[Description by contributor Neil Ross] Return with us now to the thrilling days of 1961 in San Diego, California. A time when you could get a 15 cent burger, buy name brand tires for your car for 12 bucks each, get a suit for $34.95, fly to New York or Hawaii for $80 and most amazing of all, rent an apartment for $68 a month. (The current median apartment rent in San Diego is over $1,000.) I’m a junior in High School at this time and my favourite afternoon jock is Mel Hall. Hall was hip, cool, ironic, smooth as silk and often quite funny without being obnoxious about it. He was the only jock to survive the Tullis and Hearne takeover of the station in 1960, remaining in his afternoon drive slot. The rest of the staff included Don MacKinnon, Don Bowman, Steve Crosnoe and later on Mike Ambrose and Noel Confer. Featured is newsman John Huddleston (not yet J. Paul – although he uses that name in a fake newscast that intros a commercial in this aircheck – imagine using cold war imagery to sell burgers!). I’m so glad the newscast wasn’t telescoped. What a time machine! Older listeners will recall when African-Americans were ‘Negroes’, the Ed Sullivan/Jack Paar feud, the continuing soap opera of Elizabeth Taylor’s life, radio stations broadcasting Police calls and how about teenagers buying old hearses to transport surfboards!! Those crazy California kids, what’ll they think of next? Listen to Huddleston’s timing on the half hour ‘checkpoint’, it should be required listening for today’s crop of mush mouthed news mumblers. It isn’t hard to figure out why Huddleston made it to KHJ a few years later. Also heard on this aircheck are promos for legendary morning man Don MacKinnon. I have tape of MacKinnon in San Francisco and L.A. but nothing from his San Diego stint. Too bad. You hear his voice on one of the promos which features a Lenny Bruce wild track. Most of the spots are left full length. I think they help to give the flavor of the times. I telescoped a couple of the duller ones. To most of you the Dr. Free jingle will be an annoyance but to us old time San Diegans it’s pure nostalgia, baby! I’m pretty sure that KDEO didn’t have cart machines yet. You can hear the popping and clicking of the ETs. (That’s electrical transcriptions, kiddies – not extra terrestrials)! Also, in the quieter sections you can hear interference from a nearby Mexican station drifting off frequency. Something we old time KDEO listeners had to suffer through. Mel Hall continued on KDEO for a few more years after the time of this aircheck. Why KCBQ never snapped him up is a mystery to me. In the mid sixties he went north to program KRLA in Los Angeles and you can hear some of his production work on airchecks of the station from that time. He then returned to San Diego where he was in advertising for many years. I met him once when he came up to L.A. to direct a couple of spots in which I was talent. At that time I had the pleasure of presenting him with a copy of this aircheck. Mel Hall passed away October 10, 2011.