Long before Craigslist and eBay, there was tradio.
On "tradio," a portmanteau of "trading" and "radio," people buy and sell their gently or not-so-gently used goods by calling into a live radio show. You'd think maybe e-commerce would have made that pointless by now, but tradio is still a thing on radio stations from Kernville, California, to Brady, Texas.
Brady, in the Texas Hill Country, is smack dab in the middle of the state. It feels like everything in town is the "Heart of Texas" something. Heart of Texas Ford, Heart of Texas Country Music Museum, Heart of Texas Healthcare System.
"Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our trading on the radio program here at KNEL," says host Tracy Pitcox, opening Brady's Trading on the Radio show on a recent Friday morning.
He's in his mid-40s, wearing a big belt buckle and rust-colored cowboy boots as he leans into the microphone.
"For the next 30 minutes, if you have something to buy, sell trade, swap or that you might need, we’ll try to help you out this morning on this edition of the program.”
The phones light up immediately. Pitcox answers them himself and pushes a few buttons to get a caller on the air.
“Yes, sir, I’ve got some hay for sale," says a caller. "Five-by-five coastal rounds. Ninety-five dollars a bail, delivered." The hay seller thanks Pitcox and hangs up. Pitcox repeats what he's selling and the caller's phone number and moves on. He knows there are a bunch of people who want to get their turn on the radio.
Pitcox has been working at KNEL for 30 years. He started hanging around the station when he was in high school. He said the station’s had a tradio show for as long as he can remember.
“Seventy-seven, ’78, something like that is when we started the program, but it wasn’t nothing new to us, we stole it from somebody else," he said.
There's no definitive history of tradio, but many believe that an appliance-store owner in Seguin, Texas, about a three-hour drive southeast of Brady, started the first tradio show in the 1950s. Initially, he bought air time to read notices of items for sale that customers had posted on a bulletin board inside his store. Then it just morphed into a radio program.
For some Brady residents tradio is appointment programming. John Campbell, who runs a cleaning and moving service, is a big fan and knows the show's call-in number by heart. He's about 6'2" and as thick as a tree trunk. He said everybody in town calls him Big John. He's wearing a camouflage hat with the nickname emblazoned in big, bright orange letters. Campbell's bought and sold a lot of stuff on tradio for the last 28 years. He prefers it to buying and selling on the internet.
