Tim St. Martin, remembered by friends.

Tim was a good friend of mine for over 40 years.  We scuba dived together…did a radio show together…I lived with him and his late wife Kathy for over a year….rode motorcycles together…went to Mexico with some other guys and had one of the best times EVER…I doubt that Tim and I could have laughed or partied any harder …and for years Tim and I golfed with Gary Halladay and Mike Hogan just about every weekend …every Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner you could find Tim seated with my family…Tim was probably the easiest person to spend time with…he expected nothing and liked to just chill…pretentiousness was an unappealing trait he found annoying…I have a lot of stories but one that I still laugh about concerned the Oakdale Rodeo…I had won the DJ calf-tying competition in La Grange…still have the belt buckle…now it was Oakdale’s turn.  I was living with Tim and Kathy at the time and Tim decided I needed a hat…not just any hat but his $100+ straw cowboy hat…nice…that was a lot of money back in the late 70s.  So with an admonishment not to wreck it, off I went…it went terribly wrong..FAST…as I was wrestling my calf to the ground a Rodeo Clown stole Tim’s very nice hat…walked over a few feet, put a cherry bomb under it and BLEW IT UP!!  Never cared for clowns….It was a sad sad day when I gave THE BRIM OF THE HAT back to Tim!  Damn, it sure was funny as I look back.  RIP MY FRIEND, I’ll check in with Cari once in a while to see how that grandson is doing.

 

I spent the happiest professional years of my life as a member of the broadcast industry, especially those first years fresh out of college.   I joined  KTRB radio in Modesto as a fledgling disc jockey.  A few months later in the fall of 1969, Tim, then employed by our competitor KFIV, was hired from “across the street” and became our News Director.

Tim St. Martin and I were in our early twenties and were teamed as on-air partners during what was called “morning drive.”  One of the nice things about KTRB is that, as young out-of-the-box radio guys, we were allowed to make mistakes, and we made plenty.  But we each had a lot of enthusiasm and always an abundance of creative energy.  Our General Manager, Sam Horrel, would greet us each as “Tiger.”  Tim and I took to calling each other “Timmy Tiger” and “Bobby Tiger.”

A Museum treat:   A Tim St. Martin newscast from 1973:

The announce booth where I broadcast my shows was situated in the center of the building among large studios once used for live broadcasts.  These studios had lots of dual-paned windows.  My room was perhaps eight-feet square and equipped with the audio board, two turntables, a couple of Sparta cartridge machines, a reel-to-reel tape deck, a clock, a temperature gauge, and a Playboy calendar with a naked lady.  At the other end of an oblong hallway was Tim’s news booth, next to his office and the AP machine teletype room.  Tim was a self-described rip-and-read news guy and every morning on the half hour, he’d deliver the news.  He was also in charge of a segment called Community Calendar which allowed us to banter back and forth about various timely topics.

In the pre-dawn hours, especially during winter months, the only illumination was from the two small rooms one or the other of us occupied.  The rest of the building, including that hallway, was dark.  One morning, Tim and I were in a casual on-air exchange and I happened to look down at my program log.  It was at that moment when Tim bolted from his news booth and raced toward me through the darkened hallway.  When I looked up to see what the commotion was about, all I saw was the light in his empty booth at the other end of the hall.  Where was Tim??  Suddenly my studio door was thrown open and there was Tim all excited and in full ear-shot of our listening audience.  He threw a cigar at me and just as quickly ran back in the other direction.  His daughter, Amy, had been born the day before!

Tim and I shared a similar sense of humor—more important, we had an innate ability to amuse ourselves!  We each had a knack for writing.    I was the Production Manager and the two of us wrote commercials for local advertisers, many times creating spots that were two-voicers and in character.  The ones that were most fun were those we attempted to ad lib—we’d decide on what the scene would be and would run through the important dialogue.  One was for Fargo Distributing, a tire store that received co-op funding from Cooper Tires.  Tim hit on the idea that we’d play the parts of a couple of old sod-busting cow pokes.  He’d be Farley and I was Eugene—where the names came from, I’m not certain.  We referred to the staff as the Fargo Boys—Dangerous Del, Steel-Eyed Stan, Bronco Bruce, and others—and said they were wanted for shootin’ down tire prices.

