When I was in high school, Bill Mack was one of my heroes at WBAP radio in Fort Worth. And so we were with our FFA group. We were at the stock show in Fort Worth, the Fort Worth stock show. I was showing a pig. And so I'd communicated with Bill Mack a little bit in the past. And he knew that I was working radio. I'd just been working radio for about a year or something like that. But I called Bill Mack at WBAP, and he was one of the clear channel stations that went out all over the country at night. And so I just told him that I was in town. You know, he came on at midnight. He was known as the Midnight Cowboy. I said, and I’m just, because I'd never been to Fort Worth by myself without my parents. And he said my boy, my boy, he said why don't you come over to the radio station and see me?

And of course before I even had a chance to to think, I said, “Yes sir, I'll be right there.” Well I was with the FFA group, you know? So, so we weren't supposed to get out of our hotel rooms. But I wasn't going to miss the opportunity to go spend an evening with Bill Mack, one of my radio heroes. And so I was, I told him, I said, I'm going to get a cab and I'm going to go to WBAP Radio. Snuck out of the hotel room, called a cab and went down to WBAP and spent, spent the evening with Bill Mack. And Bill Mack put me on the radio, which was like one of the biggest thrills of my life. That little podunk hillbilly disc jockey from Brady, Texas, on the radio station of the Bill Mack at WBAP.

But while we were there for that 3 or 4 hours, it became a horrible, horrible ice storm. The kind that covered all of the Fort Worth area. And so, when I started calling to try to get back to the hotel about 4:30 in the morning, and I couldn't get any cab. I tried every cab company I could find in the phone book, and none of them would come get me. They said all the cabs were shut down. And so I told Bill what the problem was, and I knew that I was going to get expelled from school.

So Bill Mack goes on the radio and he says, “Well, my friend Tracy Pitcox has been visiting with me tonight,” and he said, he needs to get back from One Broadcast Hill over to whatever hotel we were staying at in Fort Worth. And he said, “I understand that the cabs are shut down out there.” He said, “So if any of my cab drivers might be out there listening that might be able to help him, I’d sure would appreciate it.” And he had probably six telephone lines on his phone, and all the lines immediately lit up. And he took the first call, took the call on the air. And this cab driver said, “I'll be happy to come, come and get him.”

And so this cab came and got me, and it took us forever to get back to the hotel because of all the ice and that sort of thing. And, and, I mean, it just it was horrible. But we got there right before, right before sunup, back to the hotel. And so as I was getting out of the car, I said, “What do I owe you?” And the cab driver said, “You don't owe me anything. I'm doing this for, for my friend Bill Mack.” And I said, “Well, how long have you known Bill Mack?” And he said, he said, “Well, I don't know, Bill Mack,” he said, but, he said, “but Bill Mack's a friend of mine.” He said, “I listen to Bill Mack every night. He's a friend of mine.”

And so I thought, how, how powerful that was. And so I knew then that that's what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, is, is have some part of, of the radio entertainment business.

Heart of Texas Country Music Association