Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 19, 1994 TAG: 9410190044
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-10 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: DONNA ALVIS-BANKS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Through the darkness, I peered out the single window of my room in the mobile home where we lived.
My eyes, still glazed with dreaming, sought the street lights on Radford Road. Clear, frosty air illuminated by the lights sent me back to the warmth of my bed.
But white flakes swirling around those lights sent me scurrying for the radio.
Down the narrow hall, past the dark room where my parents still slept, past the bassinet that held my baby brother, over the cold linoleum floor in the kitchen, I headed for the transistor radio.
I twisted the knob gently, careful to make sure the volume was on low. Then, I pressed my ear close to the speaker and listened for the cock-a-doodle-doo!
The rooster's crow meant one thing to me then: Lewis Kanode - better known as Al Singleton Rooster Kanode Jr. - was on the air.
Lewis Kanode was the man who could make - or break - a kid's day on a nippy January morning. He was the early bird of the local radio station and, hence, the messenger of news about school closings.
"Get up! Get goin'! Ya gotta go to school today!" he would cackle in his country-boy twang.
"Readin', writin' and 'rithmetic - you ain't gonna learn it in bed."
If you had listened closely, I'll wager you would have heard a collective groan from kids all over Montgomery County.
If the news was good, "Rooster" Kanode would prolong the pain of waiting for it.
"We'll have all the school closin's for ya comin' up, but first here's Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs pickin' out the Foggy Mountain Breakdown."
After that, it was a word from the local sponsor.
It seemed like an eternity before that backwoods baritone announced, "Go on back to bed! There ain't no school today! It's snowin' to beat the band. ..."
I clapped my hands and danced around the kitchen in my pink flannel pajamas.
I didn't go back to bed, though. Snowy days were for riding sleds and making snowmen and eating sugary snow cream.
I imagine Lewis Al Singleton Rooster Kanode Jr. was as tickled when the snow fell as his young listeners were.
For years, he was the Santa on top of the fire truck in the local Christmas parade. After all the floats and bands and marching scouts passed by, he brought up the rear, bellowing the "Ho-Ho-Ho's" and passing out the hard candy.
He must've enjoyed tossing the candy canes as much as we enjoyed popping them into our mouths and savoring the sweetness.
For local yokels like myself, "Rooster" Kanode was a fixture in Montgomery County. He was a part of small-town life, a part of my childhood.
He was a cheerful wake-up call on a cold winter morning.
Donna Alvis-Banks is an editorial assistant in the New River Valley bureau of the Roanoke Times & World-News.
by CNB