To replicate the horses’ hooves, we each took a pair of plastic coffee cup inserts and “galloped” across the desk in front of us toward the microphone.  If the take wasn’t what we anticipated, we’d gallop away from the mic, regroup, and try it again!  We’d add other sound effects like gunshots or the sound of spurs.  But as much as these old cowboys thought the fictitious Fargo Boys offered great deals on Cooper Tires, Farley and Eugene themselves had no idea what tires were intended for.  At one point, they tried putting a set of tires on a stagecoach.  Farley got a tire close enough to install on the axle and told Eugene to hold up the stage.  Eugene yelled, “Reach for the sky, you sidewinder!”  They even tied a rope around a tire, hung it from a tree branch, and created the first tire swing!

Tim and I also played a couple of dogs named Spotty and Prince advertising a pet store.  We were Fred and Bernie, two Christmas turkeys who hadn’t seen their pal Murray since Thanksgiving.  We did a take-off on Edward G. Robinson and a bunch of thugs for Little Caesar’s Deli.  We were Kirk and Spock, Dino and Jerry, and two Germans named Hans und Feetz.

In December 1970, Tim and I provided live color commentary from the Third Annual Riverbank Christmas parade—no doubt one of the last such broadcasts echoing a bygone era of radio.  We described everything from the gown and tiara worn by Miss Riverbank to the dalmatian on top of the Riverbank hook and ladder and all marching bands in between.  When I was in college, I drove a Model A, so I described the vintage cars in the parade while Tim described the horses.

After five years, I left KTRB just as it was moving from a music format to talk radio and I took another radio position in Sacramento.  By now Tim was hosting a talk show and one afternoon it was Talent Day on his program where listeners would call in and display a particular expertise.  So, I pranked him!

Tim and I had shared particularly filthy limericks in our various fits of juvenile diversion.  On this day, I called the studio and told him I was “Fred” and that I wrote poetry.  I asked if I could recite one of my recent creations and he said that I could.  I began, “There was an old hermit named Dave…” and he quickly said, “You’re not gonna do that!”  But he still hadn’t grasped the fact that I, not Fred, was on the other end of the line.  When Tim finally got it, he collapsed in a fit of laughter on the air and yelled, “I’ve been had!”

Tim wrote letters to me while I was in the Air Force.      He addressed my letters: 

Major General Rick C. Myers

Commandant, Minot Air Force Base

General Delivery (What else for a General?)

Minot AFB, North Dakota 58701

I was a sergeant.   I was not impersonating a General.  Honest.  Somehow the letters always arrived.   Is this a great country, or what?   

After the military I returned to KFIV.   Tim, in his office, instead of listening to my show would listen to Dan Sorkin on KSFO, San Francisco. He loved Sorkin who would ask listeners to phone in any question, and he would give a funny, instant reply (try doing that sometime).    Tim called in a lot to “Ask Mr. Answer Person.”  After a while, Sorkin started using Tim to set up questions.  He’d say, “Hang on the line, and when the commercials end, ask THIS QUESTION…”    Tim would hang on, then play the straight man.    This merriment went on until management started noticing the long-distance phone bills.               

Our last comments come from one of Tim’s closest friends, Ken McCall:

For the last 35 years, and probably more, Timmy and I talked on the phone at least every other day.  Once a week he came to have dinner with Dina and me.  There are a flood of memories and I can’t get him off my mind.  Most recently he was helping me on a building project at the beach house.  Finishing it without him will be emotionally difficult. He loved sitting and watching the waves roll in.  Now he is gone.  I don’t feel badly for him because he died peacefully in his sleep.  It was his time to go………..and life for us goes on.

Each time he came to the house for dinner, we would go to the pool house and have a beer.  As we would walk out the back door, I would always say “Timmy, walk this way” and he would always reply “if I could walk that way I wouldn’t need the talcum powder, I would still be a dance instructor” His health faded over the last year, but his sense of humor was always sharp.  The night he died, he was talking on the phone to Warren Groschell, we were planning a golf trip for whenever Covid 19 ended.  As Warren was talking to him, Timmy feel asleep and started snoring…..he never woke up.

In 1978 when Tim returned from Reno (and the rodeo circuit) to KFIV, he moved in with me for a while.  As we have learned, when Dave Nelson needed a place to stay he moved in with Tim.   Tim then spent the Holidays with the Nelsons, always welcomed.    Over the last few years, he enjoyed  weekly dinners with the McCalls.   With Tim, social graces were automatic.  Of course he could move in with you; of course he opened up his house to you; of course he was as welcomed  as the closest relative.