Guest host Johnny J steps behind the mic and tells the gripping, unfiltered story of how Big Pharma cost him his vision, how racism shaped his youth, and how he found purpose through faith, resilience, and radio.
KLZ AM and FM, AM 560, FM 100.7, KLZ AM HD Denver. This is KLZ Denver, a Crawford Broadcasting Station.
SPEAKER 07 :
Oh yeah! Yeah! What’s up? What’s up, what’s up? You tuned in to 560 KLZ. KLZ? I’m a uniter. I’m a uniter. I’m your host, Reggie Rocco. Yeah! Yeah! KLZ! Yeah! Yeah! So right about now, we want everybody, I mean everybody, stand up. Stand up. Hold your hands up high. Lock arms. This is about America, baby. Yeah. We bringing people together. I’m a Uniter.
SPEAKER 06 :
to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty.
SPEAKER 14 :
Welcome to the Reggie Rocco show. I’m part of the United team. I’d like to thank the producer Luke there and all the family here at KLZ. My voice may sound kind of familiar. I tend to call almost every week if I have time. And if I’m not calling in, I’m pretty much listening. My name is Johnny Johnson. I’m better known in my DJ life as Johnny J and do a podcast three times a week just on my own network there. But Reggie, it was kind of interesting. I was thinking about, because my wife has gone out of town. She went to another country to… Visit her family. Now, she can’t go into Moscow because just crazy stuff are going on there. And so you don’t want to get caught there and not able to leave, right? Especially if you have an American passport. And sometimes they look down on you if you have another passport. Or if you bring in American dollars, they say, well… Our rubles are more important than your dollars. But anyway, you know, that’s the ego thing on Russia’s side. And we have a little bit of ego thing here. So she left out of town. And I said, you know, since she’s out of town, I might just ask Reggie to co-host for him. But he called me up yesterday and said, hey, I have some business to do. I’m going to be out of town. I’m going to be doing stuff and I can’t make it for my show. Would you like to do it? So I said, sure, why not? Because unbeknownst to you guys, I’ve been doing radio ever since I was six, no, 17 years old. There was a program here in Denver called Career Education Center, and they had just built a radio station, and they hired two guys, Tim Schumacher and Larry Boyd, to teach the class. And so everybody was getting their position. We had this one guy, he dressed very well for a high school student. I mean, suits, tie, he would come dressed like that. And so he was going to do fashion. We had this one girl, she’s blonde-haired, green-eyed, and she did the music report. And she was into, like, really, like, far out Frank Zappa and stuff like that, right? And then we had these two other girls that they were into just, you know, teenage girl stuff. And then we had this other girl that my friend, I met him. He’s been my long-term friend, my friend Peter, who works on our website. Peter, he… He was from a preacher’s family, so he did his thing, but he was in love with this girl named Becky. But he was so shy. He says, Johnny, how do I approach this? It was so funny because I’m thinking like, you know, it’s not very much. He’s there in the class. You see her every day, you know, just maneuver that stuff. Anyway, so then they say, what can you do, Johnny? So I was talking to the teacher, and he says, Johnny, you’re good at interviewing. So I said, okay. Then he says, well, then your job is going to be the host of this show. And it was called Youth Think Magazine. And it was on the radio station, The Peak. It was like they’re now top 40 kind of stuff now. And so they would show, they would play our program, I think, once a month at 630 in the morning. Wow. And that’s the time that they put in the public affair programs and all that kind of stuff. So that was my start. Then I moved from there to a place where they babysit people that have mental disabilities. And I was a DJ there. And it was so funny. So I was in this box with the glass window and people could push the button and request songs. And some of the people, they wanted to come in and look at the records that I had. And the ones that I sort of like feared the most were the quiet ones. Not the ones that were dancing around and outside and talked a lot. But those quiet ones, you never know what they’re doing. And so this girl is a little black chick. She came in and she wanted to look through the records and stuff like that. And I said, oh, man, you know, and at the time I could see a little bit. Now we talk more about that, my visual thing in a minute. And I kept on looking back, looking behind me and, you know, looking for records to put on because back then we had records and stuff like that. And and what got a lot of people up dancing was when I put on like Rolling Stones, you know. And so so I worked at a mental babysitting institution with adults that have mental challenges. Then I got my first job at KCFR Radio and my job there was to. Oh, by the way, if you want to give us a call, our number is 303-477-7000. That’s 303-477-5600. So I went to KCFR and there this gentleman named John Hendelman. He says, OK, we’re going to teach you how to edit as a blind person. So he thought about it and he taught me how to grab the tape. This is back when you had real, real tapes. You grab the tape here and then you you put it in the slot, cut it. Then you grab the other tape here, put in the thing, cut it. All right. And but he sent me out to do news stories. And here I’m visually impaired. You know, I’m coming. I don’t know if I was using my cane at the time because I. You know, I was sort of like in denial. I had bad vision, but I didn’t want anyone else to know it. So I would wear sunglasses or whatever. So I was in blind or legally blind denial. I’ve fallen off a lot of cliffs and a lot of stepped in a lot of like water places where the water came up to your, especially out in Washington Park, they had this little water draining thing. And because I wouldn’t carry a cane because I didn’t want really people to know I was blind, you know, it’s like blind or visually impaired denial. So anyway, so he taught me how to do this. And so I would go out and interview people. And we had a news team in the morning and this lady would would do the news. And then I would do my my intros and outros. And then you have to type in what the intro so she can read it and she’ll know like what you’re going to say. And then you have to type in your outros. And and so so we did that. And. And John, back