour of radio” and walked out of the studio.

I immediately stood up and threw up in the trash can, and did possibly the worst 30 minutes of radio in Denver’s storied radio history. Jack walked back in afterward, the shift was over and in what became my true radio lifestyle, we went to the bar. Jack told me that I needed a lot of work but I wasn’t bad and he wanted me to come back all next week at night and sit in the production room and play radio. No one could hear it but I was to pretend that I was doing a radio show to get ready for my debut the next Saturday for what’s called now a “board shift” for I’m sure under $5 an hour.

I remember the first Saturday that I was alone in that control room probably playing Engelbert Humperdinck or the Sandpipers. I heard a little voice in my head and it said, “Where have you been? We’ve been waiting for you.” When I walked out after that shift I no longer wanted to teach. I wanted to do radio.

Peter

Peter Boyles is a nationally acclaimed radio host who can be heard Monday through Friday on 630 KHOW 5 to 9 a.m. He has a monthly column in the Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle. Visit Peter’s blog and comment on his column, or let him know anything else that’s on your mind, by going to the Chronicle Web site at www.glendalecherrycreek.com.

Peter Boyles Column

April 2009

In the first part of the 1960’s, people in the USA first started hearing stories about karate;  this mysterious, Asian fighting form where people broke bricks and boards with their hands and feet.   I’d always loved boxing and my brother Scott, who I have written about before and who passed away, really was a great young amateur fighter.  I was told about a karate tournament being held in Pittsburgh in the fall of 1963 and I got a couple of tickets and went.  It was the first time that I saw a Martial Artists fight.   I got the address of their dojo (school) and wandered in and met my first sensei (teacher).  He was one of the toughest guys I’ve ever known in my life and his name was Harry Smith.   He is now one of the people who are now called first generation American Martial Artists.  He had lived on Okinawa as a Marine and achieved the rank of Sixth Degree Black Belt in an Okinawa karate style entitled Isshinryu.   

Your first entry level in Martial Arts is a White Belt.  As the story goes, the karate suit known as a “gi” was at one time the daily clothing wear of the rice farmers and working people of Asia.  Some historians believed that the system of colored belts simply comes from the more you practiced, the dirtier your belt got.  So, the long time practitioners’ belts were black which eventually became known as Black Belts.

I immediately fell in the love with the fighting aspect of karate and as a young kid we traveled to Chicago, Washington D.C., Toronto and New York to fight in karate tournaments.  It really was quite different back in those days; many times people didn’t hold back punches or kicks.  In the practice schools themselves, there were a lot of broken bones, black eyes and broken noses.  But, there was also a great camaraderie and a lot of beer drinking.   

After studying with Sensei Smith for three years and arriving in Denver, I tried to seek out Okinawa style Martial Arts school, but there were none.  Then I met my second instructor Ce (Chuck) Sereff who was a practitioner of a Korean Martial Art entitled Tae Kwon Do.   Chuck Sereff, like Harry Smith, are both now in their 70’s and have become Grand Masters (9^th Degree Black Belts) and are two of the most remarkable men I’ve ever known.   I still stay in touch with both of these men but for well over 20 years, I haven’t gone near a Martial Arts gym, or for that matter, even so much as attended at karate tournament. 

About eight or nine years ago, Ultimate Fighting Championships came to America and the first one was held at the old McNichols’ arena and the second was held at Mammoth Gardens, but then Mayor Webb outlawed it.   The nicest thing they could call it was “human cock fighting.”  I, on the other hand, thought it was one of the most wonderful things I’d ever seen.  Ultimate Fighting has become the UFC and now encompasses Pride Fighting out of Asia, K1 fighting, Shoot Fighting, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, American boxing, Thai Kick Boxing and Submission Wrestling. 

I’ve attended dozens of these fights as a spectator, locally promoted by Steve Allie and Kickdown Fight Promotions.  Through Steve, I met Tom Johnson, owner of Innovative Martial Arts.  Tom teaches Thai boxing, Jiu Jitsu and Krav Maga.  MMA, of course, means Mixed Martial Arts or all of the above, all at one time, trying to bring smoke off of the other guy’s head.

