A murder of crows, a parliament of owls, a charm of hummingbirds, a convocation of eagles… and a flamboyance of flamingos.
That’s the official parlance when it comes to the pink plastic pack that’s found their way to downtown Kilgore and the corner of Martin and Main. While the City of Stars has long been host to a “committee” of vultures on various memorial oil derricks, the newest flock in town is quite a bit more festive, gathering (in growing numbers) around the fresh and festive paint job of Chuck Conrad’s KDOK building near the Texas Broadcast Museum.
The plan was greenish-gray, the veteran radioman says. The execution lands closer to the Caribbean and a little place called Kokomo, somewhere between sea foam and aqua green.
Not that Conrad’s complaining. No, he’s getting a kick out of the warm reception to the new shade for his HQ for 105.3 FM.
“When I got the building it was horrendously terrible looking. I made it look better over the years, but I got really tired of looking at beige brick all the time,” he says. “We painted it… a little daringly, I guess.
Then the birds came.
“I made some comment… “Maybe we should change the radio station to ‘The Oasis.’ All the sudden they started arriving. It was really bizarre. They kept coming. I think there’s 30 of them right now.”
More keep showing up, gifted by secret suppliers via Amazon drivers.
“I would find a package at the door,” then another. And another. “I just wonder if anybody at Amazon is paying attention where all this stuff goes – ‘What’s going on in Kilgore with all these pink flamingoes?’ It’s become a tourist attraction now.”
It puts the building’s exterior revitalization just in time.
It’s been in need of facelift for some time, Conrad said. Once a gas station, it was used a drug rehabilitation and counseling center before he acquired it as an extension of his Texas Broadcast Museum complex, which also now includes the former Kilgore News Herald headquarters as a storage annex further along Main Street.
“I originally bought it because I was tired of looking at it. That was the whole reason. We were trying to make the museum look better, but here was this really ugly building. I bought it and made it look better.”
It still needed TLC, though.
“Shingles were flying off every time we had a big storm. We also found a bunch of wood rot. We had to replace a lot of trim on the thing, which turns it into a much bigger job.”
The plan was a subtle two-tone palette, an industrial shade with white trim.
“It wasn’t at all,” he quips, still unsure how the bright green replaced the original color. “I don’t know how it got screwed up like that, but I like it, so it’s OK. Other people like it, and it makes them smile, so it’s OK.
“I think it looks pretty good now. I’ve grown to like it.
Conrad has no plans to turn the color wheel back toward ‘subtle.’
“I’ve had nothing but positive comments about it. And it’s attention-getting,” and he’s hoping the error sparks a similar color renaissance on surrounding streets: “I really think downtown Kilgore could use a little facelift.”
Granted, he gets that the grassroots group of pink plastic birds isn’t everybody’s aesthetic. Conrad’s going with the flow, though.
“Once the flamingoes started coming, I decided I better get some palm trees. There’s palm trees and bamboo now to make it look a little tropical,” he says. “I think it brightens up the corner a little bit,” adding to the vibe that of another freshly-revitalized building across the street, Selleck Accounting & Finance.
“They put a lot of work into that building,” he praised, and Conrad’s glad to have more active neighbors in the business community. It makes him feel better about the work he’s put into the KDOK building. “There’s a bunch of stuff in there that we use. It’s actually a pretty good building.”
The callsign itself dates decades to prior proprietor Dana Adams, whose Washington, D.C. FCC attorney saved some cash back in the day when, confirming approval of the broadcast license, he sent Adams (“D”) a short telegram: “D OK.”
“KDOK is one of the real heritage radio stations in the country,” Conrad adds. “A lot of people know it in the broadcast industry. A whole bunch of people got their start at KDOK.”
And a whole flamboyance of flamingos, too.
“It’s actually been kinda fun. I’m beginning to run out of spaces to put them. I think it says a lot for Kilgore that there’s people who think this is fun. Maybe we should flock all of downtown Kilgore.”