in those days, they had these big giant dictionaries because I could, my vision was so bad I had to see big print. And sometimes when I was writing up my intro and outro, Johnny would say, Johnny, you didn’t spell this right. So you go back to your dictionary and retype this over and spell this right. And it was no, with my phone I could say, iPhone, spell this. But back in the day, I would carry around this big, and I think I left it at the station, because that’s the only time I really used it. So I would carry around this big dictionary, so if I needed to spell a word, I would flip through the pages, find it and then i would my nose would be against the paper because my vision was so bad find it and then i would type type by uh phil mostly and type up the intros and outros and then put that piece of paper in there and then you know she would she would do her newscast and says now we have a special report from johnny uh johnny johnson Back then it was classical during the day and then they had the local news and NPR and all that kind of stuff. And then, so I did all these interviews. And, you know, at the time, I was like 20, 21. I was so naive. I didn’t know that you were supposed to keep your stuff for an air check. So then KGNU said, hey, we’d like to have you up here. So I go up the boulder. And the guy at the time, his name was Steve. He says, hey, did you have any of those tapes that you used down in Denver? I said, oh, no, I just erased them. You are not supposed to do that. So it happened. So then I just went on to I worked at mostly non-commercial radio stations. I interned at a few commercial stations, but I just didn’t like the vibe at some of these stations. It was KHOW, KOA. I think those are the… I interned at those stations. And I’ll give you a little story about that. So the program director was this lady. And I was the intern there. And… And so I needed to use the studio to do a voiceover. And so I just, I saw her there and I opened the door. I said, you know, how long are you going to be? She said, oh, and then I left and I didn’t think nothing about it. But then I asked, I told my producer, I’ll be in a little bit. I just, I just asked the program director, like when she, when she would be done with her stuff. And he, and he puts his hand on his head and says, oh man, no, no, you shouldn’t have did that. I’m thinking like, What did I do? I just asked her how long she’s going to be. He says, no, you’re supposed to ask me. Then I asked her. And I’m thinking like, what? She’s right there. But I guess it was a pecking order. And if you’re an intern, the pecking order is that you keep your head down, you do your job, and you ask someone else to ask the other person to do whatever. And so I eventually got let go. I didn’t get hired to work at KW, KOA, or any of those kinds of things. And then I went to intern at KDKO Radio with Dr. Daddio. And it was so cool. And some of the interns there had an attitude because, you know, you want to be on the air, but there’s other stuff that goes on at a radio station that makes a radio station run. And so some of these other DJs, they said, well, I want to, you know, I’m going to be the top dog at the station and DJing. And put me on overnight, or even better, put me on doing the mystery, man, which was Dr. Daddy-O’s son. Put me on doing his time, you know. I could do a better job, but, you know, you’re an intern, so you have to pay your dues, right? And I remember… Dr. Dario would have these blues contests and he brought in James Brown. And he was saying like, you know, and I had my, I always had my tape recorders just so I can record whatever they were teaching, whatever, so I can take it home and study, whatever. And it was after James Brown had did his show and we were back at the station and here walks in James Brown. I realize I’m like five, five, eight, five, nine. I didn’t realize James Brown was that short of a guy. Right. And I said, I said, Mr. Brown, could you please do an intro for my radio show? And I turned it on. He did the intro. Boom. And I’ve been using that intro till the very end. And this was like 1997. But James Brown was such a nice guy and just met a lot of people. Michael Daddio was the first one to bring the Jackson 5 to Colorado. It was my sister. My little brother and I, we would go to concerts every weekend. So we saw the Isie brothers. We saw the Jacksons before they became the Michael Jackson and Jackson 5 and all that kind of stuff. We saw Rick James. uh i saw prince in i think was 1979 the tickets were only tickets were only ten dollars and because they didn’t like barry fay and barry fay was the one bringing in these these events they wouldn’t give him a license for liquor but i i’ve never been a drinker uh I hear that we’re going into a commercial. Don’t forget to give us a call at 303-477-5600. This is United Show. Reggie Rocco, Johnny Johnson sitting in as co-host. KLZ 560 AM, your home station.
SPEAKER 09 :
with KLZ Radio and I’ve got Al Smith from Golden Eagle Financial here in the studio with me. Al and I were just talking about how in retirement he helps his clients to stretch the time in their retirement. Al, what do you mean by that? Tell us a little bit more about how time works in retirement.
SPEAKER 19 :
Well, when you think about leaving the working world, you think about, well, it’s still going to take money to live on once I’m retired. And that nest egg, whatever that is, that’s going to permit you to do what you want to do with the time that you have sort of earned for yourself. So the nest egg is not only in dollars, but it’s also in the time that you have to do the things that you believe will be fulfilling in retirement. And when I have a conversation with people, I think it’s equally important to think about how they’re going to be spending their time as it is to accumulate a nest egg.
SPEAKER 09 :
You’ve got to have some pretty good examples of things that people do in retirement. So open the door for us. What sort of things can we expect?
SPEAKER 19 :
Well, sure. I have one gentleman who is very much into aviation. He owns his own small plane. He actually works on that small plane. He’s within a few years of retirement. He’s retirement age. But right now, while he’s working, he takes his small aircraft, flies to locations where he investigates air disasters. I also have some people who spend a lot of time with their grandkids, some of whom live nearby and some are a little farther away. I have some who are incredibly involved with their churches and go on missionary trips and so forth.
