Homer Jackson and Melo-Cream Donuts

Dad was part of the Moline food dynasties, starting very early, when the big franchise company let go of their shop. Lagomarcino's was not far away, downtown. He sold to Hasty-Tasty, the only family restaurant in town, and we favored Whitey's Ice Cream, only two blocks from our house. Dairy Queen invented the DQ Blizzard in our home town, and the Medds still manufacture it there.

I was on the ground floor at DQ.

 My first birthday - one candle, one cake, one future baker.

He was born in 1910 and lived to be 85, finally paying for easy access to fresh dessert items, which included cookies, fudge, and the best peanut brittle in the world. He made bread donuts and cake donuts, experimenting with other items, like tiny pies that were easily made and quickly sampled on the way down to the basement. Danish rolls were exquisite.

At age 4 I symbolized the theme of flour power. This was on the annual Melo Cream calendar.

The secret to the products was the highest quality ingredients for whatever was made. If it was the highest quality chocolate, the best coconut, the finest peanuts, the finest flour - he used it rather than cheapen the taste for a little more profit. Besides that, if they were not properly fried, baked, or cooked, the finished items were tossed in the garbage.

We had an apple orchard near our home. I was chased up the tree by some angry Dobermans. Fortunately I took my donut, comic book, and film crew along. This was on the calendar too - no royalties.

Cleaning was as fastidious as the cooking, so I had the opportunity to help make the icings, the glazed donuts, the bread, the cookies, and the perfect peanut brittle. 

Dad experimented with peanut brittle until he could get right combination of hot corn syrup, raw peanuts, and baking soda. Not enough bubbles - harder than concrete. Too many bubbles - yuk. The hot syrup cooked the peanuts as long as everything went well. The end result was easily eaten but impossible to stop. Attempts from other sources were more like tooth breakers and stale besides.

I learned a lot about the best ingredients at Melo Cream long before Deming changed the auto industry. It applied to study and the exchange of ideas. Clowns and faddists are popular for a time, but they are soon forgotten after the thrill is gone.

We had a lot of laughs at the shop. I probably put in more years than anyone else named Jackson. I even recruited the future Mrs. Jackson when Dad wanted me to work Friday nights. I said, "Only if you put Christina on the payroll." He did but miffed her when he said we did not fold boxes enough one Friday. She said, "Let's bury the shop in boxes next Friday." When he came in for work Saturday, before dawn, he saw stacks of boxes covering -

1. The table for rolling out dough;
2. All the floor freezer tops;
3. All the normal places for towers of boxes;
4. The big sink drainage board;
5. The glazing vat, which was covered with boards.
6. Anything else close to horizontal.

He laughed and laughed and laughed, especially when he found out what prompted the towers of boxes. That was often brought up with more laughter.

Notre Dame,1982. The book on grit says PhDs have the highest grit score (5). I think it started at the donut shop and at home. Christina was always encouraging.

The Famous Homer Jackson, Melo-Cream Owner, Cubs Fan - Shadow Manager of WQUA

This photo looks so much like grandson Alex, sitting on my lap,
but his father Martin was there, Grandma Chris on the right.
My father arranged these annual calendars and drafted various family members.

My father, Homer N. Jackson, was famous for his Melo-Cream Donut Shop, 1313 Fifth Avenue, Moline, Illinois. The nearby radio station called him the shadow manager, because the official manager Jean LaVern Flambo, listened to his suggestions and implemented them.

Dad was also a tireless but constantly discouraged Cubs fan. Born July 4th, 1910, he lived 85 years hoping for a Cubs World title, the last pennant won in 1945.

He began the business with his brother and later bought him out. The business was owned by the Melo-Cream chain, which still exists, but the Moline outlet had not done well.

Dad had Popeye arms because he mixed large batches of bread dough by hand in the early days. As a young adult in the Great Depression, his idea of work was anything that paid, which included being a laborer in building Wharton Field House. He talked about handling hot bags of concrete mix and loading them. In other words, "You kids have it easy. You are spoiled rotten."

Moline was very prosperous in those days, with income and taxes flowing from John Deere and related industries.

