Published Monday, April 21, 2008 8:12 PM
Updated Monday, April 21, 2008 8:12 PM
My Hometown
Chapter 3: Good Morning Tellers GapGood Glorious Morning Tellers Gap. WGTL We Got the Love news time is 6:05 a.m. It is a quiet morning in Tellers Gap. Temperatures are a little on the cool side. The First National Bank clock thermometer outside Studio A says it’s a brisk 46 degrees so bundle up those jackets on your way to work and school…
The Main Street Transit Car Company used to run a single streetcar up and down Main Street from the front steps of the Second First Baptist Church on the western most end through town and around the square on to its eastern most end and the steps of the First First Baptist Church.
The tracks were paved over when the Main Street Transit closed up in 1966, the lone streetcar put on display along the bend in the courthouse lawn resting in perpetual transit on a 20-foot section of track.
The streetcar would take a one-and-a-half turn around the square on each pass through town and you could make the half-mile run for a nickel a ride.
Days start early here when sunrise is just a fool’s folly as the first lights about the square flash on sometime after five. It is a race sometimes to see who gets their day started first. Either Nick and his twin girls Mavis and Marietta at the Dew Drop Inn frying up bacon and sausage in anticipation of the breakfast crowd that starts hitting the door shortly after 6 a.m., or the lights inside WGTL’s Studio A on the second floor of the First National Bank building where news director and office manager Ginny Elrod shows up in house coat and pink fuzzy slippers to start scouring the newspapers and church bulletins for her morning newscast.
The buildings assembled about the square looking like plastic game pieces arranged on a Monopoly board had weathered the ravages of time quite well. Across the square from Nick’s and his angled tin awning that creates the worst racket during thunderstorms is the First National Bank building, looking all regal and fortress-like with its granite and marble façade and latticed brickwork. The design of battlements along the rooftop says to all customers, “Your money is safe and sound here.”
The WGTL sign flashes continuously atop the bank, a sore spot for many Tellers Gapians whose bedroom windows have the misfortune of facing the square.
The letters W… G… T… and L blink in bright red one after the other then flash on and off three times. To complete the light show the words “We… got… the… LOVE!” flash in a subscript sweeping up from the base of the W to the trunk of the L in bright white. The light bulbs behind the words “the” and “LOVE!” burned out three years ago and were never replaced, so now it simply says “We got …” and leaves the rest to your imagination, which along the counter at Nick’s or in Buddy’s barber chairs have run the spectrum of transmittable diseases to mental afflictions to bad disco songs of the 70s.
The sign had been erected after the war by then-owner Two Bob Perkle (called Two Bob because he was named Robert Robert Perkle after both his granddaddies. Rob and Bob didn’t get along very well. Rather than share a name “with that no-good two-timing low life son of a – ” as apparently each dallied a little fling back in high school with the other’s then to be wife, they opted instead for Robert Robert).
Originally the sign said, “We got the Lord!” when the station ran a Southern gospel format but was changed to “LOVE!” when Brother Jasper took over the station after Uncle Two Bob died in 1988.
Originally, Brother Jasper changed from Southern gospel to a country oldies format until he recorded his only hole-in-one during the Tellers Gap Open in 1996, a 7-iron shot from 169 yards that two-hopped into the hole.
Jasper claimed to have seen Jesus holding the flagstick before teeing off and dropped to his knees after “Jesus guided my ball into the cup.” Kind of like a Sunday School version of Bagger Vance, Brother Jasper says when he recounts his being saved.
WGTL has run a Southern gospel format ever since.
Ginny Elrod even went so far as to sue the town for not making WGTL remove the sign as the day-in-and-day-out flashing of lights outside her office window, according to Ginny’s affidavit, caused her outbreak of Tourette’s.
At 5:30 a.m. Deputy Dewey makes the walk across the courthouse lawn from Nick’s where he gets a thermos of coffee and a Big Man’s Breakfast Special to-go to take his seat high atop the First National Bank building for his eye-in-the-sky traffic reports during WGTL’s morning newscasts, Monday through Friday, rain or shine, all year long. Deputy Dewey’s Eye in the Sky Traffic is brought to you every morning by your Hometown Pharmacy and General Store, “where we give you exactly what the doctor ordered.”
The blue neon sign that says Millie’s Cut N Clip flashes on at quarter til six as Millie Whelchel (Buddy’s wife) likes to have the coffee as hot as the curling iron by the time she starts taking appointments at 7 a.m. Buddy doesn’t fire up the barber pole at the shop until 7:30 but he can normally be found sitting at his corner stool at Nick’s by 6:30 sipping coffee and eating his usual short stack with blueberry syrup.
At 5:55 a.m. the bells atop the Second First Baptist Church sound saying it’s fixin’ to be time to get up, and at six sharp the bells atop the First First Baptist Church tell all of Tellers Gap it’s time to rise and shine.
Commenting on the Second First Baptist Church’s obsession at being first, Pastor Brother W.T. (Dubya Tay) Howell of First First says, “It just goes hand in hand with anything you hear come out of Pastor Brother Love. You just hit the snooze button, roll over and go back to sleep for five more minutes.”
Next Week: I was a Biscuit Baby