College Frenemy: Lid

Lid was not really a "frenemy" in the classic sense of the word. What happened was that he started out as a friend, turned into an enemy and then had something really terrible happen to him that made me feel sorry for him, so he became a friend again.

I first met Lid during Eastern New Mexico University's High School Drama Festival during my sophomore year in college. He was from Clovis High School and was in their presentation of the play "Juvee." I thought he was an interesting person, and I got to know him and some of the other people from Clovis, including this girl who I thought had a crush on me, but nothing happened when she started attending ENMU. (I won't be writing an article about her.)

He was a freshman at Eastern when I started my junior year. One interesting thing about him was that he had worked at K108FM before I did. At the time, the radio stations in Clovis had a tendency to hire high school students because they couldn't pay enough to keep their air staffs filled with grown men and women. If you've ever driven through a rural area and listened to local radio stations that sound like the DJs don't know what they're doing, this is the reason. I'm not certain, but I think Lid left the station and created the opening for the slot that I first applied for. That person left a few months later and I got the job.

He told me about how he once went into Program Director Crad's office and found an application and an aircheck from someone that hadn't been listened to. He said he played the tape and it sounded really good. So good, that even though they weren't doing any hiring at the time, he felt like his job was going to be threatened if this person was added to the air staff. So, he took the tape over to the bulk eraser and barely "popped" the button. It wasn't enough to completely erase the tape, but it was enough to make it sound really terrible, leaving a bad impression on Crad.

A new radio station was just starting up in Texico, NM, close to the Texas border. Lid and I drove out there to apply for jobs. I didn't really want to leave K108FM and would only do so if they were offering more money. They weren't. I knew a couple of other people from the Theatre Department who managed to land jobs there, but it turned out that there was a problem with cash flow and they often went long periods of time between paychecks. I was glad I didn't change jobs (even though there were cash flow problems at my station).

Lid did not work at that station, but he did manage to get a job at KWKA-AM, which was a country music station and the sister station to KTQM-FM, K108FM's top competitor. He claimed that KWKA was the number one station in the region and he wanted to work for number one. The reason it was number one was because a lot of people back then still had cars that only had AM radios in them and they were all "cowboys." It also had a clear channel signal that went across three states at night. He seemed to be under the impression that people from as far away as Wyoming could hear him. This was true, but I don't think anybody was actually tuned in.

It didn't bother me that he worked at that station, but I got tired of him saying that more people in the area were listening to him. This was even after the frenzy we created after K108FM turned into "The Zoo." Looking back, I think he was a little jealous that he didn't stick around and become part of the excitement surrounding the station. This was the point at which he started becoming my enemy.

I will go into detail about this in the future, but I had fallen out of favor with Crad. I had been working 12 hours on the weekend, but it got reduced to six. I was only working the midnight to six shift on Sunday morning. Lid would talk to the other DJs he went to high school with. Apparently, there was this "radio circuit" that I wasn't a part of. He told me that, according to everyone else on this circuit, Crad supposedly said that pretty soon, my weekly hours were going to go to zero. (I was surprised that people I didn't even know were talking about me. I think everyone was jealous of the attention we were receiving.) Lid kind of laughed about the possibility that I may no longer be working at the station. The really bad thing was that I actually let that get to me. I was so paranoid that I was going to get fired that I planned to record the conversation that Crad would have with me. I went to the station that night, and his car was outside. However, he wasn't there. Our station had a mobile DJ side business and he was out getting some extra money. I didn't get fired. I was mad at Lid for getting me upset like that.

A few months later, Lid called me at the station during my midnight shift. He was working at KWKA at the same time and taunted me about the latest Arbitron ratings that had come out. He called to give me a hard time because they showed that we were in the bottom half of the ratings, despite all the hype about us. He just laughed about that. It turned out that there was an error in that the ratings were done when the station was still K108FM, but the report reflected the station's new call letters. When I mentioned that to him later, he really didn't care. I stopped talking to him after that.