This recent view looks toward Melo-Cream, hidden, on the left.
First Lutheran, on the right. was the mother church
 of the Augustana Synod in that region.

Dad boasted that he outlasted at least 200 bakeries during his decades on Fifth Avenue. People still write to me about his doughnuts - or donuts - as they were spelled for the business (an invention in WWI to feed the soldiers quickly).

Here is the secret to the addictions generated by any prodcut he made - the best ingredients and quality control:

• Chocolate was the best Baker's cocoa nibs, which were melted and mixed into icing.
• He only used cane sugar because bakers knew beet sugar was not quite the same, even if the chemical formula was identical.
• The best flour came from General Mills and a California company, mixed for the best cake donuts.
• The peanuts, walnuts, coconut, and pecans were the largest and best from the suppliers. He paid for the peanuts late because he loved the ferocity of their dunning letters. He let me read some and have a laugh.
• The shortening was also the highest quality and cleaned or changed often. To this day I judge food by the quality and cleanliness of its fat. 
• Overcooked and undercooked products were dumped or sent home to be consumed by the family. The quality was shown by our ability to warm up donuts or danish days later and get that just-made taste. We laughed about getting the discards, but they were pretty good too.
• Spices were top quality, so it was a treat to open the cinnamon barrel or the nutmeg barrel and inhale.
• He used a blend of Maxwell House Coffee and Yuban for full, smooth coffee, drip grind. His rule was - coffee was no good after 15 minutes and had to be tossed.

This was my Melo-Cream calendar picture, about age 4.
I soloed again years later.

That is just a sample. Any given ingredient could be A+, A, B, C, or just plain dreadful and still used in a bakery. We visited one, which was large and profitable. The backroom aroma at that bakery revealed that there was a considerable amount of compromise involved.

When the best ingredients were put together and used with skill, the Melo-Cream donuts and danish were the best anywhere. I have never seen them equaled. When he took over the bread donuts for a time, rolling them out, cutting and frying them himself, the long johns and cinnamon fries  were almost weightless. That was a combination of the perfect mixing, the right rise and proofing, the correct cutting and frying. Some of his employees could get close to this, but no one mastered what he could do.

Dad was also famous for peanut brittle, which was light and crunchy - and fudge, rich in chocolate flavor, walnuts, and chocolate icing. I loved his oatmeal raisin cookies, with chopped walnuts in them. I suggested an improvement for the chocolate chips cookies, and that worked out very well.

Adam Jones was the most original DJ
at WQUA or anywhere else.

Cubs Fan
Dad loved following the Cubs, so going there for games was not a debatable topic. He always marveled at the way a Cubs player could be lackluster until traded to another team, then suddenly become a league champion in his position. The jeremiads continued year after year.

Long after I was gone, the trips to the games continued, often on busses filled with fans and a little beer. WQUA disk jockey Adam Jones said he really enjoyed those trips to the Cubs games with Dad.

This is the year for the Cubs to win the pennant and World Series, so the experts say. I could repeat a few expressions that I heard about those years when the Cubs led their division until the end and choked. But I do hope that Cubs fans will find justice and victory at last, this year.

Some Springdale boys were asking for donations for their all-star team, working the crowd in front of the largest Walmart in Arkansas. I said, "Are you Cubs fans?" One said, "No, Cardinals."

I said, "Oh no! They are the worst." His friend muttered something to him.

Then I added, "A lot of my friends are Cardinal fans too, and I enjoyed their games in St. Louis."

I gave them a donation and that got me some gift cards to Sonic, which I gave them to use. "Build your muscles." They laughed and their adult sponsors behind them laughed with them.

Growing up Melo-Cream meant having no tolerance for
inferior ingredients, no excuse for shirking hard work.

Adam Jones Remembers Dilly Bread and the Cubs

Greg Jackson (blogger) posed with his wife Christina and son Martin, with Homer Jackson standing - for a Melo Cream calendar.

