Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished - Revised & Expanded Edition (73 page)

Huffman borders Bridgton, a real Maine town and the setting for
The Mist
and a key location in
The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah
. Bridgton is virtually on Long Lake, on which the Kings had a home in the 1970s. In another King link the Bouchards adopted Frances Tho with the assistance of a placement agency in Boulder, Colorado. The Kings lived in Boulder in the summer and fall of 1974 and King largely wrote
The Shining
there. 

The Town Of Huffman 

Huffman is a small town at the far end of the Lakes district in Western Maine. Incorporated in 1840, its main industry in 1976 was a furniture factory. In January 1976 an apparent serial killer of young children began to stalk the town. 

The Town Green is bordered by Main, Trafford, Shire, River, Chestnut and Maple Streets and was donated to the town by the Hosea Family in 1880. Two stone posts 6 foot high in a brick wall frame the entrance. Brass plates are set in each post, one reading “Huffman Town Green,” the other acknowledging the donation. Playground equipment is on the Main Street side of the Green. The War Memorial is on it, there is a small band shell, and a small pond in the middle, where Ouelette found Frances Tho’s body. 

Main Street is also Route 17, which runs parallel to the GS&WM freight tracks (now disused and presumably running in an easterly direction to Castle Rock and further, to the location many years before of the dead boy sought by Gordie Lachance and his friends in
The Body
). 

While Huffman is close to Castle Rock, Fryeburg is the town over Huffman’s town line in one direction and Bridgton neighbors it on another. As Harlow is the town neighboring Castle Rock it must also be close to Huffman, although it is not mentioned. Drivers stop in Huffman on their way to the nearby ski fields, such as Black Mountain, Pleasant Mountain and Sunday River.  

Among other places King mentions is Hunington Road (location of the Chasswick place, before it the Sirois place and also known as “Windy Acres”); Back Stage Road; Carbine Street (so named for the factory that had stood there in post-Civil War times); the Old Farm on Devonshire Road; the Huffman Stream, crossed by the Margaret Chase Smith–Lyndon Baines Johnson Bridge, built in 1965; Shire Street; Sirois Creek; Trafford Lane (those who live on it are not well-off) and its extension, Trafford Road, which crosses the Huffman Road via a wooden bridge built in 1932 but which was much run-down four decades later. In early 1976 the town had at least one kindergarten, a grammar school, a junior high and a high school, a library and the Huffman Country Club. 

Huffman’s businesses in 1976 included a bank; Thatcher’s Ford-Honda dealership; the furniture factory, at which Bob Bouchard was a foreman; two motels (one called 40 Winks); a pool hall and bowling alley; a drug store; the Brass Rail restaurant and the Home Folks Café; Carl Dusfrene’s legal office; Dr. George Peters’ surgery; an Exxon gas station; the Huffman Barber Shop; and retail outlets, including First National, the Huffman Federal Supermarket, Huffman Field & Stream Sporting Goods, Huffman Giftwize, the Leather Bar and Henry’s Busy Corner. Janet Dolgun ran a half junk shop, half antique shop spread over four buildings on Main and called The Pretty Penny. The Huffman Mill was defunct and “decaying” beside the Castle River by this time. 

Drogan’s husband founded her newspaper, the Huffman Gazette-Intelligencer, in the early 1950s. She took control in 1964 and by 1976 had a circulation of 2000 in winter, doubling in summer. Its so-called competition was
The Wise Shopper
, put out as an attempt by Drogan’s enemies to damage her economically. The Huffman Police Department fell under Chief Stone following Andy Ellerton’s retirement in 1975. Local sports teams included the Lake Region Lakers and the Huffman Wildcats. 

Untitled Screenplay (Radio Station) (c1977) 

An untitled partial screenplay is held in Box 1011 at the Special Collections Unit of the Raymond H. Fogler Library at the University of Maine, Orono. It has never been produced. 

This 20 page, 24-scene telescript was apparently penned in Bridgton, Maine. There is no other indication of the year in which the action is set. It is unclear when the script was written, although the Kings lived in Bridgton from the Summer of 1975 to the Fall of 1977. In an interview with David Chute (published in
Take One
for January 1979 and reproduced in
Feast of Fear
¹³⁶
) King talks about the screenplay, saying he was working on it “now, off and on.” 

In this Maine Street Horror story a local radio station is to be converted from manned to automated operation, with the changeover taking place one January evening at midnight. That night the owner, Roger Lathrop went to the station to confront his last DJ, the drunken Bob Randall. 

