‘If you’re happy with your work, you’ve got the world by the tail’

Al Diederich left his native Nebraska in 1959 for Oceanside and a job with the now-defunct KUDE radio, where he stayed 19 years and earned the nickname “The Voice of North County.” Now the manager of the Fallbrook Chamber of Commerce, Diederich, 62, sits in his cluttered office under a sign that says, “Welcome to the House of Perpetual Commotion.” Papers spill from the desk as Diederich gestures, cigarette in hand, offering his guests a crocheted plate of Oreo cookies. If that doesn’t whet their appetites, visitors are encouraged to help themselves to a basket of mail-order toys, including stick-on mustaches, plastic rings and miniature spaceships. Diederich was interviewed in his office by Times staff writer Leslie Wolf and photographed by Barbara Martin.

At the age of 52, I chucked radio for an unknown future. Working in radio was worse than being a cop. Cops work regular eight-hour shifts, but I was on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. News by its nature is most often tragic and sad, and, if you’re doing your job well, often controversial. Over the years there were murders, suicides, bank robberies, hostage-takings and gigantic anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, including one with 10,000 demonstrators parading down Hill Street in Oceanside. It was capped with a speech by Angela Davis, who, shouting from the Beach Stadium public address system, screamed vile obscenities almost every 12th word. Even with all the sadness and controversy, much of it was damned exciting and even funny. But I finally burned out.

After leaving radio, I took a temporary position coordinating Paul Eckert’s successful campaign for county supervisor. Over the next 18 months, I did a lot of loafing and worked on a still-incomplete novel about a Green Beret battle during the Vietnam War. I started writing it in 1967, but then, with public sentiment being so opposed to the war, I thought, if I write it, nobody will buy it. So I stuck it in a drawer, but did keep doing research.

I wasn’t a Green Beret, and I wasn’t in Vietnam either. But there was a man in Oceanside who had a brother who was on that particular Green Beret team, and he kept calling me and asking if I had heard anything new about the fate of his brother. The camp was ultimately overrun, and his brother did survive. He was not among those that got evacuated, however, but was finally rescued three days later after some other encounters with Vietnamese, which are a part of the story.

There are some amazing facts woven into the story, but it’s a book of fiction because I don’t know enough about the 10 men on that Green Beret team. In the book, they’re 10 different kinds of characters, and, naturally, I wove a little sex in it. I want to finish it someday. . . . I have to re-motivate myself, I guess.

I finally decided I needed to get back to work, and in 1981 I was hired by the Fallbrook Chamber. I was hired to work from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., but I quickly discovered that to do the job properly took at least an eight-hour day. So I’ve worked the extra hours without the pay. Hell, I’ve never just worked for money. If you’re happy with your work, you’ve got the world by the tail.

There’s a picture on the wall of me with the president of ABC television news. That was taken the year I won my first Golden Mike at the Southern California Radio and Television Assn., at a big dinner in L. A. He was the guest speaker that night, and his speech was not a speech, but a 25-minute film on ABC television news. Here was a room full of some 250 news people, and everybody’s sitting there bored to death. . . . They wanted to get back to the bar!

So it finally ended, and they started handing out these awards, and you’d have thought it was Oscar night in Hollywood. These news people were going up to get their awards and thanking this person and that person and the other person. So when they called my name, I went up to the microphone and said:

“I only have two things that I’d like to say this evening. One of them is that, unlike ABC television news and its hundreds of news employees all over the world, I come from a little radio station in Oceanside, and we cover that market in a way ABC couldn’t even hope to touch. And the second thing I have to say is that I only said the first thing because I’m probably the only guy here tonight with enough guts to tell you what he really thinks.”

It brought the house down! Then I went over to shake hands with this man, and he said to me: “You’re quite a talker, aren’t you? Well, if you ever get into New York, why don’t you come in and see me.” And I figured to myself, now here’s a guy who’d like to hire ya so he could fire ya!