Email Adam - adam@adamjones.info

Bob Allen retires A few things have happened since my last entry. Bob Allen (my radio partner for 17 years) retired from WAKR after 31 years. We had a great time together at WQUA, WPTF, and for the 14 years here in Akron. I remember many times when we would get off the air and we would be exhausted from laughing and having a good show. I would say, "Bob, these are the good old days." And they were! On Bob's last day, Ray Horner, the morning guy, turned his show into a four-hour tributary to Bob, starting with his first job in Kewanee, Illinois, right up to the pinochle of his career on the Adam and Bob Show (I just had an attack of Leo Gorcey.) Horner sat behind the board (no, it wasn't in the corner) as one person after another, both on the phone and in person, went on and on about what a great talent and swell person he is. I arrived near the end of the nine o'clock news, and Bob spotted me out in the hall. You could see his lips form the words, "Oh my God." He knew I was the only one who knew the truth! We spent the last hour of the show reminiscing about the people we had worked with and things we had done. Ray Horner was nice enough to bring up the fact that our ratings were remarkable, even by 1980's standards. In 1981 or '82 we were in the top 25 highest rated morning shows in the country, according to Radio and Records magazine. Dale Reeves called and was very funny as always. He was also very complimentary. Ray was about to dial 911 when I told him I was just blushing and not having some sort of event. I don't blush much. People who had worked with us said things like – There will never be another Adam and Bob Show, how great we were, and other nice stuff. It really made us feel great (Bob said things like, "Well, ain't that swell!") At this point you might be wondering why, if Adam and Bob were so great on the air, did they take them off? Let me put it to you this way. At the time our show was broken up, WAKR was run by U. S. Radio. The owner of that company, whose name will go down in the annals of broadcasting as completely unfootnoteable, has been called a whole lot of things by a whole lot of people. "Bright" is not one of them! He went out of business a few years later. U. S. Radio would have been a perfect name if un-scrupulous was two words! I'll have more to say about the ignominious end of radio's "Silver Days" later. Last month I heard from Greg Jackson. His father Homer was a friend of mine when Bob and I (and later, Dale) worked in Moline, Illinois. Homer was a swell guy, a real Cubs fan (win or lose), and the best donut maker in the history of the world, BC and AD. Forget about loose-meat sandwiches, the best thing about living in the Quad-Cities was Melo-Cream Donuts! Does anyone remember "Adam Jones Dilly Bread?" Homer did that for me. He even had bags printed with that on them. The bread was really good – yum! Not quite as good as the Jack Barlow Donut, but very few things are. They were covered in peanuts and if you ate them frozen they tasted like ice cream! Greg has a blog about Moline: http://molinememories.blogspot.com. It was nice to hear from him. (It must be spring; my taste buds are blooming.) . . . I'm sorry I got all sidetracked. Now back to Louisville and the Speed Building where (when I could get in) I worked at WINN. I liked that station and I liked Louisville a lot. I worked at WINN from February through August of 1962. As was always the case with Gene Snyder, he let me do whatever I wanted on the air. The owner was Glen Harmon, a nice enough guy as I remember. The first time I met him he told me he had played minor league baseball (with the Tulsa Oilers, I think.) Some of the other guys I worked with then included Joe Fletcher, Jerry Thomas, Bob Lyons, and Dean Michaels who did news. The way I remember it, Snyder had been hired to change WINN into a rocker, then Harmon had second thoughts so while Gene and Glen argued about it, "Adam in the Evening" had a great time. I really loved doing that show. The station had a nice collection of 1950's jazz (I was told that a former jock had made off with half their library and opened another station across the river.) Having just one name was cool, and having a beard was even cooler in those days. I started to dress the part, and took to wearing mandarin shirts (which gave me that "You-ain't-from-around-here-are-you" look.) For a few months I had great fun and even tried to do a few voices. I never realized how bad they were until a few years later when I met Dale Reeves and Larry Kenney. Time out here so I can go vote. I always vote. I do my homework and try hard to learn all I can about the issues. Even when my vote will be nullified by some big old bag of stupid from the Salada Crap Movement who gets his news from G. Gorden Liddy! Who, incidentally, starred in the 1970 White House production of Edison the (dim) Bulb. - Adam Jones 5-16-2010

Adam Jones (nee Ocepek), at WQUA Moline, was a frequent visitor at Melo Cream. I looked forward to his show.

