Angst and Cooking (Part 2)

I had no idea this cookbook would warrant a part 2 post. But since I wrote that post in 2014 almost everyone mentioned has died. That first post is here; where I spent some time untangling all the Angst's: Alice, Helen, Roy, Bud, Lisa and I'm sure there were others. Just as the prior book was undated, so is this one. It seems intuitive that Volume 1 precedes Volume 2 but there was also a third one that lacks a "volume" appellation though it seems to precede both. Volume 2 has one magnificent difference, four pages of black and white head shots. I picked up this copy at a yard sale

The first  cookbook referred solely to WPAM. Then the first volume of this series lists both WLSH and WPAM on the cover. As you can see this one, Volume II, refers to WLSH on the cover, but mentioned WPAM on the inside text. Missing from my first post was the origin of WLSH. It signed on in 1952 as a 1,000 watt daytimer owned by Miners Broadcasting which also owned 1450 WPAM-AM and 1460 WMBA-AM. Bud Angst oversaw the construction of WLSH, so it's safe to say the Angst's were there from the get-go.  Bud died in 2016 and his obit [LINK] tells us a little more about all that:

"After graduating from high school Bud enlisted in the Coast Guard during WW2 & served as a radio operator in the Mediterranean. After the war Bud made radio his chosen career. Under the banner of Miners Broadcasting Service Bud & his partners established 3 AM radio stations in PA—WPAM Pottsville, WMBA Ambridge, & WLSH Lansford. WLSH signed on the air December 24, 1952 & it's where Bud called "home" for almost 40 years... In 1977 because of FCC duopoly rules, Bud became sole owner of WLSH. Miners Broadcasting Services was replaced by Pocono Anthracite Communications & all ties to WPAM & WMBA were severed."

That really fills in most of the gaps. That Facebook page also has great pictures of WLSH. That same obit mentions the programs that led to these cook books. "Alice's Ask Your Neighbor show spawned 2 very successful cookbooks during the 1970s..." Kelly Monitz Socha at Times News dates one of them to 1978. [LINK] That's further than I got back in 2014. But the Skook News reports that it was printed in 1974. [SOURCE] It further confirms the earlier edition that I found "There was another cookbook before "Volume 1", but it only had 16 pages of local recipes." 10,000 copies of Vol 1 were printed and then 20,000 copies of volume 2.

Alice Angst died in 2020, her obit [SOURCE] confirms that she's Bud's wife and that they met in 1946. She worked at both WPAM and WLSH, where she was the host of the long-running radio talk show, Ask Your Neighbor. It's branding appears on 2 of the 3 editions. Alice and Bud had two daughters, Bonnie (Bim) and Lisa. (Alice contributes a Roman Salad recipe and another for sausage stew.)

Helen Louise (Bouslough) Angst was the WPAM host, she died in 2021. Her obit [LINK] confirmed that she was a book-keeper at WPAM in Pottsville. I had assumed the program was simulcast but all sources confirm that Helen and Alice hosted their own shows, but co-edited the cook books. I think she was Bud's sister. (She contributes a classic Brownie recipe among other items.)

I wrote enough about Bud last time he was a beloved local figure in local radio, politics and civil society in the coal country around Lehighton. (He contributes one recipe for Broken leg hot punch.) Al Sword later worked at WTHT and became a newspaper reporter. It's hard to find more information about him despite the unique name. But Walter Reabold died in 2003 at the age of 76, he had long since left radio and was the manager for Progressive Merchants in Lehighton. (His wife Sarah contributed a good donut recipe, and a meatloaf with sausage to the cookbook.) Jack Meyers remains obscure. Sales people are like that.

Mark Osif remains a mystery but Mike Berzosky was still with WLSH as late as 1982 evidences by issues of the Hazelton Standard-Speaker newspaper. The Carbon-Tamaqua Unit of the American Cancer Society had it's seventh telethon back in 1986 and that too listed Mike Berzosk, though it's the last time I can find his name in print. He hosted the The Dutch Trader radio program, and it ran for at least 20 years so that makes sense. Jerry Tray pops up in a few sorts articles in the late 1980s, but most prominently in 1980 in a Pottsville Republican newspaper article about an FCC investigation putting him at WPAM and WZTA under Curran Communications apparently after leaving WLSH.

"Another former Curran Communications employee, Jerry Tray, told The REPUBLICAN that he had been ordered on numerous occasions by James J.  Curran Jr. to slant the news. Tray, who worked at radio station WZTA, Lansford, and who was fired in June, 1979, for having a "bad attitude..."

I found one great article about Howard Ondick, the man had guts. When ordered by a judge to stop recording a public meeting Ondick said "no."  Hilarity did not ensue. But under pressure in a room of reporters the prison commission backed down. [SOURCE] The man has chutzpah. His name later appears in conjunction with WPPA and WAVT in Pottsville, I'm pretty confident that's the same news man.

Billie Schuetrumpf got married to Michael Harakel and fades from the record. Michael's obit mentions that she was still alive in 2017. Her name is one of the few here who also appears in that pre-duopoly edition of the cook book along with Theresa Homick and Mary Jane Yeager who are absent here. (Except that Yeager contributed a recepie for Lime French Dressing.) Lisa Angst Long Kowalsi passed in 2022, she had was the owner of her own accounting firm LA Long and Associates. Evelyn C. (Kenlin) Kowatch died just last year. She had been the Postmaster for the Andreas United States Postal Office and was retired. 

