Hands Across America took place on Sunday, May 25th, 1986. The concept was supposed to be an unbroken chain of people holding hands across the United States. But reality kicked in and it just didn't work out that way. However, it was still a big promotion for KZZO to capitalize on.
We organized a contest so that 30 people would get to ride a bus to San Jon, NM, which was the town closest to Clovis that had the event run through. We also had a full mile assigned to our station, so we were able to fill it up with listeners who wanted to go and take part. A few station employees, family members and my brother Loyd loaded up in the Zoomobile to lead a convoy we organized to the event. Ked was the one driving the van.
The road up to San Jon has lots of curves on it. While we were driving, we could look behind us and see dozens of cars following us. Supposedly, after we arrived in San Jon, there were 1,200 cars that came behind us into the small town next to Interstate 40.
We found a place to park our van. The event was still a couple of hours away. The town had quickly organized an all-day festival with food, live music and dancing. The staff of our rival, KTQM, was already there. They saw us and shouted, "WE GOT HERE BEFORE YOU!" Ked muttered, "Yeah, but you didn't bring hundreds of cars behind you." Really, this event was about helping provide food for starving people across the world, not petty jealousies.
The event was supposed to take place at 1:00. We took off for the New Mexico-Texas border, where there would be certain celebrities who were taking part. (I'm not going to say who they were, but you can look it up on Wikipedia.) Along the way, we saw several miles of people lining up to hold hands. They were all cheering as we drove by in the van. We had a bullhorn and we shouted things at them. For the brief period of time before the event, the speed limit was slowed down to about 30 mph. However, There was this one guy who blasted past us going about 60 mph. When we drove past a cop, we got on the bullhorn and told him about the guy who was putting people's lives in danger by driving so recklessly. We described the car. A couple of miles later, we saw that the police had pulled the guy over and was giving him a ticket. An officer talked to Ked, who gave him the station's phone number.
We continued to the border. There were a lot of people crowded to see the celebrities. Because we were with media, our group got to go back to the staging area where the main celebrity held a quick press conference. There was one woman there with a handicapped child who wanted to go backstage. She kept yelling, "My son is handicapped and wants to go back there! Why won't anybody help my handicapped son go back there?"
A few minutes before 1:00, we all left the staging area and waited for the event to begin. The celebrities took to the main stage and started holding hands. However, no one else in the crowd held hands. I looked east of the border into Texas. I saw miles and miles of empty roadway. Everyone just stood around for 15 minutes while the music played. And then it was over. We all got back in the van and headed back to San Jon.
We managed to get a free meal. I still needed to go home and work the overnight shift that night and I was really tired. Loyd and I were able to find someone from Clovis who could give us a ride.
One thing I was not aware of was that there was a helicopter there at the border. I guess the music was blasting really loud and I couldn't hear it. But I found out it was there when the Albuquerque Journal featured an overhead ?
photo of the border on the front page and I could clearly be seen standing there with other members of the KZZO staff.
The best thing about Hands Across America is that it did so much to restore our station's image after the Bank Rip Off debacle. We had really felt down in the dumps for about six months following that. It seems like no one liked listening to us anymore. Even though Hands Across America came up short nationwide, it really improved our image and it felt like people were listening to us and enjoying us again. I was proud to be an employee of The Zoo. Even though Hands Across America has been the punchline of a lot of jokes, it had a positive impact on me.
But this isn't the end of the story. A few months later, I came to the station to find that I had been subpoenaed to appear before the County Court in Tucumcari. That guy we reported to the cops was contesting the ticket and they wanted us to testify against him. (Loyd would have also received a subpoena, but the receptionist couldn't remember his name. It was just as well, because he was living with Mom and Dad in Artesia.)
Four of us from the van went to testify. Ked was somehow able to get out of coming with us because he had to work his shift that day. I guess they figured they had all the witnesses they needed. We supposed to get paid $20 apiece for our testimony, which I thought was odd, but it was meant to cover our travel expenses from Clovis.
We all drove up to Tucumcari in the same car, which was driven by the station's receptionist. I remember that we ate at the Golden Corral before we went to the courthouse. It was just going to be a trial before the judge, not a jury. We were each called into the courtroom to testify separately. When I went in, it was just me, the judge, the prosecutor, the defense attorney and the defendant sitting at a table. It didn't really feel like a formal legal setting. My testimony was that I was sitting in the back of the van, but did see the car speeding ahead of us. However, I couldn't see the driver. In other words, it was pretty much worthless.
The four of us got to go into the courtroom to see the defense present its case. The attorney challenged the legality of temporarily changing the speed limit on the Interstate that day. It was like the cops shouldn't have been enforcing that even though there were hundreds of people and cars on the side of the road.
The defendant testified. He explained that his reason for being in a hurry was that he wanted to get to the border to see the girls who were going to be there to see one of the celebrities. My thought at the time was, "You are LYING! YOU went there to see THE celebrity, but you're afraid that if you admit that, you're going to look gay! All of us in this room who were there wanted to see THAT celebrity! And no one else in here is going to judge you for wanting to do that. So if you're lying about something this petty, I have no idea how much of your testimony is actually true."
The judge found against the defendant and ordered him to pay the fine. He had his day in court and I hope that attorney was a relative of his. Otherwise, he likely had to pay more than just the fine. We all went home and our $20 checks came in the mail a few weeks later. (Oops! I didn't claim that on my taxes that year.)
So in 1986, I managed to do something charitable and perform a civic duty. I sure didn't get to do those very often in the same year.
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