Hot Spotts in Carbondale
Episode III – “Fast Train to Nowhere”
The very first fully live in the studio episode. Floss Daily (Pete Jacobs) stars as the conductor – Floss saved the day…I just could not come up with an adventure idea all week. At about 4pm that Friday Floss stopped into the station….sensed my impending doom and remarked….. you are going to take a train and I’m your conductor! A tad past 5pm we were finished in production studio…and I was busy typing script in the sales office (yes on a real typewriter….no computers back then). This episode was so quickly thrown together and then it turned out to be one of the most entertaining (at least for Rankin as I always have difficulties making sure carts are cued!).
The very last station stop on the train ride has a really good remembrance on my part. Conductor Daily voiced together a cart of several train stops that ended with the last one you hear…..and I knew that one was the very last one. Problem was I really did not remember the order of the stops and I desired to end the episode with that particular train stop….thus a “reason” for the drawn out silly discussion with Rankin and all those extra train stops. Rankin finally had enough of me (the scheduled 5 minute segment turning into almost 10 minutes) and wanted me out of “his” studio to get on with “his” music programming. So when Rankin went back to his regular gig and spun the Iggy Pop tune on the turntable….I swiftly got up from my news chair, walked over to the board, reached over him and hit the green button on the cart machine one last time. Rankin went completely nuts and scolded “don’t you ever touch my board again!!” The cart pot was still up and honestly it’s an unadulterated WIDB moment that final train stop was cued up on the cart – and boy does the finish back to the music sound absolutely fantastic……all good karma….completely by chance!!
The show’s sponsor Two Smart Cookies is highlighted and subsequent episodes also contains this commercial. Voice credits/production – Floss Daily featured as Holmes and Dave The Rave (Dave Linke) as Watson.
I never knew until this day that Eric Clapton is Rankins’ father.
Episode was in part inspired by bomb scares on train rides home…Carbondale to Union Station and then to Downers Grove…back in the early 80’s I remember getting evacuated from the Amtrak train in the middle of nowhere south of Champaign and north of Mattoon because of some phone call threat.
