Bare Bones by Bobby Bones Page B

the Barbarian . . .” (In reality, fifty people tops were listening. I mean, it was Christmas Eve.)
    The moment was surreal because here I was on the other side of the radio, which was my favorite thing in life. Because I grew up sleeping on the couch with people walking by or the TV playing, that kind of constant noise became comfortable. If nothing was happening, I couldn’t fall asleep. (I still don’t sleep well if it’s dark and quiet. My heart beats fast and I get really anxious. I sleep better on a couch with ten people in the room than alone in silence. So if I turn on the TV or the radio, it puts me back in my comfort zone.)
    When my mom was out, and there was no noise to keep me company when I went to bed, I listened to the radio. I liked music of all kinds—still do. Living in Arkansas, there was obviously a heavy country music influence. But I was also into nineties grunge and alternative and hip-hop (see above 2Pac and Biggie references). I didn’t see any problem jumping from Garth Brooks to Nirvana to Cypress Hill. Good music is good music.
    But I didn’t call KLAZ every night because of the music. I wanted to be in radio because I wanted to talk. I wanted people to hear my opinions. I wanted to entertain.
    I had my favorite radio personalities, one of whom was the Outlaw Tommy Smith. He’s still on in Little Rock, where I listened to him every morning. He and his sidekick, Big Dave Sanders, were pretty outlandish for the time and place. When they talked about booze and butts, which they did a lot, I said to myself, “This is crazy! I can’t believe they’re doing this on the air!” In reality, their morning show was a Howard Stern copycat. I had no idea, because I didn’t know who Howard Stern was and wouldn’t learn of Stern, who truly is the King of All Media, until I saw his movie Private Parts in college. But I looked up to Tommy Smith like crazy for the longest time.
    As I prepared to graduate from high school in the spring of 1998, I was still a starry-eyed kid who had one goal and one goal only: to work for KLAZ. With the naive confidence that only eighteen-year-olds have, I got myself an interview with Kevin Cruise, the program director and afternoon host of KLAZ, through sheer persistence. I basically went into the same radio station where I had guest DJ’ed on Christmas Eve six years earlier and begged for a job. Sitting across the desk from Kevin, a small guy with a thin mustache, I offered up my only qualifications (other than that I was willing to work for no pay): “I’ll do whatever you’ll let me do, and I’ll be on time.”
    â€œI’ll think about it,” he said.
    Unbelievably, Kevin called me a few days later to say yes. I wasn’t hired to be the new morning-show personality or anything, just to clean the lobby on Sundays and switch out a Rick Dees Top 40 countdown. (Back in the days when the countdown was played on CD, you played half the countdown on one CD, switched it out, and then played the other half of the countdown on another. Super technologically advanced.) I think eventually I made five bucks an hour, but I would have seriously done it for free. I felt like the luckiest guy in the world.
    As soon as I found out that I had a job working at KLAZ on Sundays, I called my high school guidance counselor to change where I was going to college from the University of Arkansas to Henderson State University. Now, the fact that I was going to college at all was a major victory. Only a handful of kids from my high school went on to college—and no one in my family had ever been.
    My senior year had been all about that goal. I was smart enough to know it wasn’t enough to be smart. I also had to be good at the standardized admissions tests for college. There was a formula, and I needed that formula. So I spent my own money on an ACT prep course. I had saved up from my job at the marina on