Who Is Adam Ocepek and Why Is He Writing Me? He Has Feats of Clay

Adam and Debra Ocepek are known for their ceramic communion ware.

Adam Jones is fondly remembered for his broadcasting at WQUA.

I was reading a long, friendly email from Adam Ocepek today, wondering, "How do I know this person and when did I publish his photo?" I realized quickly enough that Adam Jones was using his legal name - Ocepek.

Adam and my father used to go with a group to see Cubs games. He quoted my father as hoping to live long enough to see the Cubs win the World Series. I guess my father wanted to live forever.

He and his wife Debra, married 35 years now, have their own pottery business, and they make only communion ware:

http://www.communionware.com/

Write him at this link.

David Coopman's Book Coming Soon: May 10, 2010

Dave Coopman is the media historian of the Quad-Cities.

Captain Ernie

To discuss his book - Davenport's WOC AM-FM-TV

Book Description:
Beginning in 1922, Davenport's WOC has charted an impressive list of broadcasting firsts: the first licensed commercial radio station west of the Mississippi River; first station to establish logging, the practice of recording program schedules down to the minute and second; the use of time signals at the beginning of programs; first to build and use audio mixing controls that allowed multiple microphone usage; first to broadcast from a state legislature; and first to broadcast programming meant specifically for children. WOC-TV was the first television station in Iowa on the air when it began regular programming in 1949. This volume of images presents an overview to the history, facilities, programming, and technology of the WOC stations and provides a glimpse at the stations today, as new ownership carries on an outstanding tradition in Quad City broadcasting.

ISBN: 9780738577807

# of Pages: 128
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
On Sale Date: 05/10/2010

Author Bio: David T. Coopman is a former employee of the WOC stations, a former teacher, past president of the Rock Island County Historical Society, and a local history buff. He has authored two books on the history of local broadcasting and Rock Island County in the Images of America series.

Coopman's WQUA book.

Delicious! - Jim Backus and Mystery Woman

Jim Backus and Mr. Magoo.

The actress on this is Hermione Gingold. The instrumental backing is by Appleknocker and His Group.

Beep! Beep! Novelty Song in 1958 - And Delicious!

WQUA played this a lot. It was on the charts for 12 weeks.

---

In the same year, Jim Backus did this great novelty record, Delicious!, which we played at home. The laughter is infectious.

It apparently made it to #40 on the charts in 1958.

DELICIOUS!
Jim Backus & Friend
Note: Jim is indicated by J, "Friend" by F.

Lots of laughing and Jim's diction gets a little slurred toward the end

F: Ooh we're gonna have fun.
J: Yes.
F: It's a cozy table, isn't it?
J: And champagne my dear, heh-heh.
F: Mmmmmm delicious, ha-ha
J: You like it? Heh-heh.
F: Mmmmmm delicious, ha-ha!
J: Hee-hee-hee I like it too, heh-heh yes I do like it
F: Mmmmmm delicious.
J: Heh-heh you want some more?
F: Mmmmmm delicious!
J: I knew you'd like it, heh heh ha.
F: Delicious!
J: Have some more...get the waiter and hehheh put on the paper hat...get out the lampshade ha-ha I even like the cork! Waiter, waiter, more! Keep pouring it! Every night's New Year's Eve! Waiter, every night we're gonna do thish, I don't care, loshe the job what are you gonna do scooba dabba doo oh champagne (*hic*)...

WQUA and the Crocodile Club

From Anonymous Dave:

The picture of Barlow is from a promotion when WQUA picked up the ABC Radio Network. Flambo brought Don McNeill's Breakfast Club to town and floated the whole gang down the river to arrive in the QCs. Barlow made the trip on the "WQUA Showboat"

Don Nelson came to WQUA in 1955. He did various air shifts -- afternoons, mornings, even late evenings from the Plantation. He also had the first rock and roll show on local radio, even before KSTT went all rock. One of the promotions was the Crocodile Club.