Fool that I am, or as my father once said, “You don’t have the brains to pour a certain liquid excrement out of a boot,” I have now begun MMA fighting.  As I’m sitting here writing this, I’ve had my ribs kicked in and really pulled my hamstring hard.  It’s the most fun I’ve had with my clothes on in a long time.  These guys are everything rolled into one and everybody plays for keeps.  I think I’m the oldest guy in the school by about 25 years and I think these young guys really do take mercy on my soul.  But the good thing is that I don’t think I’ve been in this good of shape in a long time. 

In trying to recapture my soul that I’ve written about in my last few columns I’m now running four miles a day, my weight is down to 161 pounds and I go to Fight Club twice a week.   I can’t tell you how much fun this is.  The gym at Innovative Martial Arts is located at 1961 S. Havana Street and Fight Club is inside the Pro Gym at the same address.   They can be reached at 303-671-9586. 

In about three weeks Tom thinks I’ll be ready for my first three-round fight with two minute rounds.  I can’t wait.  Remember, fight with your feet and make love with your face.  Thank you to Harry Smith, Chuck Sereff, Steve Allie and Tom Johnson. 

Peter

It was a whale of a summer, the Supreme Court had outlawed prayer, the Russians were putting missiles in Cuba, and James Meredith was trying to enroll in the University of Mississippi. As I’ve written before, I was a young laborer in a steel mill in Western Pennsylvania called Edgewater Steel. The mill was on the Verona border, right on the Allegheny River. It was also the summer that I found out a lot about sex.

Now in a prior column, I mentioned the first time I exercised my franchise was when I talked about voting for the first time with my father. However, my first experience of exercising my true franchise came a couple years earlier than that with a rather overweight woman by the name of Betty. I hesitate to use Betty’s last name because I don’t know if the statute of limitations has run out on this one yet. Betty’s nickname was the “Wood Witch.”

I was 13-years-old playing baseball with the older guys and after the ballgames on the afternoons that Betty’s mother and father worked, the fellows would all tramp through the woods and visit her. This, by the way, was also the first time I had a drink of alcohol. We went to Betty’s house and the guys got her into playing strip poker and then Betty would have group sex and at the time we called it “a train.” Because I was the youngest, I was the caboose. And by the way, Betty was two years older than I was at the time. After that, I was sure my mother knew I had changed just by looking at me and moreover, I started on my life of drinking.

Less than a week ago I shaved off my mustache and as you can see from the photo, I have had that ’stache for well over 30 years. I’m going through a rough patch in my life right now and I figured maybe it was time to ditch the ’stache. So I had it shaved off in this barbershop. I noticed the scar on my lip that I hadn’t seen for well over 30 years. It was from an altercation from one of my early sexual encounters I had in my life and my first affair.

This time it was the husband of some woman (Delores) that I had met at a nightclub in Verona, Pennsylvania called Billy Kay’s. In Verona there were bars called Blind Pigs, which were really bars without licenses, and I’ve written about them before and talked about them on the radio. They always had gambling. When I was 19-years-old working in the mill and drinking at Billy Kay’s, I met this exotic woman who told me that her husband spent all of their money gambling and drinking in Ma Benson’s Blind Pig, which was on the other side of the B&O tracks. She asked me to go back to her house and it was about midnight. They lived right off the Allegheny River on Railroad Avenue. She told me she needed money for the rent and the kids and I only had $80 in my pocket. I said, “Sure, how much do you need.” She said, “Wait right there” and went into the other room and then called my name. I went in and she was in her glory. Remember in the movie Young Frankenstein when Madeline Kahn sings in a high falsetto, “Oh sweet mystery of life, at last I found you.” Well, that’s accurate. I discovered the true meaning of life.

As you can see by this time, for me it was the bells. Her husband’s name was Felix and I was slipping her $40 or $50 every payday. One night, with my running buddies Tommy Holmes and Larry Matfay (who is a whole other story), we were in Billy Kay’s bar and I was told “Duck!” As I turned around, I turned into Felix’s right hand. He dropped me like a bad habit and was going to put the Florsheims to me until Tommy and Larry jumped him. Everyone got thrown out and Felix had cut me right on my lip with probably a cheap ass pinky ring.

Nobody had a lot of sympathy for me. I violated the 11th Commandment of Verona —  that was another guy’s wife. And it also might be the seventh Commandment that God gave us about adultery. I just knew that I hid from Felix for at least two paydays and started drinking in the Steering Wheel Inn, which is another fine Allegheny River drinking establishment.

