The Atlanta Constitution from Atlanta, Georgia • 82

COBB EXTRA, MARCH 24, 1983 Skinny Bobby still rocks 'n' rolls on radio Life is mellower for bad boy of '60s, 70s garitaville' and bang, it's fantasy time! That's where the job is great." Most listeners are familiar with another product of Harper's imagination, his "little old lady," La Verne. La-Verne has followed him from station to station, and practically has a life of her own. "She has taken on the proportions of realness, especially out here in Cobb County at the 'Never Can Say Goodbye' Retirement Community," he said. "In my mind she looks a lot like Granny on the Beverly Hillbillies show she's got blue hair and she wears high-topped sneakers." Though listeners love Harper's madness, its present form is greatly subdued. Gone are Officer Bruce, Rex the Wonder Dog and the political and blue humor of his earlier days in broadcasting.

Harper developed a reputation as a bad boy of radio in the mid-'60s and 70s, when he was fired from hand-fuls of radio stations in Atlanta and elsewhere, but he said those days are over. "I think I've mellowed a lot. I don't have a driving passion to make the world right any more." "If people are inviting me into their homes at 6 o'clock in the morning, there's a real responsibility that goes along with that. I don't have the right to stick my nose in their breakfast and tell a joke that they're going to have trouble explaining to their kids." But Harper couldn't resist making mischief with the station's plans to change its call letters from WLTA to WRMM in May. 'Warm' Radio, playing soft and warm rock and roll," he said.

"It sounds like I'll be the 'early When he's not working, Harper loves to spend time with 13-year-old Krissy, his daughter from a second failed marriage. "She's my anchor," he said. By Ellie Sussman Still Writer After more than 20 years in the barrel of Top 40 and FM radio, Atlanta radio personality Skinny Bobby Harper is mellowing smoothly, distilling into a vintage rock and roll deejay. Sitting in front of a cozy fire in his Cobb County condominium on a recent cold and rainy afternoon, Harper talked about his career. "The thing about radio is, your personality comes out, you can never camouflage it," he said.

"You're almost sitting there naked. I would like to think that most people who listen to me like my personality." Harper, an Atlanta radio institution, is on the air from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. on WLTA-FM radio, a station that plays soft rock. Dressed in jeans and deck shoes, he is slender and graying, and his neatly trimmed hair belies his former reputation as the madman of radio rock.

But he is a master talespinner, a mental creator of scenes. "Radio is such an imaginary thing," he said. "If you use that imagination right, you've really done the job." To illustrate his point, Harper recalled a "bit" he had done on another rainy day, wheq he recreated for listeners the sounds and impressions of a hot summer day on the beach at Destin, Fla. "I had recorded the sea, and the sounds of people walking along the beach, even the voices of a family admiring the 'crab condo complex' I had built in the sand," he said. It was easy for a listener to put himself in Harper's place, baking on the hot sand with a hat over his face, sipping on a cold beer and munching fried shrimp.

"After a while you can hear the sea calling your name and that's when I cue in Jimmy Buffett's 'Mar- asij-aioSSK itgi i im niKmiinnin-mn Skinny Bobby Harper is relaxed at home. (Photo G.A. Clark) Lifelong carving hobby gets Ransom national exposure By Debbie Nawby SUN Writer Ron Ransom is known in Marietta for his witty and wise mice, and another of his talents will be displayed this month when photographs of his colorful cows and whirligigs appear in a nationally circulated magazine. Samples of Ransom's wood carvings were photographed in the west Cobb home of Bettye and John Wagner, which will be included in a special edition of "Better Homes and Gardens," called "Remodeling Ideas, Country Home Summer 1983." The magazine is scheduled to be on the stands later this month, Ransom said. Mrs.

Wagner is a partner in The Antique Store in Marietta. Ransom, who has carved seriously for about five years, cut. 4 f. the wooden figures at Mrs. Wagner's request.

"She would bring me something she had clipped out of a magazine," Ransom said. Magazine photographs taken in the Wagner home include a cow, a heart clothes hangar and whirligigs children's toys like a sailor and a preacher. carved by Ransom. The director of Marietta's Parks and Recreation Department, Ransom, 51, already has gained a following for his thumbprint mice. The tiny ink creatures offer their wisdom and wit in a collection of drawings Ransom has compiled called "Thumbs thumb favorite sayings of mine." Carving is another outlet, a pastime Ransom started as a youngster.

"My grandfather was a carver of sorts, and my brother gave me a knife," Ransom said. "He told me not to come crying to him when I cut myself. I did cut myself, but I didn't cry not much anyway. "Carving is very relaxing to me. If I don't have something to carve or to draw, I go to sleep." Ransom carves his creations from sugar pine and white pine and paints them with acrylics.

His shorebirds including willets, yellow legs, curlews and sandpipers are perched atop driftwood, which Ransom-collected at Lake Lanier. He also carves roosters, horse weather vanes and angels. He disregards advice that a carver should cut only away from himself. "You shouldn't peel a potato if you don't know what you're doing," Ransom said. Begin- Jt Carving is relaxing, Ransom says.

If he's not carving or drawing, he usually goes to sleep. (Photos G.A. Clark time by drawing the thumbprints. The mouse eventually evolved, and Ransom had the thumbprint creature copyrighted nearly a year ago. In coming months, Ransom will have more time to practice his doodling.

He is getting carvings ready now to display at local craft shows this spring, including one at Merchants Walk next month. nlng carvers should expect to get some nicks, he said. Carving actually preceded the thumbprints as a serious art. A lifelong doodler, Ransom began experimenting with the thumbprints in the 60s when he worked in recreation for the City of Atlanta. In later years when he displayed his carvings at craft fairs, he passed the Ransom's shorebirds will appear in national publication..