The station held dances, with plenty of chaperons, for teens and the kids even had to dress up. The first dance was at the Moline American Legion. Several thousand showed up and they had to set up speakers on 15th Street to accommodate the crowd. The second dance was at Wharton with The Diamonds ("Little Darlin").

The last pic is of Nelson and Barlow
at the Q reunion held in 2003.

Melo Cream Penny Postcard - Dean Jacquin

Dean Jacquin posed for a Melo Cream penny postcard around 1938.

His mother Charlotte was dad's sister.

I was looking for pictures of Moline when I found this one on a penny postcard page. "That's Cousin Dean!" He graduated from Moline High in 1955. Aunt Charlotte worked at Melo Cream for many years.

The family legend is that dad and his brother bought Melo Cream when the store failed as a franchise, keeping the name. This is apparently the original franchise.

They began without electric mixers, if they were even available, so dad mixed all the batches by hand, giving him Popeye forearms he never lost.

He believed in advertising, so we had Melo Cream hats long before that upstart Krispy Kreme gave them away.

Every year someone was featured on the calendar. One of my melancholy duties was giving away those calendars. People just had to pull out the latest calendar picture from the envelope and say, "Aww." The calendars featured the Jackson cousins as they grew into parents and included grandchildren as they were born.

The phone number on the calendar got longer as Moline grew, starting at three numbers and growing to seven.

To make Melo Cream seem larger, we passed the phone to the intended recipient thus, "Aunt Charlotte, phone for you, line 8."

The phone always had a light dusting of flour and powdered sugar from its proximity to the table where bread doughnuts and danish were readied.

WQUA ads

The staff at WQUA ate free at the counter and gave Melo Cream free ads from time to time. No one was better than Jack Barlow at live ads. People drove to the shop in the middle of night, still in their PJs, robes, and slippers, to buy doughnuts after Jack talked about them.

I remember Jack at WQUA, but I did not know he had a recording career. This MySpace site tells about it.

"Jack Barlow was farming in Muscatine, Iowa, when he was hired as a deejay for the local station, KWPC. That led to a move to Moline, Iowa where he had his own show on WQUA. From there, he moved to WIRE in Indianapolis. That's where he met Darrell Speck, who had moved his family north to Beech Grove, Indiana in 1964 to work in radio and write songs. They co-wrote I Love Country Music with Barlow's friend, singer/songwriter Charlie Stewart."

Now I have to do a separate post on Jack Barlow the singer.

Melo-Cream - Gourmet Doughnuts

This was an early photo, when my uncle was still a partner with dad. Uncle Don Jackson is in the middle in the back. My father, Homer Jackson, is on the right.Aunt Charlotte Jacquin also worked at the shop, 1313 5th Avenue, Moline.

 

This photo, dated in the 1960s, shows the icon wall of WQUA personalities right behind my father's head.

My father and his brother bought Melo Cream when the initial store, part of a franchise, failed. They kept the name and built up the business. My father saw 200 bakeries start and fail in the area. He kept going, even after retiring.

The formula was simple. They made the best products possible. If a batch was less than perfect, it went in the garbage (or we had to eat it at home).

My father got pure cocoa for the chocolate frosting. He bought special flavorings.

The ingredients were always the best. The walnuts, coconut, and pecans were the largest and choicest varieties. Going into the basement meant a chance to take a handful of nuts, to provide some energy for the long trip. If danish rolls were cooling on the rack above the stairs, that worked too.

When my father discovered a better doughnut flour, he paid extra for it to be shipped from California.

Coffee was a mix of Maxwell House and Yuban, to provide more flavor. If the coffee was more than 15 minutes old, it was poured down the drain, much to the horror of customers, who did not want to wait for a fresh pot.

We had a drip system for making coffee, when restaurants were percolating cheap coffee and storing it forever.

My father experimented with new recipes. He made a Jack Barlow doughnut that was a cake doughnut, glazed, with a mixture of ground roasted coconut, graham crackers, and peanuts rolled in. The doughnuts were labor-intensive, because the coconut was roasted at the shop (easy to burn) and the peanuts were cooked and ground there. The end result was a delicious doughnut, even when frozen hard. In fact, someone recommended eating them frozen as a treat - and I did.