I later saw Felix. He was putting hot tar on a roof and it was about 110 degrees in Pittsburgh, and I was home from the service. Felix looked down at me and I gave him the finger and Felix pointed to his own lip, reminding me that he had “Sunday’d” my ass at Billy Kay’s bar on that wild Friday night.

I have no idea what this column’s all about except that after 30 years for the first time I saw Felix’s scar. I don’t want to let this be a lesson to anybody because no 19-year-old idiot is going to read this and say, “Yeah, I better not do that.”

Delores took me to school but it was Felix that took me to graduate school. So, now the Cubans are on their own, black guys have quarterbacked the University of Mississippi and no one prays in school anymore anyhow. But I remember Felix and it was a two hit fight. Felix hit me and I hit the floor.

Happy New Year.        — Peter

Peter Boyles is a nationally acclaimed radio host who can be heard Monday through Friday on 630 KHOW 5 to 9 a.m. He has a monthly column in the Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle. Visit Peter’s blog and comment on his column, or let him know anything else that’s on your mind, by going to the Chronicle Web site at www.glendalecherrycreek.com.

Just until about the last 15 or so years of my life, and before I’d turned 11, I really hated Christmas. In fact, before I gained my sobriety, right around Thanksgiving time, when I heard the first Christmas carol, I immediately became a stuntman for Jack Daniels. I had Adolph Coors Company working nights and the first ho-ho-ho I heard dropped me into the deep dark well of depression. I never really would come out of it until some other drunk yelled “Happy New Year” all wet and sloppy from about three inches away at some “stop and sock” country bar where there is a fight in every bottle. That “Happy New Year” came after the first three fights of the night working itself up to the main event in the parking lot at about 1:30 a.m. That would be right after someone turned the lights on and said, “I don’t care where you go but you can’t stay here! Happy New Year.” And when the house lights came up that quickly, inevitably Jim-Bob caught some other redneck with his hand on Jim-Bob’s wife’s ass. You just gotta love that holiday spirit.

When I was a boy, alcohol and the holidays seemed to be inseparable. We always thought you put your Christmas tree up on Christmas Eve. I’ve had lengthy discussions with my wife about when the tree goes up. She believes it goes up as you are cooking the turkey for Thanksgiving, and I have always been a tree goes up on Christmas Eve man because that’s the way we did it when I was a kid. But I later figured out that the cheapest time you can buy a tree is Christmas Eve. So that’s when my old man brought home the tree; 7 p.m. on his way home from work. I figured those $6 trees must have gone for $1.50 at 7 p.m. on Christmas Eve back in 1953. The old man had it figured that the tree lot gypsy was going to be stuck with the trees and had to make a deal.

My father couldn’t get a tree to stand up straight to save his life. In fact, on more than one occasion, he drove a nail into the wall, tied a string around it and tied it to the tree. I’ve never thought there was anything wrong with that and I actually tried it once myself. Believe it or not, it still works. The other somewhat fun game to play at Christmas is to ride the baby Jesus and the three wise men around on the electric train. Sometimes you could set the baby Jesus on the tracks and play a game of chicken with the Lionel Train.

Final score

Lionel: 1

The Holy Family: 0

My father, who was an ardent gambler, won our electric train on a punchboard sometime in the late 1940s. (Punchboards were gambling devices in bars in Pennsylvania). I still have the train and today the damn thing is worth a lot of money. Which disproves my brother Jeff’s great line, when asked what your father left you when he died, my brother said, he left us alone.

Christmas always involved some drunken brawl in my family. My Uncle Wally had snaked the wife of his neighbor and then married her, and for that she had her kid taken away from her. So, every Christmas eve, my aunt would show up, get dead drunk and cry in the kitchen. Then someone would yell at her, “Shut the hell up! It’s Christmas.”

I was also an acolyte, i.e. altar boy, at All Saints Church. One of the great fêtes as always is Christmas Eve service. More people have passed out at a midnight Christmas Eve service and ended up in the drunk tank at the local police station than any other service. On more than one occasion I smelled the Irish on a parish priest, Father Earl Dougherty.