SPEAKER 09 :
How do people get in touch with you if they want to stretch that time out in their retirement?
SPEAKER 19 :
They can reach me at 303-744-1128. And if they’re driving when they hear this, you can contact KLZ and they’ll put them in touch with me.
SPEAKER 09 :
Of course, as always, you can find Golden Eagle Financial on klzradio.com slash advertisers and get right in touch with Al if you’re driving and can’t write that number down. Al, thank you so much for joining us today.
SPEAKER 19 :
You’re welcome.
SPEAKER 01 :
Freedom versus force, force versus freedom. Ultimately, these are the questions that we should ask when looking at policy decisions facing our communities, our state, and our country today. Kim Munson here. Join me every weekday morning, 6 to 7 a.m., as we look at important issues and how they affect you and your life. Encore broadcasts air from 10 to 11 p.m. every weeknight. Tune in to the conversation with The Kim Munson Show right here on KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 14 :
Hey, we’re back here at KLZ Radio with the Reggie Rocco Show. The phone number here is 303-477-5600. I send out topics to people that listen to me. We can do political stuff. I’m very familiar with that stuff. I just thought I would lighten it up today and do a variety of things. But we do have someone… A very special, I mean, it’s not James Brown. You know, James Brown is long gone. But this is somebody who’s here and will be around for a long time. Wait, do we have him on the line there? Oh, we have the United himself. Hey, Reggie.
SPEAKER 08 :
Hey, what’s up? How you doing?
SPEAKER 14 :
I’m doing great.
SPEAKER 08 :
Hey, I want to tell you guys a couple things. I appreciate, Johnny, you coming in there. I like hearing your voice, man. You’re doing a good job. You do a lot of things, man, spectacular things to be visually impaired or blind, whatever you go by. That’s just incredible, man. I don’t know how you do it. But you want to understand something because I won’t be on the phone too long. Okay. I had a conversation with a volunteer. from somewhere here in Colorado. I think he lives up north. But he was a volunteer for Texas Slugs. Hmm. And so I guess he’s heading out down there. I guess it’s really, really like super bad. And the other news outlets is not really reporting like they’re supposed to.
SPEAKER 14 :
Yeah, like 27 feet of water. That is bad.
SPEAKER 08 :
And so what I’m going to do is I’m getting ready to meet with him right now. So I’m going to hang up, and I’m going to call you guys back and let you know what’s going on. But I guess it’s supposed to be so bad that they’re getting volunteers from everywhere. So I’ll keep you guys updated. But, yeah, yeah. This is Reggie Rocco. I’m your nighter show. I’ll get back with you.
SPEAKER 14 :
All right.
SPEAKER 08 :
All right. I’m out.
SPEAKER 14 :
Yeah. Yeah. I have a lot of family down in that part of Texas. But I’ve been in that in that part. And they have like I went to visit this boat they had down there. And then they have a statue of this famous singer. And right now the name slips my mind. Yeah. Selena. Selena. Um, cause she was from corporate Christie, uh, Texas. So, um, so yeah, I, I been down in that area and, and when we were kids, we used to always go down there every summer and it was, it was like one of those hot summers where you took a shower and you’re drying yourself off and you’re, and you can never get like really dry, uh, because of how hot. And we would always go down in August for some crazy reason. And my mother, she bought a camper. So at first we were driving like, because my sister had a Volkswagen, so she would follow the camper. And so we did that until I got tired of going down to Texas. Let me tell you that story. Now this is back in the 1970s. And remember, I know the history of the Democrats. So there, a lot of the Democratic politicians and some of the Democratic people were very racist. And in Denver, as you know, when you go to a restaurant as a black and brown person, you don’t really have to think about like, if there’s nobody there that looks like you, don’t go in that place. But when I was in Texas, My cousin said, especially to Vernon, because she had her voice wagon, and we just thought, you know, go, you see a Burger King, go in a Burger King, get a, you know, okay, whatever. You go to a hamburger, but down there they said, if you don’t see anybody that looks like you, meaning your skin color, don’t go in. And I’m thinking like, what? What are you talking about? Because I had only been in the world for like, what, 16, 14 years, whatever. And I said, I said, get out. And I mean, I’ve seen some kind of weird stuff going on at the school and stuff like that. Because like Reggie, I went to like, I think it was like, it was 5% like black people in the school. And I think I was one of the five people. And so it was kind of I saw that, but it just never really hit me until I went down there and they had to give you rules about when you go out. So we had this racist Democrat said, oh, it’s because and they try to put their racism on Republicans. But no Republican has ever owned a slave. Now, today we have a new type of slavery called illegals. And the illegal slavery is where you get these illegals and you can pay them whatever you want to pay them. And if they don’t like it, get out of here because I’m putting myself online, the business owners are saying, to hire you. so this is what i’m paying i could pay someone else 10 times 20 times more but i’m gonna give you a chance and it’s it’s the modern day slavery of today right and it’s mostly uh back in the south it was started by the democrats because they’re the oldest party then we had the uyghurs then we had the republicans who had to fight the democrats to stop this thing called slavery. And it wasn’t the Republicans that wanted to continue slavery. And there were some good Democrats because they had the underground train thing. So there were some Democrats that pushed back on that because you can’t say like all Democrats are racist. So there were some that were within that group. They tried to push back and they tried to help the blacks get from this place to that place during those slavery times. But it was mostly on them. And this is the way I think. So you have these white guy Democrats who We didn’t get mulatto-colored skin people because they would try to tell people, well, the blacks are going to abuse our white women and so we’ll castrate them and do all that kind of stuff. No, it was the white master, who was a Democrat, most likely, The wife would say, no, I’m not filling it tonight. So you’re not going to get none tonight. So he says, well, I just got a wench back there that I own and I could do whatever I want. And so that’s what he did. And then these colleges, black colleges, they weren’t started because the white guys had such a benevolent kind of thing. These Democrat white guys had such a benevolent thing. They couldn’t put their mulatto kids in the same school as their white kids. So they said, let’s develop a school for the mulatto kids and we’ll call it the Negro College. It’s a terrible thing to waste the minds of a bunch of crap. So, oh, we have a caller. 303-477-5600. As I explained some stuff that was going on in the 70s with the racist Democrats down there. We have a caller named Alan on the line. Alan, are you there? Yes, sir. How are you doing? Oh, wait, it’s not the Allen I thought. This is another Allen. It is. It is. Nope, it’s the same guy. Oh, well, you must have stayed up all night.
