… Don’t break our hearts tonight …
WAPE, “The Big Ape”, started construction of its state-of-the art facility in the late ’50’s and began broadcasting soon thereafter. It was a force to be reckoned with  25000 watts (later boosted to 50000) on 690 KHz with an enormous signal travelling up the eastern North American coastline. WAPE was a unique Southern experience, though folks all up and down the East Coast tuned in daily. “From the Capitol to the Coast, From Washington, DC to Key West, Florida”, the Big Ape was BIG on power, yet there were no fancy bells and whistles  just the unforgettable “Ape Call”, featured liberally in this composite assembled from Fall 1963 and February, 1964.
“Dedications” (remember those?) were an integral part of the broadcasts. Then there was the legendary swimming pool, the main function of which was to cool the transmitter (water-cooled transmitters were something of a rarity). BUT,
“then the weekends came and a bevy of girls in two-piece bathing suits began cavorting in the pool and prancing around for the benefit of those disc jockeys and anyone driving past….Some say a fall cold snap ended the practice. Others swear that the sheriff got tired of pulling cars out of ditches for drivers who couldn’t keep their eyes on the road…an outsider would have thought that Hugh Hefner had built a Playboy mansion annex on U.S. 17.” 1
It WAS the “Radio Country Club of the South”, after all. During the second half of this Dino Summerlin show from February 29, 1964, a girl gets thrown in the infamous Big Ape swimming pool.
1. Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville), Mary Jo McTammany, 8-20-97 (on-line edit.); other material from stories on 9-24-97 and 6-27-98. Thanks also to Russell Wells and John Long, Repository: WAPE, 1972 Comment section.