But the greatest gift I ever received was when my Uncle Barney gave me a cigarette lighter with a hula girl on it that when you turned it upside down, her skirt came up. He slipped it into my hand and with whiskey breath said, “Don’t show this to your mother.” I was 11 and it was the last great Christmas. I do remember the people up the street who got drunk and on their front window of their house wrote in fake spray paint snow “Noel.” The problem with the decoration is that they did it from inside their house. From the street, it said “Leon.”

Now since I’ve gained recovery and my wife has shown me how to love Christmas again, I can only use the words that a man who helped me gain my sobriety almost 25 years ago said to me, “I don’t know what makes you an alcoholic kid, but give me a bottle of Jim Beam, an hour and a half and a hotel room and I’ll show you Christmas.”

To All A Good Night.

Peter

Don’t forget to put out breadcrumbs for the birds.

Peter Boyles is a nationally acclaimed radio host who can be heard Monday through Friday on 630 KHOW 5 to 9 a.m. He has a monthly column in the Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle.

Blasting With Boyles
Naughty, Paulie Walnuts Or Don’t Disrespect The Bing

For what’s behind the curtain or the luggage or the new car, I defy you to choose from above. Which one is the real gangster? Naughty or Paulie? I find the case of U.S. District Judge Edward Nottingham one of the more interesting Colorado stories of the last couple of years.

Recently, I have been going to federal court almost daily to watch one of the stupidest federal events in recent history: the trial of Cory Voorhis. But you can’t help but notice, walking into one of the most imposing buildings I have ever been in: the Alfred Araj Federal Courthouse, and the top name on the plaque is none other than Naughty himself. Looking down on all others, is none other than Denver’s number one party boy, Eddie Walnuts.

We’ve also just witnessed the political demise of another funster, Governor Elliot Spitzer, who always looked as though he could get in a fight with a cobra, give it the first two bites and still win. So the trivia question for this part of the show is, “What do Elliot Spitzer and Eddie Nottingham have in common?” That’s right, fun-seekers, none other than Jolting Joe Nacchio/Phil Anschutz’s pride and joy. Now comes the true musical question: We know who Naughty and Spitzer had sexual relations with, but the real question is how many people did Joe Nacchio screw? Not in the biblical sense, but in the real world of job loss, health care, benefits being taken away and vanishing retirement funds.

And surprise, surprise, Nacchio has got a brand new trial and a brand new judge; Spitzer is spending more time with his family. (If you ever hear me say, “I want to spend more time with my family, know that I screwed the pooch beyond all recognition, or my other favorite, “Peter’s now in treatment.”) Meanwhile, back at the ranch, isn’t it interesting that the Feds break up the Denver Players a.k.a. Denver Sugar’s prostitution ring, who apparently, like “Dominos,” were more than willing to deliver, at least to Naughty’s son’s home in Cherry Creek.

Knock knock.
Who’s there.
Denver Sugar. Is Naughty home?
Come on in girls.

Brian Maas from Channel 4 has shown a series of photographs to one of the working girls from Denver Sugar. She, according to Brian, can identify a number of Denver society column bold print names (winky, winky), but we only know the name of Naughty. Naughty of course, not only had the hookers delivered but his cell phone number was on a whorehouse list. And, he spent over $3,000 in a drunken blackout in one of Denver’s premier hoochie koochie spots. As Kurt Vonnegut would say, “and so it goes.” So Spitzer’s done and I bet there are a lot of big name guys in this city holding their breath. And by the way, Brian Maas’s hooker couldn’t identify Naughty, but I bet there’s a lot of rich and famous guys buying their wives new cars and diamonds in preemptive strikes and holding their collective breath.

Now back to Paulie Walnuts. As you can see, this is the $64,000 question: Why do we make these so-called social crimes so embarrassing? Why do any of us care about the actions of these people who hold other people in moral standard? Because people like Naughty and Spitzer and these yet-to-be-named powerhouses have a special place in society. The young woman mentioned, in the interview by Brian Maas, heavy cocaine use, athletes, money-managers and lawyers. And also, apparently, at least one of these vestal virgins turned a trick wearing the bathrobe of the guy who throws like a girl. So, they can put people in jail, ruin someone’s life, and they can interpret laws that affect all of us daily and they only prove that all of us, myself included, have feet of clay.
We’re all just human, but Jesus, Eddie, $3,000 in a strip club and you were too drunk to remember what you did? What the hell were you thinking? And you were trying Joe Nacchio? I don’t know, maybe it’s just me.

— Peter