Most peanut brittle tends to break teeth off. My father worked out a method for making peanut brittle that tasted great and was easy to eat. He used soda to make it rise up. The trick was cooking it to the right temperature without burning it, pouring it out while still hot.

Melo Cream's coffee counter was the hub of downtown. WQUA staff were there all the time. Police came through. Store owners came in for a break. The John Deere and Arsenal workers bought doughnuts on the way to work.

Melo Cream was the original Facebook. All kinds of news was exchanged back and forth.

Dave Coopman's Book

 

In his book, “WQUA, Moline's Hometown Station,” author Dave Coopman writes that the radio station flourished at 1230 on the AM dial under the ownership of G. LaVerne Flambo, above, a successful promoter of big-name entertainment shows and teen dances during the 1950s. The station launched or aided the careers of numerous on-air personalities, including some still familiar to Quad-City audiences such as William “Spike” O'Dell, Paula Sands and Jim Albracht.

New Book Explores Pioneering Quad-City Radio Station

Dave Coopman has tuned in his broadcasting background and love of local history to write another nostalgia-packed book about Quad-City radio.

His latest work explores WQUA, which was on the air from 1946 until 1983. Billed as “Moline’s Hometown Radio Station,” the pioneering rock ‘n’ roll music outlet, 1230 on the AM dial, was a proving ground for William “Spike” O’Dell, Paula Sands, Jim Albracht and many others who went on to broadcasting success.

“WQUA, Moline’s Hometown Station” is Coopman’s second book exploring the golden age of Quad-City radio. In 1998, he published “Someplace Special … KSTT: A History of the Station and its People,” a richly detailed look at the popular top-40 station of the 1960s and ‘70s.

Like “Someplace Special,” his book on WQUA brims with photos, promotional and advertising images, programming schedules, station logos and other graphics. The thorough and fact-laden account examines ownership and format changes, the comings and goings of announcers, and the station’s glory days under owner G. LaVerne Flambo, the impresario who brought big-name entertainers to the Quad-Cities and introduced the popular “Crocodile Club” teen dances of the 1950s,

A former Rock Island County Historical Society president who managed his college radio station and later worked as a broadcasting engineer, Coopman was encouraged to write “WQUA” by several former employees who also worked at KSTT. Published under the banner of Heritage Documentaries Inc., a local nonprofit organization with a goal of producing educational and historical projects, the indexed, 95-page, soft-cover book is available for $15 at the Rock Island County Historical Society in Moline.

KSTT and WQUA flourished in an era when Quad-City radio stations were operated by independent owners who had their offices on the premises, not by distant corporate chains as is the case today, Coopman said. “KSTT probably is better-known today, but WQUA was a good all-around station. And it also played rock ‘n’ roll before KSTT did,” he said.

Coopman, 60, graduated in 1970 from what was then St. Ambrose College in Davenport, where he managed the student radio station, KALA. He has worked as an engineer at several Quad-City radio and television stations, taught English at Moline High School and worked more than 20 years in sales management.

In piecing together the history of WQUA, he combed Broadcasting magazine yearbooks, Federal Communications Commission records, newspapers and other sources. He also interviewed many former employees and others associated with local radio.

WQUA signed on Sept. 23, 1946, from studios at 1319 5th Ave., Moline, and built a state-of-the-art studio at the northeast corner of 6th Avenue and 18th Street some 22 years later. The station was owned by the Moline Broadcasting Co., whose principals were broadcasting veteran Bruff Olin, Davenport industrialist G. Decker French and Davenport lawyer Howard Eckerman.

The station blossomed under “Vern” Flambo, who became general manager in 1950 and was owner from 1955 until 1960. Coopman writes that Flambo was “the man who put the Quad-Cities on the entertainment map with his big-name shows and promotions, and who took great pleasure in developing the talent of many young people in the broadcasting field.”