The week before the Fall 1985 semester started, he was involved in a car accident outside of Albuquerque. Supposedly, he drove off the road and crashed. He was taken to the hospital there. Dr. W told us he happened to be in Albuquerque at the time and went to visit him there. He was in terrible shape. He had hit his head up against the windshield and had several broken bones, but he was going to survive. He was going to require reconstructive surgery on his face.

It also messed up his brain somewhat. Dr. W said that right before he went into the room, Lid was having an argument with a member of the medical team. The member was trying to tell him that he was in Albuquerque, but Lid was insisting that he was in Portales. When Dr. W walked in, Lid said, "See? There's Dr. W. I told you I was in Portales." We later found that the after-effects of the accident would cause him to go into a persistent state of denial from time to time. If he got it in his head that Wednesday came the day before Tuesday, you would not be able to convince him otherwise. This included the accident itself. At the theatre, he would say something like, "I still don't know what happened." One of us would say, "Well, you probably fell asleep at the wheel." (In retrospect, this was something we really shouldn't have engaged with him, but it happened.) He would reply, "No, I did not fall asleep at the wheel. I had been awake for the last 24 hours and didn't have a problem." "Wait, you hadn't slept for 24 hours? Oh, no. You fell asleep at the wheel!" "I DID NOT FALL ASLEEP! I WOULD HAVE REMEMBERED THAT!" This state of denial issue would go on with other topics not related to the accident.

The first time I saw Lid after the accident was in the Theatre lobby. When I first came in, I saw him sitting in a wheelchair. I saw him from the side and he looked very much the same as he did before the accident. However, when I went around to the front, I was surprised at the transformation. I know that I had a shocked look when I went up and shook his hand. The damage to his head was much worse than I had imagined. His face looked like it had been hit by a frying pan and his eyes were slightly bugged out. However, his spirits were very high. He knew he would be up out of the wheelchair in fairly short order.

We hung around every once in awhile after he got back up on his feet, but it wasn't like when he first started attending Eastern. When I was slapping my senior recital together, he participated in performing a series of sketches I wrote about pizza. He was perhaps the furthest from the top of my list of people to ask, but he was the only one who was able to commit. (This was toward the end of the school year, so everyone else was actually busy.)

The summer after I graduated from college, he was working tech for the Caprock Amphitheatre's production of "Billy the Kid" for the season. He came by my apartment a couple of times and visited. The next time I saw him was in 1988, when I was about to move to Denver. I stopped by the Theatre on the way down to see Dr. R and anyone else who happened to be there. Lid was working in the Theatre office. That would be the last time I would actually see him.

About a year later, when I had come to Artesia to visit, I was listening to the college NPR station. I heard him doing a newscast. Several years later, Kird told me he visited the ENMU Theatre Department. He said he ran into some guy named Lid who remembered him and mentioned me. Kird said he didn't recall Lid when he went to school there. I told Kird that was because Lid literally had his face rearranged. I had to remind him that Lid was on the stage crew when he was in "Charley's Aunt." He still didn't remember him. At the time, it appeared that Lid was so messed up from the crash that he wasn't able to leave the Portales/Clovis area.

But I was wrong about that. I recently found an obituary for his older brother, who had died in February 2005. His brother was the same age as me and was in my ENMU graduating class of 1986. I barely knew him. At the time, the obituary said Lid lived in San Diego. It made me wonder if we had been living in San Diego at the same time and just never ran into each other. It was possible. A younger brother of his died in August 2012. I probably met him the one time I went to Lid's house and his younger siblings were there. The obituary didn't list where Lid lived, but a Google search seems to indicate he is still in San Diego.

But I'm not going to make any effort to reach out and contact him. That accident was almost 30 years ago, and I still sting from the radio comments he made, even though that was even further back. I don't need him to be a frenemy again.