Craggy Solar – It Certainly Was NOT Paradise

by Ernest Weinberg

Siskiyou County had always been a cultural radio desert. Although I do not remember how it came about, it was in the mid-to-late '70s that I became the first person of JPR's Listeners Guild representing this most northerly area of California. As such, I got to know the small staff of KSOR-FM as it was known at the time. This of course included the radio station's engineer, John Patton.

When the station's Executive Director Ron Kramer proposed to establish a solar powered translator atop of Paradise Craggy in order to beam culture (with a capital C) into this area, I jumped at the idea and offered to help with the installation.

And so it was that on a sunny day I met John at the start of the tortuous, bumpy and curvy dirt road that would eventually take us to the top of Paradise Craggy. He was driving the station's only power wagon, a very, very old and unreliable "beast of burden."

As Public Information Officer for the Klamath National Forest, I decided for personal safety reasons to follow in the tracks of John's vehicle and drive a safe Forest Service vehicle. (Fortunately at this point in time, the Statue of Limitations with regard to non-approved use of government vehicles has most probably expired.)

Once both vehicles had successfully negotiated the primitive track to its merciful destination just below the top of Paradise Craggy, we unloaded the rotary jack hammer and compressor. I helped John lug the hose and hammer for about 150 feet up a near 45 degree slope to the top of the ridge, which, to my dismay had a vertical drop-off for several hundred feet to the west.

Never having felt at ease when encountering precipices, I told John in no uncertain terms that I was downright scared and that I had reached the utter limits of my fortitude. Thankfully, the latter gracefully accepted my inherent limitations. Thereafter, girding himself with a safety belt which he affixed to a steel bar previously driven into a crack in the rocks, John blissfully hammered away for the appropriate number of holes to hold the steel girders to support the solar panel. This certainly was a task that any sensible human being would have shied away from, but as the saying goes, "Somebody has to do the dirty work," and it certainly was wonderful that I was relieved of this burden. THANK YOU JOHN.

Although the Paradise Craggy solar powered translator has long ago been replaced by a more efficient system, I feel honored to have contributed to its initial installation.