Announcers who honed their skills at WQUA over the years include Spike O’Dell, now a star and host of the morning-drive time slot at radio station WGN-AM in Chicago; Paula Sands, news anchor and host of “Paula Sands Live” on KWQC-TV; and Jim Albracht, who was sports director at WQAD-TV and later hosted a talk show on radio station WOC-AM for more than a decade while becoming the play-by-play announcer for the Quad-City Steamwheelers.

In addition to nurturing young broadcasters, WQUA attracted proven talent such as Jack Carey, whose “Coffee with Carey” was a hit show in the 1970s. Other veteran announcers recruited at WQUA included Adam Jones, host of the “All Night Fist Fight” during the 1960s and ‘70s, and Jim McShane, who became immensely popular with listeners and advertisers alike during the ‘70s.

After going through various format changes, WQUA dropped its identity in 1983 to become WMRZ , which featured hits from the 1950s and ‘60s. That format lasted until 1990, when the station became WLLR-AM. Today, it broadcasts sports talk and events as WFXN.

In an age of corporate ownership of radio stations and programming ruled by consultants, Coopman says WQUA is worth remembering. “Young people today ought to know what radio was like 30 years ago,” he adds.

Contact the city desk at (563) 383-2245 or newsroom@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com.

Buy the book

“WQUA, Moline’s Hometown Station” can be purchased for $15 at the Rock Island County Historical Society library, 822 11th Ave., Moline. Telephone: (309) 764-8590.

Hours are 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday.

Source

Adam Jones from WQUA Radio Wants to Hear From You

Adam Jones brought creativity to Moline radio.

I remember Adam Jones coming to WQUA radio. The station was a few doors away from the Melo-Cream Donut Shop, 13th Street and 5th Avenue, where I slaved away my youth. My father set up a photo wall, where all the personalities of WQUA were featured.

I remember exactly two announcers. Jack Barlow was one, because all the women were in love with him.

Adam Jones was the other, because everyone talked about him. His radio show was so shockingly different that we could hardly believe our good fortune. I often worked late or early hours, so I heard him often, and he came into the shop regularly. WQUA gave Melo-Cream a few free ads and my father gave them doughnuts and coffee. We saw the announcers, secretaries, and the manager on a daily basis.

G. LaVerne Flambo was the manager of the station. One day it was snowing, so he told the Shell gas station owner to shovel a path from his Caddy, so he would not get his shoes damp. The owner said, "Shovel your own #$%&* path." To be fair, Flambo is remembered as a real pioneer in the area. I will post more about him later.

I recall that Jones was eventually left the station - see below. Adam retired from radio after 40 years and Bob Allen, his radio partner for 17 years, retired from WAKR just a few weeks ago.

Adam married a girl who graduated from Moline High, someone who played in the Glass Menagerie play at school. Later he married Debra. He and Debra have been wed for 35 years. They run a pottery business, which makes only communion ware:

http://communionware.com

Adam Jones has his own website and wants people to write to him.

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Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Adam Jones from WQUA Radio Wants to Hear From You":

Melo-Cream was like "studio C" for WQUA. Past employees still talk about the place, and it's usually one of the first things they mention when talking about Moline and the station. If I remember correctly, weren't there pictures of all the WQUA talent, on the wall behind the counter?

Adam was indeed a unique personality for the station. Very entertaining for the early morning listeners -- and there were a lot of them. But I must correct something, Greg. Adam was never fired. He tired of working overnights and was moved to an 8:00pm to Midnight shift for awhile. Then he and Bob Allen (known as Gordon Vann when he was at KSTT) were paired together in mid-days. It worked quite well and the Adam and Bob Show got hired away. They eventually wound up in Akron, OH.

He did indeed marry a gal who was in the Glass Menagerie at MHS, but they later divorced. He later married another gal from Moline and they're still very happily married and run Ocepek Pottery near Akron.

Dave

[GJ - I corrected the post. Thanks, Dave.]

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GREG WHITAKER commented on your web page I still remember the Adam Jones All Night Fist Fight as he called it I'll forever recall awaking in the early morning in summer 1968 to Adam Jones announcing the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. He Adam Jones from WQUA Radio Wants to Hear From You