In the early 1960s, President John F. Kennedy emphasized physical fitness, partly to counter excessive screen time for us, the first TV generation.
One thing that stuck in the social consciousness was the idea of a 50-mile trek, which began as a military readiness program, but was picked up by civil-rights organizers to demonstrate their seriousness, and to attract publicity.
In the spring of 1966, three 16-year-old companions and I decided to accept the challenge in the form of a 50-mile hike from my house in Lakewood, south of Tacoma, to our favorite rock ’n’roll radio station, KJR, in Seattle. I guess you could call it the JFKJR challenge.
We met at my house at sunrise on Saturday morning, with canteens, sack lunches and homemade signs to attract attention along the way: “KJR or Bust”; “Off to Strip the KJR Supercar” (the station’s novelty advertising car, which looked like a jet engine) and “Everyone’s Gone to the Moon” (by Jonathan King, the theme song for our upcoming junior prom). We also had a gas station road map with our proposed route, a bunch of change for pay phones and a little transistor radio. We planned to call KJR periodically to report our progress, hoping they would mention our quest, and especially, the name of our school on the air.
So we walked and we walked and we walked. Then we ate our lunches and we walked some more. We waved at cars as we walked, and some of them waved and honked back. We called KJR every couple of hours, always getting the receptionist, never a DJ, but we kept calling, reporting our progress and plugging our school. And then we walked some more, through Tacoma, onto Highway 99 through Fife and Federal Way, and past the Midway Drive-in Theater.
Then it happened. DJ Larry Lujack announced that four Lakes High School students were on a 50-mile trek to the radio station. Beside our calls, they had heard from motorists who had seen us along the way. He wished us luck and urged listeners to honk if they spotted us.
What a boost! Our adventure was on the record, and we knew that many of our friends had probably heard this broadcast. This affirmation brought a little bounce to our brains, if not our tiring steps. We trudged on, but despite the uptick in honks, our stamina was waning and we were passing from determined optimism to gutting-it-out.
When the DJ mentioned us on the air again a couple hours later, our thoughts were less “Oh boy!” and more “What have we gotten ourselves into?”
By the time we passed SeaTac it was obvious that we all weren’t going to make it. Jeff was having calf cramps. Jack was nursing nasty blisters. We were all exhausted.
It was about 8 p.m. and the sun was going down. We’d been walking for 14 hours straight and had covered about 40 miles. At our 3 mph pace we were still more than three hours from KJR.
Reluctantly, we began to consider our options. We could hitchhike the final leg, but the impending darkness made that problematic, and KJR was located way out of anybody’s way on Harbor Island. We could call it quits and call for a ride home, but none of us wanted to give up, and our sense of solidarity precluded leaving anyone behind.
A car stopped. These two guys had heard about us on the radio and, coincidentally, worked at KOL, the competitor to KJR for local teenage ears. They tried to talk us into ending our quest at their station, just a mile from KJR. We really wanted to get in this car, but we’d already invested so much in our original plan that anything else would be a failure. They understood, and when they noticed we were hurting, they offered us a ride to KJR.
Hallelujah! We happily, painfully crammed ourselves into the back seat, with Jeff’s cramping leg draped across our laps. At the station, we were greeted by DJ Chuck Bolland (famous for his sarcastic sports opinion spot called, “That’s the way the ball bounces”). Chuck announced our arrival live on the air, and then played “Everyone’s Gone to the Moon” in honor of the Lakes High School junior prom. While our song was playing, we visited with Chuck and he autographed a KJR Supercar postcard for each of us.
Then Bill called his cousin to pick us up as planned, and we all collapsed on the uncomfortable furniture in the station’s tiny lobby. We made a pact to never disclose that we hadn’t hiked the whole way — more for the fun of having a pact than any concern what people might think. Heck, we thought we’d done pretty well, and we fully expected to be received as conquering heroes at school on Monday.
And we were! In the lunchroom before classes started, there was a pretty good buzz going.
However, during first period, we were all called into the principal’s office. Instead of patting us on the back and congratulating us, he sternly informed us that he wasn’t happy with our “unauthorized publicity stunt.” He said it reflected badly on the school, and that we may have broken some kind of rule governing the promotion of high school dances and blah, blah, blah. Later, he even spoke to the journalism teacher and squelched the possibility of a story about us in the school paper.
None of this made any sense to me. I remember promising myself that I wouldn’t be such a stick-in-the-mud when I became an adult. I was proud of our walk then, and still am today. We laid it on the line for the class of ’67 and our school. Go Lancers!
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