SPEAKER 05 :
I have. I’ve been doing a lot of work. How’s the day going, sir?
SPEAKER 14 :
Yeah, you sound totally different. I said, this is not the Allen I know.
SPEAKER 05 :
This is the stayed up all night Allen. So you’re talking about the United Negro College Fund. You’re talking about some other stuff. Where are we going?
SPEAKER 14 :
Well, you know, I feel like we’re going directions of people that call in. And, you know, it’s kind of funny. I had my notes. I sent them to myself. Didn’t come in. And then I said, well, you know, I’m going to talk about – I’m just going to wing it because I have enough stories after being around so many years. And so I wanted to – So if you guys were interested in the radio stuff, you can go to our podcast. Our website is intervisionrecords.org, intervisionrecords.org, and you can find out more about my nonprofit and so forth like that. And if you want to come on our podcast and continue the conversations I was having earlier, we can do that. But I wanted to talk about Big Pharma and how they can legally – injure your child, and then they put it in law that you can’t sue them. And before I start off the story, I want to first tell my story, and then I’m going to ask you this question, Alan. Are you ready?
SPEAKER 05 :
Yes, sir.
SPEAKER 14 :
Okay. How much would you charge someone? No, no, no. How much would you pay someone if they said to you, Alan, at midnight, I want you to walk through this dark alley and I’m going to come out with a sharp blade. I’m going to cut you. And you may bleed out. You may not. And I’m going to leave you there pretty much to die, whatever. How much would you pay someone to do that?
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, I wouldn’t pay anybody anything, but I will tell you this. The packaging and marketing around exactly what you’re trying to say is this. The pharmaceutical companies often, here in America especially, will tell you what you need, and they’ll tell you to ask your doctor about it. They’ll tell you that certainly there might be some side effects. Some of those side effects may indeed include death. The unfortunate thing with all of these disclaimers, all these commercials that go out every single day during whatever event, is that the pharmaceutical companies get richer. And they don’t have to be accountable. But that changed when Maha entered the scene. So we’ll have to see what happens.
SPEAKER 14 :
Yeah. Now let me finish the story. But you will pay a doctor… who says he’ll wear a white jacket and he’ll say, I’m going to cut on you, but I’ll give you something for the pain. And if you should start to bleed out, I’ll get people to volunteer, people that you don’t even know, I’ll get them to volunteer to give you blood. And we say, well, where can I sign up? And we’ll have insurance companies to say, oh, I want to let this guy practice on me. I mean, he’s caught up quite a few people. And do you know, I found that there was a black guy in this day in history I was finding. There was a black guy in 18… What’s that thing? 1893 that did the first open heart surgery. I said, get out of here. I knew it was a black guy that invented like the blood transfusions in the, I think the late, the early thirties. But before then they probably lost a few people because you’re cutting, you’re splitting this person open and you know, there’s going to be some blood loss and stuff like that. And you’re doing a open heart and it’s like, you know, little stuff in history like that. But let me tell you this other story. So when we went to the hospital, when I was six years old, this is how my blindness all started. I was perfectly 20-20 vision and all that kind of stuff. And when I would go to school, I would think like, man, life is going to be a piece of cake, man. You know, if I saw a picture, I could draw a picture. And my favorite clown on TV was this clown, blinking clown. And I would draw him perfectly. And I was teaching myself how to write. And life was just easy with this 20-20 vision. And then one night, I was playing around with my eyes, and I went to sleep, and next thing I know, I woke up in a hospital. So then they did a spinal tap, and they gave me these pills, phenobarbital, and they said, oh, take these, and this will stop the seizure from ever happening again. But obviously, they didn’t check to see what side effects might happen through the spinal tap. Twelve days later, I woke up, and my mother’s getting dressed, And she said, we’re going back to the hospital. I didn’t know. I just went in, got my chairs and whatever. But I didn’t know that the medicine had burnt me from the inside out. I was kind of like bleeding, so there was blood on the bed and stuff like that. But I didn’t feel any pain. And all the curtains were closed in the house, and I was watching TV, and I didn’t notice that the TV looked a little bit further away than what it usually looks. And then when we went outside, the light hit me, and she says, what’s wrong, Johnny? Because she saw me walking around the house like nothing. But it was like it had caused my corner inside my… Eyelids, the mucous membrane is scraped and my eyelids were scraping against my corneal and was scraping off step by step the surface of my corneal. And so, of course, we sued. And when we went to court, they said, well, they signed the papers.
