Having climbed the access road half way up Bolton Mountain, we take a break from the radio towers for a few moments to contemplate the house where I grew up. Other than the paint job, and a few trees gone AWOL, it looks remarkably unchanged from when I last shut the garage door in July of 1988. Even the TV antenna is still there, on which I recorded many hours of WNPI (18 Norwood, N.Y.; PBS), CBMT (6 Montreal; CBC), and CFTM (10 Montreal; TVA), and just missed witnessing the birth of a new French-language television network [Télévision Quatre Saisons, now just “TQS” on CFJP (35 Montreal)]—but couldn't ever manage to get nearby locals like WVNY (22 Burlington), WETK (33 Burlington), and WCFE (57 Plattsburgh, N.Y.). About the only significant change is the turnaround at the bottom of the driveway, paving over—that asphalt is new, too—a bit more of the front lawn.
Somehow in all this excitement I neglected to take still photos of the three stations (I did get video) which transmit from Bolton: WNCS (104.7 Montpelier), WGLY-FM (91.5 Bolton), and WLKC (103.3 Waterbury). WNCS and I believe WGLY-FM transmit from atop this very mountain, which was built for WNCS when it moved from a puny class-A signal on 96.7 down in Montpelier to a more substantial (albeit directional) class-C2 allotment which allowed WNCS to serve the much more populous (and wealthier) communities of Chittenden County. WLKC, which was the original WGLY (“God Loves You”), operates from an inaccessible tower on the other side of the Winooski River from the main part of Bolton. The current WGLY was built as WCMK (CM for the station's owner, Christian Ministries, Inc.), which then later combined operations with WGLY and sold off the commercial 103.3 Waterbury and 104.3 Hartford (ex-WGLV) licenses to help fund operation and expansion of their network in the non-comm band, which now comprises WGLY-FM, WGLV (91.7 Woodstock), WCMD (88.9 Barre), and WCKJ (90.5 St. Johnsbury).
Copyright 2002, Garrett A. Wollman. All rights reserved. Photograph taken 2002-09-28.