Ex Eh Aira Bay, Me-hico

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 805, 24 December 1954, Page 7

Ex Eh Aira Bay, Me-hico

by

G. leF.

Y.

OSARITO BEACH is about 15 miles south .of Tijuana, Mexico. Most of the way the road runs inland. Leaving town you turn south at the bull fight arena, which from the outside looks like the framework of a_ gasometer the day after somebody stole the tank. The road crosses a low pass, winds over rolling down land, straightens itself, and reaches the sea almost at Rosarito. There it is; radio transmitter towers, beach cottages, a few motels and roadhouses, and the white stucco mass of the Rosarito Beach Hotel. Mexican border resorts have split personalities, half innocence and half dark violence. Spend a summer Sunday on the beach with the picnicking Mexican families. It’s all melons, lobsters, cans of beer and children’s laughter. Then you read in Monday’s paper that some inharmonious character, down for the day from the City of the Angels, has chopped up his girl friend and left the pieces in a Rosarito parking lot. Fortunately the sins of others, and particularly gringos’ sins, don’t affect the Mexican’s belief in his own essential goodness. He will help the cops clean up the parking lot, shrug, and take his place again behind his cash register. If you know the score, Rosarito Beach is a good place to take your cash register. When I paid a social call there one Saturday afternoon last October I Was not so equipped, but I learned about money just the same. The party I was with were immovable round a portable radio, playing canasta and listening to a_ college football game. I sidled off towards the radio transmitter towers a quarter of a mile south. Once you have worked for a while at this sightless, blattering trade your sensibilities become dulled and you don’t know enough to stay away from strange studios. Actually, strange is hardly the word to use. Besides New Zealand, I’ve trespassed about studios in Fiji, Fanning Island, Hawaii, four Canadian Provinces, Portland, Oregon, San Francisco, San Diego, California, and Baja, California, Mexico, and they might all have been in the same building. The first person you meet in a radio station is the doorman. He is never

there. You push through the glass doors to the receptionist’s desk. Her telephone headpiece is hung over the back of her chair, lights blink on the switchboard, and a buzzer purrs short syllables. She igs not there, either. You wait. As I waited I read that this was Station XERB. Through a double glass window was what I took to be the main studio. There was no one at the announcer’s desk., By the chair was a three-tiered tape recorder. On the middle tier tape wound steadily from one spool to another. Further off, thréugh another sound-proof window, I saw the head of an eagle-nosed brunette. We stared at each other remotely across the top of a control. panel. Presently, enlivening this mechanised and embalmed piece of property, a small boy shoved open the glass doors and went whistling through the foyer, past the receptioriist’s desk, and down a corridor marked NO ENTRY. He carried a greasy paper bag and a coke bottle. In a few seconds he reappeared through the door behind the eagle-nosed brunette and gave her the food. She pushed her chair away from the panel and their heads started to bob in conversation, The doorman appeared, carrying a mop. He was pleased to see me, and we talked about the trade in a debased border mixture of Spanish and English. Things were not too bad, he thought. They’d cut down the staff by two-thirds since he first came, but he was still there to open the door when a truck brought a load of tape recordings. The announcer was probably in the washroom, but I could wait for him in the studio. Announcers are divided men. They have to watch the clock, the tape, the turntables, the control panel, the station log and the front office of the advertising agency. As they talk their fingers must flutter between many skilled little operations. They must generate enthusiasm on a succession of snacks from greasy paper bags and project sincerity through an atmosphere devoid of oxygen. When they leave the microphone their voices diminish, losing that dominant bass resonance. Those not in the

trade suffer a sense of loss the first time they hear an announcer at home, hawking his throat like any other human being and whining irritably for his morning coffee. As the announcer came into the studio the wall clock read 15 seconds before 4.30 p.m. He greeted me with one eye, keeping the other fixed on the clock, sat down at his desk. faded out the tape music with his right hand, with his left flipped a disc on one of. his turntables, and set the playing head in the first groove of a narrow-tracked section near the centre. He pushed over his microphone switch: "This is XERB. Mexico. Ex Eh Aira Bay. Me-hico." He spun the turntable and faded in a march theme for a few seconds, then announced race results and gave a spiel for a firm of Los Angeles turf consultants who guaranteed to set you up very favourably for a day at the races. At 4.34 p.m. he faded in the tape programme again, switched off his microphone, and was ready for gossip. He was a sallow man, the whites of his eyes tinged yellow, and pouches of darkened skin had developed under them. His appearance indicated that, like _ most radio men, he was short of oxygen, green vegetables and sunshine. He spoke softly, only a slight roughness in his r’s amd s’s suggesting that English was his second language. "Always glad to have people stop by," he said. "You worked in radio? Well, you know .how it goes. . . We're on the air from 6.0 a.m. till midnight. Two hours of Spanish in the mornings, the rest in English, but even our Spanish commercials are from across the line. Every fifteen minutes we have a commercial from this turf firm, and we give race results as they come in from all tracks. We've got an Associated Press wire in here, so we keep up." I asked him about advertising; rates and coverage. "Forty thousand watts," he — said. "We're beamed North and South, but we don’t worry about the South end. In the North they can hear us in Alaska. We get top rates; in dollars, naturally." "Naturally." I said. "It is steady? Long term stuff?" "Yeah," he said. "Our big checks stay steady. We’re in the information business, you see. We can supply information that doesn’t go on thea air across the line, So the firms know people tune

us in for that, and when they figure they can sell to that type of people, they stay with us." "You've got a big studio here," I said. ‘Any live shows now?" He snorted in sallow amusement. ‘T’ve seen pictures taken in here before the war." he said. "Rumba bands and mariachis and stuff, but not now, brother.~Just me and the doll (he waved at the eagle-nosed brunette behind the control panel), and a mile of tape. We get it from a firm in Chicago. They must have quite a factory there. We play a few records in the mornings, but mostly it’s just tape." é "Do you miss the people?" I asked, wondering how deep he’d dive in after that one. "Oh, sure," he said. "I know I’m strictly on the assembly line now. If I were One of those little guys with a fiddle you see in the cafés I woudn’t be so happy. Muzak and the tape has teally moved in on them." "It must look all right on the books," I said. "Very little overhead." He looked at me over his cigarette without saying anything. "Top American ad rates," I went on. "Mexican costs and maintenance. How are taxes?" His expression was almost smug. "Not too difficult to work out that someone’s winning," he said softly. "But you didn’t see a Cadillac outside, brother. The boss ain’t here." He ground out his cigarette. "It’s a sweet deal, all right. All you need is capital and contacts. Then you'll bring it in. You can sure shout loud with forty thousand watts." I shivered slightly. The clock showed 30 seconds before the three-quarter, The cold sea mist blows in most autumn evenings about this time. The announcer turned towards his desk. Compared with his mechanised frontal aspect, the back of his neck looked curiously defenceless. "Stop by anytime," he said, fading the tape muSic. "Always glad to see you." © The eagle-nosed brunette waved as I left. I was almost part of the family. "This is XERB, Mexico. Ex Eh Aira Bay, Me-hico." The little boy was doing rumba steps on the concrete outside the front doors. "Que paso, hombre?" I asked. "What’s cooking, sport?" "Monny," he said simply, holding out his hand. "Monny." 2 "es