One of the strange parts of Tape Radio is the constant change of Staff DJs. While I might try tell this story as part of a small world thang, however, since it involves people from the same town, “it’s a small town after all” (of maybe 100,000 folks) story. Now I haven’t lived in West Hartford since 1993, but it will always be home to WTIT.

In 1967, our first year, we tried a variety of areas of comedy. We did the prank calls, and fortunately just for a year. To this date, I hate DJs who do prank calls. (Sorry, Gary Craig. Love the show, but I hate the calls.) It was in 1968 that I discovered how stupid they were. On this particular day in 1968, Bouncing Billy decided to call various girls that he did not know. Girls that I and some other DJs knew. One was named Bonnie, whom I had a crush on at 13 years old. In 1967, she was considered Killer Joe’s girlfriend. There are tapes that he just went on & on about how great Bonnie was, and he was right, she was strikingly beautiful. (I ran into her about a year ago, and she’s still got it.) What Billy liked doing was calling a girl, explain that he sat behind her a couple of years ago in some class, and then ask her out. On this particular day, he phoned Bonnie. And, of course, Bonnie said she remembered him from whatever class he said that he was in with her. After a serious discussion of this shared class (Billy was not at public school. He went to a military academy.) Billy asked Bonnie out for New Year’s Eve. She turned him down, having a boyfriend who happened to be Killer Joe’s cousin. (Joe & this guy were not close.)

Years later in 1986, B.B. Bacardi joined WTIT. B.B.’s wife was Bonnie. So after B.B. was with us a while, I remembered that old tape. One night I found it and played it for him. Hearing his wife thinking she knew Bill, and then stating her devotion to a previous boyfriend, was to say the least very weird for the Beebster. On the bright side, much like most of us from back then, they are now divorced. I wonder if that tape had anything to do with it…