Going truckin in Hazzard,

In 1975 as many did watched movies about truckers and trucking. Back then the CB radio was extra popular and I got one. I'd listen endlessly to those rigs rolling down the big road and dreamed of going trucking in a classic Peterbilt both chrome stacks blowing black coal hauling it. But who the heck hires a kid to drive a rig?

Surely nobody except maybe a farmer who needs extra help during harvest.

I got a real education in the realities of trucking. But I dreamed still.

A year later I got a part time job working on trucks at what was called Cady Auto, a sheep hauling outfit in Hagerman.

The only reason I got that job was my Dad knew Marion Pugmire who owned the company.

So I'd drive rigs to the washout, and back to the shop.

It was not the length of the haul but the fact I was driving a truck.

Back in 1974 I got involved in a group called the JR-14 CB Club. The older of the group called the I-80 Control CB Club, of Twin Falls threw a big wing ding of a CB and Truckers Jamboree in 1975 at the Filer Fairgrounds.

However that group started to spoil in the fall of 1976, so I got together with some of the members and thought lets put together a junior truckers group. So my dad talked to the Gooding County Extension agent at the time and a pilot project as it was called through the 4-H clubs was created called The TeenAge Truckers Association (4-H Club).

Due to trouble at school the following year I went to stay with my cousin, in Lewiston Idaho, and went two monthsto Lewiston High School. What caught my eye was at the back of the classroom where third hour study hall was held was what looked like a radio broadcast control board. So I asked the teacher what that was all about? He told me students who kept their grades up could do radio shows on that thing. The station KLHS FM 89.1 only reached 20 miles at best during the day. But I went on the air at third hour and playing what else ? Old country music , mostly old trucker tunes.

One night however during a football game that I was doing board work for at the station , gave me an hour after the game.

That 100 watt signal at night went much further.

Over to Grangville to be exact. I was on air talking truckin and the club, and two days later 10 more kids wanted to be part of it.

Fast forward to 1978 I was back home in Hagerman, Dad had passed away and I had barely got Lexi. The club had changed and was on its way to being a older than teen truckers group.

To show that there were other careers in trucking not just driving through the club, and one heck of alot of phone calls found out that KLHS was selling a bunch of that radio gear off.

So I got the money together and in a 1978 Ford and a 1969 Chevy car to Lwiston we went, fetched the gear and in 1979 KDSL(KAY-Diesel) went on the air. Not legally of course we were called a pirate station but who looked in on Hagerman?

In 1980 the Hazzard bug had bit and by 1981 most of the truckers club along with 10 others assembled at the Polish Palace in Hagerman, and with our version of ye ole Gen Lee outside and all the foundation of the Hazzard County Knytes was constructed.

The rest as they say is history, but it all really happened.

L8R

AyreWolf