SPEAKER 05 :
Right.
SPEAKER 14 :
So this is like back in the 60s when you could get away with it. You signed the papers. So we went to another hospital, and I spent five months being tortured because when your eyes are extremely dry, they have to take spoons, they have to hold you down, and they have to go inside your eyelids with a spoon to unstick your eyeballs from your… Eyelids.
SPEAKER 05 :
Sounds like a lot of fun. Yeah.
SPEAKER 14 :
And so that’s why I have the white coat syndrome. Now, when I go to the doctor, my blood pressure shoots up. But when I’m not there, it’s like 20 over 24 over 78. But as soon as I get there and they say, wow, your blood pressure is right. They want to give me pills. And I said, no, this only happens when I see. And I said, no. Oh, we’re going for another commercial. This is KLZ 560 on AM Dow. Reggie Rocco show with Johnny J sitting in for him.
SPEAKER 04 :
AM 560 KLZ, your home station.
SPEAKER 10 :
I’m Jonathan McKean. You’re listening to Plugged In on KLZ AM 560.
SPEAKER 11 :
The world’s changing, Clark. And the questions are getting louder.
SPEAKER 10 :
Superman returns to the big screen this weekend in the new PG-13 movie named, you guessed it, Superman. And once again, Metropolis needs its favorite superhero. But with archenemy Lex Luthor trying to smear his good name, and with Supes losing his first fight ever, is it possible that the Man of Steel is losing his luster? Superman can get silly at times, but its central character acts like Superman should. He stands for truth, justice, and most importantly, hope. Unfortunately, not everything in the film is quite so super. Most superhero movies are violent, but some scenes here are particularly wince-worthy. Language is harsher than you’d expect, too, and that forces this iteration of Superman to land with a 3 out of 5 for family friendliness. Read the full review at PluggedIn.com slash radio. I’m Jonathan McKee for Focus on the Family’s PluggedIn Movie Review.
SPEAKER 04 :
We have such incredibly loyal listeners on KLZ. You faithfully patronize our advertising partners keeping us on the air. They are grateful and so are we. Thank you for listening. Thank you for calling and visiting our advertisers. Thank you for telling them you heard them on KLZ. We appreciate you.
SPEAKER 14 :
We’re back here on the Reggie Rocco show. I’m in the Uniter show. This is Johnny J. sitting in for Reggie Rocco. You usually hear me as a caller calling into the show. But he offered the show to me. And like I said, my wife is out of town. And while the. The cat’s away, the mouse will play. So here I am. So I was just giving the story, we’re talking about Big Pharma, and I was leading up to, I’m telling about how my experience with the medical part of this stuff and how when you sign the paper, they can practically, you know, damage your baby, your child or whatever, because you signed the paper. And in the big case of a big pharma, you have no recourse. And we have Ellen on the line with us. And let me get through some of these more, some more of these little stories while I spent five months in the hospital. So they had to give me steroids to heal my skin. And of course, like every so often, they have to put this ointment in my eye. And oh, and then I had a, it was so fun. In grade school, it was a girl that I liked in grade school and I didn’t know that she had eczema and she had it so bad that sometimes they had to take her to the hospital to get her skin right. And I used to like her and I used to, you know, in the first grade and stuff like that. And I would offer her my pencil and stuff like that. And so she was in the hospital. And so one day I was talking to her and I was totally blind at this point because my vision had got lost. My vision, where I could only see like white. I could see like colors and stuff like that, but it was only white colors because my cornea was so scarred up. And the nurse came in to put an ointment and uh so she was there the girl that i liked and she said this word that is just stuck in my mind she said uh and i’m thinking like what is she seeing that i don’t know that she’s seeing right and i guess you know with your eye it looks like one of those horror movies like those zombie movies i guess when the eyes are all white And so, man, that really just crushed me because here’s a girl I really liked and it was something about me that, and then that’s when I started wearing sunglasses because I realized that it’s not to make me feel comfortable, it’s to make you feel comfortable. right and so i learned i’m learning all these different lessons at the age of six years old and and and i didn’t understand that this was devastating my parents because my parents you know my mother’s sixth grade education my dad working for lorry air force he’s a truck driver he got this great job because my mother helped him fill out the application to and helped him study for the test to get this government job. He was in the military, and so he went from being a janitor in Colorado Springs to driving for Laurier Air Force and making good money, and on one income was able to support the whole family. That was back in the day when one income could support the whole family. And here his youngest child at the time, they trusted the doctors and the doctors and my mother would always say, if they mess you up, they could fix you up. And I believed that for a long time until Well, we met this guy named, it was Dr. Fountain. And he said, hey, I think I can help you get some of your vision back. So what it is, is like they have to grab skin from the inside of your mouth, then implant that in your eyelids. So