by John (Hot) Spotts (himself)
I moved from Michigan in the middle of my junior year of high school to Downers Grove. My new school was on complete lockdown – my former HS school had a completely open campus and I lived so close to it many days I went home for lunch and played pool/ping pong in my basement with friends.
Arriving in February at a very overcrowded Downers Grove North – counselors gave me a schedule where my first class started at 740am and last class ended at 440pm! Finishing off the junior year of HS featured FIVE study hall periods and a lunch period! I wasn’t allowed to leave the building to go outside for any of it.
I met Don D’Agostino. He lived in my new neighborhood. I discovered D’Ago spun records in the radio station at the high school. Better yet this station WDGC was located in a portable class room outside of the main building but you either had to have a Radio licensing class in it or a special pass to allow you to get in and out of the building.
Don D’Augustino
So my plan was hatched….having no knowledge or much interest in Radio or Radio licensing…. this purely an avenue to escape that hell hole of a HS building and attend worthless study hall periods. By default that special pass let me hang out at DGC all the time and I ended spinning records that summer, caused trouble with Dave Price (another IDB alum) and generally not heeding anything the faculty instructor said – never did take a Radio licensing class even during my senior year….which featured some really bad play by play calls of rain soaked football games. I was the only one who really knew football that wasn’t already on the team working at the station willing to do it.
The WDGC gang 1980
Let’s fast forward a year or two…. D’Ago ended up going to SIU to pursue an R/T major….he followed after Timmo Cawley (who never did quite understand how I got shifts at WDGC despite never taking licensing classes). I went to College of DuPage still trying to decide on my major and was about to get my Associates Degree. D’Ago convinced me to visit SIU during the spring of his freshmen year for a weekend.
It sounded like fun so I hopped on the Amtrak from Union Station to C’dale. I arrived at his dorm (3rd floor of Allen 1). D’Ago and his roommate DJ were highly agitated. They were in the middle of fight with several guys who lived down the hall from them and in other buildings– firing tennis ball cannons at each other primed with rubbing alcohol! It got so loud we had to get out of there and out of the line of fire.
The cannon that propelled Hot Spotts to WIDB.
D’Ago said let’s go! At full speed we ran out to the blare of cannons dodging tennis balls out the windows of Allen – even some cannon fire from higher floors of Neely all the way past the Boomer Triads. We sought refuge entering the front door of Wright 1 going to the down the stairs In Da Basement. And that’s how I got to WIDB.