Herb Davis is one of several in radio with that name notably at WCKY and "Mr. Money" on the Channel 20 daily game show in DC "Dialing for Dollars. He is neither of those gents. Barbara (DeGiosio) Giantesano survived her husband Richard in 2020. Stella DiFebo died in 1992. Her obit says that she was born in Italy and was known locally as "Aunt Stella" as a frequent contributor to the "Ask Your Neighbor" cooking show on WLSH in Lansford. (She contributes very meaty recipes for venison, beef brisket, leg of lamb, bacon ribs.)
 

In 1989, Bud sold WLSH radio to Harold G. Fulmer III of Allentown. The Fulmer family continues to own & operate WLSH today. In 2014 WLSH and the American Cancer Society partnered to reprint the Great Radio Ask Your Neighbor Cookbook so in addition to my yellowed copies, there are fresh printings out there. They printed another 1,000 copies, and they're more affordable then the local collector items that are going for $50 now.

Angst and Cooking at WPAM-AM

This cookbook is titled, "WPAM's Book on Great Radio Cookery," and was compiled by the staff of  1450 WPAM-AM located in Pottsville, PA right in the coal country of Pennsylvania. It was a family affair then as now. Then it was run by John "Bud" Angst, later by Mickey Angst. This cook book is authored and edited by This one credited to Alice and Helen Angst. Alice was Bud's wife. I see a pattern here.

In the late 1960s and 1970s WPAM was owned by The Miners Broadcasting. They owned three stations including  WLSH-AM in Lansford and WMBA-AM in Ambridge. WPAM was a hyper local station airing what was then MOR and is now standards, artists like Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and the Ray Confif singers.

I also found another related cook book probably from a bit later in the 1970s.  This one also credited to  Alice Angst and Helen Angst. It also names Billie Schuetrumpf, Theresa Homick and Mary Jane Yeager.  But this one bears two sets of call signs: 1410 WPAM-AM and 1410 WLSH-AM. So I assume the other book precedes the acquisition of WLHS and this one precedes the purchase of WMBA. The trio were owned by Miners as early as 1964... so maybe not.

In in 1971 the Station Manager is listed as Roy Angst, undoubtedly yet another family member. In 1974 Bud is listed as the Station manager at WPPA-AM.  The Angst family seems to be building a coal country media empire. But in 1976 WPAM was was sold to Curran Communications.  Then in 1977, Miners Broadcasting Service Inc. sold WLHS to Pocono-Anthracite Communications passing the station to Mickey as GM, but Bud was involved in the station well into the 1980s. 

In about March of 1998, Curan Communications signed an LMA with Pottsville Broadcasting to handle WPAM. Mickey Angst stayed with WLSH and stayed with radio for 33 years... finally retiring in 2011.  Curran mismanaged WPAM and was fined by the FCC for failure to keep proper records in 2012. Then 1450 reportedly went silent for weeks in both 2011 and 2012.

Side note: the Schuylkill Legal Record indicates that Pennsylvania once sued Bud in 1961. It has something to do with a run for public office. I wish I knew the story there. More here.

Stock Image Fail

This is a lesson on why it's sometimes worth paying a license fee for a stock image to have exclusivity. Below are Scans of promotional cook book covers for 1450 WPAM-AM, 1240 WTAX-AM, 1380 WPHM-AM, 1060 WHFB-AM, 1280 WNPT-AM, 1400 WELK-AM, 810 WEDO-AM and I have others I didn't bother to crop and post. If there are this many you know there are more out there too.

These stations are spread out all over too: Eklins, WV; Pottsville, PA; Mckeesport, PA; Springfield, IL, Port Huron, MI; Tuscaloosa, AL; Roanoke, VA; Sacramento, CA and the sad, cursed town of Benton Harbor, MI.  What happened here is that a company bulk mailed a large number of radio stations their catalog of promo items. Some large subset of them chose this customizable cook book. There are probably a couple pages in the front unique to each station, but the art and the rest is the same, with convenient a big white space to print on the Black & White station logo.

 

Jolly Jack Robel

Jolly Jack Robel and his Radio Band, that's the artist name on the Vocalion 78 I have here. He sang, conducted, played clarinet, bass, violin and harmonica and had his own 12-piece orchestra. He had a radio program on 1490 WAZL-AM in Hazleton, and another on WPAM-AM. Jack also sold some of his songs to the Andrews sisters. One of these was the infamous "Beer Barrel Polka." Jack Robel was a polka pioneer if you will. he was one of several Polka artists that pushed polka toward a more popular and less ethnic audience. his works favored dance rhythms, and full orchestras like more common pop music of the era. It was a more homogeneous and a new and truly American style of polka. This makes sense when you realize that while was born in Ukraine, he learned clarinet from a Tommy Dorsey an American swing legend.  Some sources credit him with writing the "Beer Barrel Polka" in 1936. For that he will never be forgiven.

But it was a different time and place. The coal mines of the Shenandoah were cracking and Polish and other western European immigrants worked the mines. Local stations like 1450 WPAM-AM, 1530 WMBT-AM and WMIM-AM all ran polish programming regularly to serve that audience.

In the beginning Jolly Jack put together a band of Slovak musicians and started playing the ethnic polish programs on WAZL-AM and WEEM-AM. WAZL and WPAM eventually gave him his own program. Then he moved on to playing ballrooms back when that was a way to reach people. In a small burg like Pottstown a big show might draw 1000 people. It was gigs like that which got his band recorded in New York and sides released on Brunswick, Vocalion, Columbia and at least 40 LPs for Decca. More here.

WAZL is still an ethnic station today, now serving the growing Hispanic population. I do recommend you read the Fybush tour of the Pennsylvania coal country radio stations here. Almost all these stations appear in his essay.