he said, we’re going to try one of your eyes first. And so if it works, then we’ll go for the other eye. dr funton i don’t these names i is phenobarbital was the medication that led me down this journey and dr funton he gave me enough or this this operation it gave me 20 over over 30 um no i’m sorry it gave me 20 over 200 over 20 or 20 over 200 something like that but it was it was not that good of a vision but it was interesting um and so he did the operation and it’s like i don’t know if you ever been put under before I have. Yeah. Well, okay. So ladies and gentlemen, for you that have not, so you’re sort of like just hanging out there and it’s kind of cold. You put blankets around to make you warm. And then next thing you know, you’re out. But when you’re coming back, when the anesthesia is letting you back into the world, sometimes you can feel things. And you can see things, but you can’t move because your body is in a paralyzed state. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to cut on you because you’d be moving around, swimming around. I don’t know if you ever had a knife coming, seen a knife coming at you. even at the dentist office if you see that grill coming at you you know you get kind of nervous you’re gonna you’re gonna do what with me so i’m up here and and i can see him the white mask but it’s all like looking like in black and white right and but i could i could see him uh and um he’s finished up the operation he’s he’s now he’s got these needles and he’s sewing up my eyelids in out in and I could sort of feel it but I couldn’t feel it but I couldn’t say nothing about it And I’ve had many operations where I could feel it, but I couldn’t say nothing about it because I was in this paralyzed state of surgery. So he did this operation. Fantastic guy. And then so the promise was that the next summer they would come back and do the same thing. But when you got good insurance and they can get paid for it, Well, yes, we know how to fix it. We know how to partially fix it. It’ll never be perfect. But since we have you here, let’s experiment. So every summer, I would go back and the doctor said, well, we’re going to try this. We’re going to try this. We’re going to try this. And I kept asking, and my mother said, shh, there’s no doctors. And I thought my mother, by this time, would know that something’s going on here but because it was happening to me and somehow I had a better awareness of stuff I told my mother I said I want to know why aren’t they doing what they did to my left eye to my right eye you know I just want to know you know right and so It got serious when this one guy, he said, and I got this new procedure, it’s a corneal transplant. And it could give you like great vision and all that stuff. But I learned later from the doctor now that I’ve known for years, Dr. Damiano, that this guy was teaching himself how to do corneal transplants. So in the process of teaching yourself, and my Dr. Damiani always said, you never want to be the first 100. So the corneal transplants, they would cut out the iris, which is the part of your eye that’s brown, blue, green, whatever. But the only thing you really needed to do was cut out the cornea, which is the clear part in the middle of your eye. But he was teaching himself. So he took out the whole iris, transplanted somebody else’s whole iris in there. So if it rejects, you have to get rid of the whole eye. Absolutely. You know, that was part of the part that you didn’t tell. And so they had these people there. And, of course, we were the only black family there. So my mother would get mad at them because they would be staring at them. She would say, what are you staring at? You know, because I guess in those days they didn’t know, in Colorado, they didn’t know many black people that had good insurances that could get the best for their kids. so that made my mother angry because she grew up in the south and weird stuff went on in the south which we probably won’t have enough time in this show that because the story she told me about the south and these democrats and these people that hire a maid to come over to clean their house and and and the the wife leaves the house to go shopping and daddy’s there and he said well i got this light this is a nice uh negros here and uh i know we hired her to clean out but maybe i can get some some something But she told us a lot of story. But anyway, that’s that story. And illegals are going through that now. And the Democrats want to keep that going. But anyway, that’s another story. But anyway, so this guy, he did it. And then we had to get these $20 bottle that the insurance didn’t pay for, 20 bottles of poor liquid in my eyes to keep it moist, right? So my mother had to get these $20, $20, $20, $20, $20. And back in that day, the minimum wage was $2.10, but my dad was making more than that. So then, eventually, my eye blew up. I mean, if you want to see, on Star Trek, you’ve seen these guys with those big eyes. my eye blew up and then this water your eyes were large they were no the one eye the one eye that they were experimenting on it blew up water shot out of the eye i went to the doctor thinking i you know i was covering up because i don’t want my eye just to fall out of my head because you know you know it was kind of scary to me so come back oh and then he used this word ah well we’re probably gonna have to enucleate your eye. And to me, I didn’t know about the word enucleate. I said, oh, okay, let’s go enucleate the eye, right? I didn’t know that he meant, huh?
SPEAKER 05 :
Remove. Yes. Why didn’t they just say remove? Yeah. Enucleate is such a scary word.
