I was a small-town girl.

Aside from the ridiculous green beret and homely green jumper, signing me up for Girl Scouts was the best decision Mom made for her fifth-grade daughter. I already knew how to build a campfire, and selling cookies wasn't the highlight of my year -- it was the field trip to the radio station that thrilled my little eleven-year-old heart.

There it was, five thousand watts of crystal-clear power...it was a daytime-only radio station, the voice of our town.

One look into that studio and I was hooked. I begged them to let me take home the unused news copy from the AP wire. I hung it up on my wall like a rock-star poster. I got a tape recorder and practiced doing newscasts, writing exciting stories of neighborhood gossip. I practiced my commercials, imitating TV ads for Miss Clairol.

In the seventh grade, I entered a speech contest and won three of the four categories. The judges were the owners of that radio station.

Within a week of winning the speech contest I had my first on-air job: "Delilah, on the Warpath," school news and sports, taped weekly.

By the time I was in high school I had worked into a full-time part-time position at the radio station. I wrote afternoon newscasts, wrote and produced commercials. I took the empty soda pop bottles back for the refund. Six days a week I was at the station. Six days a week I was happy!

It's been over 25 years, and fourteen stations since Mrs. Davis's Girl Scout troop walked through the doors of that first radio station. Today, my show isn't on a five-thousand watt daytime AM station, but the thrill of the microphone hasn't disappeared. Radio is still my first love.