My hometown of Fairfield has a radio station called WFIW, which has been in our community since the early 1950s.  

At one time, it had local announcers who actually looked out the window and told you what the weather looked like. There would be school menus read, and the local talk show host would interview folks in the community about various things.

Citizens could call in and sell things on the “swap shop,” and you could hear local sporting events in the evening.

One time, my grandmother who was a cook at the Elks Club was on with a few other cooks. I think she  gave out her onion ring recipe.  

Many radio stations, especially the little ones, have gone corporate with computerized recordings and syndicated content and few of the “down home” type stations exist anymore.  

Each time I turn on the radio and search for a station that doesn’t play the same songs over and over, I stop and listen if I hear talking and conversation.  Once in a while, I’ll run past an interview of a local farmer or indeed, another “swap shop” type segment.  

Even though it isn’t my hometown station, I will listen for nostalgia sake.

When I worked at the local teen hangout, a little taco joint in the late 1980s, our station went through what some may call a “hip” period. There were a couple of young DJs employed by the station and they played Top 40 tunes as well as other hip and happening content in the evenings.  

Since our boss at the taco joint was an advertiser on the station, we were asked to play WFIW while we worked. Most of us didn’t mind, since the Top 40 tunes of the 1980s were decent… at least we thought so at the time.

One of the gals we worked with happened to date one of those “hipster” DJs. We’d often go hang out at the station at night, or he would come by the taco joint and hang out after we closed.  

He was cool, a little older than we were, and he smoked cigarettes. We thought he was somewhat of a hippie, and we thought he was a bit of a rock star.  He often made fun of the Top 40 music he was asked to play, and we sat around talking about alternative bands like Depeche Mode and The Violent Femmes.

As with most high school and post high school romances, this relationship didn’t last. The hipster DJ was no longer a cool guy to us but now somewhat of an enemy, as all of us taco joint workers were loyal friends.

Still, we somehow kept in touch and still talked bands with him when he’d call to order food from the restaurant. I mean, we had a business to run and these guys at the station gave good tips for the delivery drivers. 

Another thing we were well aware of was which new Top 40 songs were detested by the hip DJ guys.  They were sometimes sarcastic about certain songs on air, or we’d worm the info out of mutual friends or if we were delivering a bag of tacos to the station.

We hatched a vengeful plan one evening after our formerly hip DJ friend started a new feature on his evening radio show. It was called “Top 9 at 9” and callers would call in and request Top 40 songs.  

The DJs would tally the votes and play the “Top 9 at 9.” If you guessed which song would be No. 1, your name was entered into a drawing for an album or those new fangled things called CDs.

Our plan was to aggravate our old DJ friend, now known as the guy who broke the heart of our co-worker.  

So, we’d first find out which song the DJ hated, and proceed to launch a campaign to get it either on the Top 9 or even No. 1.  

We were relentless in our evil plan of revenge.

One time span in particular lasted about two weeks straight. We found out, through mutual friends and spies, that the hip DJ’s most hated song of the moment was “Conga” by Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine. We dialed the station number each time a teenager came in to order food and asked them to request the song.

We managed to put that song in the No. 1 spot at least a dozen or so times the next few weeks. If it didn’t make it to the top spot, it was close.

Over the course of several months, we made songs from Air Supply, Starship, Belinda Carlisle and Dionne Warwick seem as if the whole county were loyal fans.  

You see, these were bands and artists we young folks thought were a bit out of touch or square. Imagine the surprise of these DJs every time Dionne Warwick’s “That’s What Friends Are For” made it to the top spot. It happened numerous times.

Wayne County, wild about Dionne Warwick! Evil laughter.

It was hilarious, and our spies told us our frenemies were as annoyed as we thought they would be.

Finally, for whatever reason, the “Top 9 at 9” went by the wayside. I’m sure the prank got out of hand, especially after we made it a popular thing to do among the teenage population. 

For several weeks, the Top 40 in our town didn’t resemble anything close to Billboard’s Top 10.  

But we eventually lost the grudge we held against the DJs. It wasn’t as fun as it had been. We moved on to newer pranks, believe me.

But heck, people turned on the radio, didn’t they?  We should have probably gotten some type of commission.