SPEAKER 14 :
Yes. And so, you know, I’m going underneath the blade and then he takes it and then he comes back to check and then he looks in there and says, oh, fantastic. Good job. I said, I bet you did. You know, later I’m thinking. And then I got on these pain pills because I had a headache on the side of my head. I’ve never had a headache like this before. And I was starting to get addicted to these pain pills. And I was like 11, I think 12 years old at this time. And my dad, he’d already died a few months before or whatever. Or maybe he was still alive. That time is kind of blurry. So I was on these pain pills. And my favorite brother, I didn’t know that I was becoming addicted to these pain pills. And my favorite brother warned, he says, Johnny, is something wrong with you? And then it hit me. I said, if my brother is asking me if something’s wrong with me, something is wrong with me. And I said, these pills, because I’m popping them like they’re candy, because I had this pain. And I said, okay, I’m going to tough it out. I’m 11, 12 years old. I’m going to tough this out, and I’m going to stop taking those pills. And I’m so glad that my brother, he noticed something was going on. And, you know, who knows, maybe people that are strung out, they twist or whatever. But because he had been out there and he was our only brother that ever went to jail and did crazy stuff out of my eight brothers because he just wanted to live the wildlife. He knew what a strung out person looked like. And he recognized that my little brother at the age of 11, 12, he’s looking like some of those people I see in the streets that are strung out on drugs. And I got the best drugs from these doctors who are practicing. And so that’s when I said, I’m going to step back from all doctors. And the only thing I’m interested in now is getting my eye fixed up to get a fake eye and all that kind of stuff. And then I met this other doctor that he convinced me. He says, Johnny, whatever we do, Dr. Damiani says, you will not lose your eye. And so I went on a journey with him and had 13 corneal transplants, which gave me 20 over 30 vision. And he’s about the only doctor I trust. I trust him up to a point because he even gave me some medication to stop rejection that made me… see stuff that weren’t there. And I once looked out the peephole in my parents’ house and I saw a SWAT team pointing rifles at the house. They weren’t there. And I was sitting at a bus stop and I was talking and seeing this big white bunny rabbit that wasn’t there. I had to get off the stove. Hey, you’re listening to the Resi Rocko Show. This is John and Jay. We’ll be right back after these important messages. This is AM560 KLZ, your home station.
SPEAKER 01 :
We live on the shoulders of giants, ordinary American men and women who put themselves in harm’s way so that you and I can live in freedom and sleep at night. Kim Munson with America’s Veterans Stories here. It is my honor to bring their stories to you each Sunday. These interviews help you learn our history from those who lived it. These stories remind us why we stand when we hear the Star Spangled Banner. That’s America’s Veterans Stories Sunday, 3 to 4 p.m. and 10 to 11 p.m. right here on KLZ 560 and KLZ 100.7 FM.
SPEAKER 17 :
Your home, the safety zone, a place where you rest, invest, gather, grow, watch, and work. On KLZ, we seek to edify you at home with educational and entertaining programming. We handpick advertising partners to protect and improve your home. We serve as a second home where you can join a community of like-minded individuals. We are Crawford Media Group, and you’re listening to KLZ 560, your home station.
SPEAKER 14 :
Welcome back to the Reggie Rocco Show. Johnny J sitting in hosting. And, you know, Reggie, he talks about his mom. And, you know, all of us, we have we have we should have moms, you know. And I want to dedicate this to my mom, Maddie Johnson, because she was my biggest fan. She watched all my TV shows and, you know, she gave me like advice and stuff like that. And she gave me some some very good advice. And it’s really weird. Some people would say like, oh, you were cruel to Johnny because you made him do stuff. And ladies and gentlemen, if you have a disabled child, do not do everything for that child. Get him out there and let him do some stuff on his own because he already has a disability and you can cripple him or her even more if you do everything because you’re not going to live forever. And even if you do live for a long time, like I have one friend, he’s 52, and his mother, he’s married and stuff like that, but his mother pretty much takes care of him and he’s on his… lung machine that’s keeping him alive, and if they cut out that machine, he would be gone.
SPEAKER 05 :
If you can foster accountability in any relationship, it’s always good. And so therefore, I think what Johnny is trying to say is, if you’ve got parents that are overprotective, it can foster a mentality that results in sheltering the child. So, you know, just kind of be aware of that as a As a parent of a disabled child, let them explore. Let them find out for themselves how things work.
SPEAKER 14 :
Now, she did show to me some stuff that, you know, I didn’t know the world was as weird as it was. And one time this guy invited me to church, and he was trying to integrate his church. And I understood what we were trying to do, but my mother said, this is a 23-year-old guy with a 17-year-old guy. Johnny, look out. But he wasn’t that way. And we knew what we were trying to do. I had this white girl that was blind, and she wanted me to come to church, but I was the only black person who went. And I would have couples sitting in church, and this is in Lakewood, and they would pull their wives closer to them as if this wild African was going to jump on their wife. So this brother said, we need to integrate this church, and will you help me do this? So I understood what he was doing, and it was just kind of weird seeing that kind of reaction because I had never, raped anybody or committed any crimes, but I guess the news media at the time and the Democrat propaganda had it going on. So people had stories about me that I didn’t even know that I even did based on the color of my skin. And now we’re getting away from that because when Martin Luther King said, well, he wants his kids to be judged on the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Now the Democrats, they’re trying to erase that part of the history.
SPEAKER 05 :
Here’s something that’s interesting, Johnny. I’m glad that you brought all this up because this ties directly to the blind and low vision community. The blind and low vision community have a 70 to 90% unemployment rate in our demographic. And so it’s crippling, it’s crushing. It never leaves while everybody else is enjoying freedom of finances. We are stuck at the bottom on a fixed income. That means we’re always broke. So, you know, I started looking into this. What is the deal? Why can we put people on the moon? Why can we send probes to Mars and all this stuff? And we can’t get 3 million of our brothers and sisters in the United States employed. No real easy answer, but I did start a… A COUPLE OF THINGS THAT MIGHT BE A SOLUTION, AND THESE ARE DISTRIBUTED ACCOUNTABILITY NETWORKS. THESE WOULD BE STARTED AT THE LOCAL LEVEL. ALL THIS STUFF IS STILL CONCEPTUAL, BUT STARTED TO REALIZE, MAN, IF WE DON’T DO SOMETHING we will indeed end up on a fixed income for everybody on the planet.
