Gone Ape

The day begins at 5:30 a.m. with the recorded mating call of a bull ape. After that, for 14 hours, Florida radio listeners within range of Jacksonville's WAPE-are assaulted by the monotonous beat of rock 'n' roll. A three-minute trickle of news every two hours is the only relief; every station break is loud with the lovesick ape. The continuous uproar is so hypnotic that few who hear it seem anxious--or able--to turn it off. Last week one-year-old WAPE finished its fourth month as the top-rated station in a highly competitive nine-station town.

Many a listener has been moved to visit WAPE's white-marble building just south of Jacksonville on U.S. Highway 17, to see the source of the noise. Most come away convinced that more than one odd critter is loose inside. Station Boss Bill Brennan, 38, a hillbilly-talking Harvard-trained electrical engineer, directs operations in his bathing suit, but he prefers to escape to his plush apartment (separated from the office by a sliding panel operated by a hidden pushbutton). There he can toy with his "bar and his "Play Pretty," a frosted-glass wall behind which colored lights flare and flicker in time with the transmitted music. "On low notes," Brennan explains, "the low part of the panel lights up, and so on. When there are chords, the whole wall goes crazy."

Disk jockeys go about their labors beside the building's dolphin-shaped pool, which tails off into the lobby. (Late-arriving employees often enter by way of the diving board.) Station engineers are given to dressing in an ugly, hairy-ape costume and dashing about with another WAPEster in hot pursuit, brandishing a rifle. On calmer days, a costume ape may stalk out to the highway to thumb a ride. Even WAPE's checks are decorated with the simian image--along with a brief message from the keepers: "We will welcome your saving this check as a souvenir instead of cashing it."

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