SPEAKER 14 :
And with five minutes to go, you can go on our podcast. Just go to innervisionrecords.org. That’s right. Innervisionrecords.org. We work with physically challenged musical artists, teaching them the business of music. We also do podcasting classes, and we do a three-day-a-week podcast from 4.30 to 5 o’clock Eastern. And you can go up there and shoot us an email. Intervision Records. And that’s like the Stevie Wonder album. Intervision Records, plural, dot org. And you can find out more about this with a little less than four minutes to go. And I mentioned, like, all this stuff because it’s a story that probably hasn’t been told. And you can, you know, you probably can’t give us a call, but you’re here to be played tomorrow night at 9 o’clock on KLZ Radio and on the FM station as well. And I really want to thank Reggie Roscoe for giving me this time. And it’s like, I was thinking about this, but in the cosmos… You know how in the cosmos it would bring things together? And he said, he called me the day before, and I was thinking about asking him, but I really wasn’t. I was busy doing other stuff. And he called me and he said, hey, let’s do this thing.
SPEAKER 05 :
Kronos time versus Kairos time. God’s timing versus man’s timing. Yeah.
SPEAKER 14 :
And we want to pray for the people in Texas. But like I said, there’s a lot of crazy stuff that goes on back in the 70s and maybe not so much today as it used to. But for the Democrats, it’s the blame that it was an all-white community. And you don’t know what’s in the hearts of these people and whether they voted or not. And I know the children didn’t vote. And for the Democrats to be so evil to say, oh, they deserved it or these – it’s now – It’s a format where people can just say the most stupidest things, racist things, and then they point the finger at you with three fingers pointing back at them. And it’s just all… And I know the people probably listening to this show, they know that… These Democrats are liars. They’re like the John Tintin. They come to steal, kill, and destroy, and they lie. And their father is the enemy. And this is not a physical thing. This is a spiritual thing. Ephesians chapter 6 says, It talks about we don’t wrestle against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities. So I don’t look at a color of somebody’s skin because I can’t see anybody’s skin. I want to know you, and from talking to you, I get an insight into you, and then I get a gut feeling as well. And fortunately, I haven’t been around enough people to say, man, that’s pure evil. Now, I’ve been around a lot of hustlers because I was a club DJ once, We got two minutes to go. A lot of prostitutes, I mean, in the music business, as she would tell you, and I was a club DJ, and I met all kinds of people that I said, man, I used to watch people like you on these crime stories, but you really exist. I met ladies that were prostitutes that came from a good family, but they wanted to go on the wild side and say, well, you know. And I said, wow, my parents really sheltered us. Because we knew nothing about this. And the drug scene and all that stuff. And my one brother who went out there and wanted to get into the criminal lifestyle, he was the watch out guy. So he never really shot anybody. But he was walking with a friend and got a friend. A friend got shot right beside him. And that sort of woke him up a little bit. But he lived that lifestyle for a long time. But then he came out of it. So we had one minute to go.
SPEAKER 05 :
And it’s going to be great.
SPEAKER 14 :
All right. And I want to let you guys know, innovationrecords.org is our website. I want to thank Reggie Rocco, thank all the staff here, Luke, Big Luke, holding the fart down as we were doing this show. And, hey, hope to hear from you guys again. Go to our website. And do we want to count down the show now? Okay. Three, two, one. We’re out of here.
SPEAKER 07 :
All right, y’all. It’s that time. We out of here. But you’ve been listening to KLC 560 AM. I’m a united Reggie Rocko. Yeah, it’s fun. We will tackle the issues. We will unite the country every week, every Friday morning from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. It’s about love, y’all.
SPEAKER 12 :
Have a wonderful morning and a great day.
SPEAKER 13 :
The views and opinions expressed on KLZ 560 are those of the speaker, commentators, hosts, their guests, and callers. They are not necessarily the views and opinions of Crawford Broadcasting or KLZ management, employees, associates, or advertisers. KLZ 560 is a Crawford Broadcasting God and country station.
SPEAKER 18 :
Coming up, Jay Sekulow live on KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 15 :
John Rusher on the next Rush to Reason. It’s Friday. Andy Pate is my co-host. And Andy has two movie reviews this week. Heads of State and Superman. And then movie rental hour will be Best Bad Guys. That’s the next Rush to Reason. Weekdays from 3 to 7 p.m. Brought to you by one of our great sponsors, Cup Creek Eating and Air Conditioning. Find them at klzradio.com or download our free app, KLZ Radio.
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They say the best things in life are free. So, hey, why are we paying so much for our basic information and entertainment needs? The average cable TV bill has more than doubled in the last 10 years. The price of movie tickets keeps going up. So exactly what is free today anyway? Well, you’re listening to it. Local radio. Support the advertisers that support this radio station. And keep listening. We won’t send you a bill. There are still some things you just shouldn’t have to pay for.
SPEAKER 16 :
I’m John Walsh. I’m Ed Smart. When a child is abducted, time is critical. That’s why Amber Alert is so important. The public is notified when a child is abducted. It’s a partnership between broadcasters, law enforcement, transportation, and you. Thanks for making Amber Alert happen.
Johnny J vs. The Machine: Racism, Radio, and Resilience
Guest host Johnny J steps behind the mic and tells the gripping, unfiltered story of how Big Pharma cost him his vision, how racism shaped his youth, and how he found purpose through faith, resilience, and radio.
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