The two debated the merits of automation, a service of the Century-2000 Corporation. Randall returned to his apartment and hanged himself. An angry Randall fan slapped Lathrop at his funeral. As it was January, Randall’s body was placed in a vault, to await burial in the spring. At this point the script ends. 

The station is WOKY, based in the countryside of Western Maine and which could be found at 1530 on the AM dial. Bridgton is also in Western Maine. We know that the script was not inspired by King’s experiences with his own radio station, WZON in Bangor, as he did not buy that until October 1983. 

Randall, about 35 at the time of his sacking and suicide, was a hippie type with a lot of gray in his long hair and a smoker. Also something of a drinker, he had worked at WOKY for five years. 

The owner and station manager, Roger Lathrop, was married, to Maddy. He was about 40, a smoker, and “good looking.” 

The other sacked DJs were Tommy Lake; Chip Ripley, who weighed 306 lbs and whose real name was Chester Robichaud (he is somehow reminiscent of Henry Leyden, the DJ of many characters in
Black House
); and Greg Starr. After automation Tyler Bracken, a 22 year-old college dropout, was to manage the radio station. Thin, with thick horn-rimmed glasses, he had been around the station since he was 16. 

A number of the media outlets mentioned in this script appear elsewhere in King’s fiction. WJBQ, the radio station Bob Randall was to join after leaving WOKY, is also mentioned in
The Mist
, where it was briefly on the air after the storm and Steffy Drayton managed to tune into it. WIGY, the radio station to which Chip Ripley was moving, is also mentioned in
The Mist
, as it was also on the air shortly after the storm. WLAM, the radio station in Lewiston, Maine Greg Starr was to join is mentioned in
The Body
. Bob Cormier, a DJ there, was a contestant at the pie-eating contest in the Lard Ass Hogan part of the novella. WCSH, the TV station on which Tommy Lake got an announcer’s job, is the station in Portland, Maine on which executions were televised live in
The Stand
(
Complete and Uncut
edition only). 

In King’s interview with Chute he gave away some of the storyline: “It’s a story about the owner of a radio station in western Maine. He fires all his disk jockeys and imports this computer radio thing. It’s one of those automated radio voices, with this syrupy, totally mechanical voice, totally divorced from any real human being. One of the deejays commits suicide, and after that the machine starts to take over. It’s saying things like, “And now the latest from, and
blah
,
blah
,
blah
and fuck you, you’re going to die; I’m going to kill you.” I’m having a good time writing it.” This clearly indicates more was written than the short piece held in Box 1011 at UMO. Hopefully, the extra scenes will one day come to light. 

We can presume Randall has come back to haunt the radio station (the automated voice would have allowed for plenty of potentially hilarious mayhem, particularly with regard to the tracks playing at any given point in time, and for the threats noted by King). The fact that his body was not buried, but lay in a vault, would also have allowed for a plot development such as the corpse’s disappearance, but that is entirely speculative. Where King was actually going with this script we will probably never know but should he ever choose to return to the concept (having delivered haunted houses, hotels, hotel rooms, bathtubs and hospitals, among other places) his fans could well be in for a treat. 

¹³⁶
Feast of Fear: Conversations with Stephen King
, Tim Underwood and Chuck Miller (editors), page 79
 

Untitled Screenplay (Radio Station) (c1977) 

An untitled partial screenplay is held in Box 1011 at the Special Collections Unit of the Raymond H. Fogler Library at the University of Maine, Orono. It has never been produced. 

This 20 page, 24-scene telescript was apparently penned in Bridgton, Maine. There is no other indication of the year in which the action is set. It is unclear when the script was written, although the Kings lived in Bridgton from the Summer of 1975 to the Fall of 1977. In an interview with David Chute (published in
Take One
for January 1979 and reproduced in
Feast of Fear
¹³⁶
) King talks about the screenplay, saying he was working on it “now, off and on.” 

In this Maine Street Horror story a local radio station is to be converted from manned to automated operation, with the changeover taking place one January evening at midnight. That night the owner, Roger Lathrop went to the station to confront his last DJ, the drunken Bob Randall. 

The two debated the merits of automation, a service of the Century-2000 Corporation. Randall returned to his apartment and hanged himself. An angry Randall fan slapped Lathrop at his funeral. As it was January, Randall’s body was placed in a vault, to await burial in the spring. At this point the script ends. 

The station is WOKY, based in the countryside of Western Maine and which could be found at 1530 on the AM dial. Bridgton is also in Western Maine. We know that the script was not inspired by King’s experiences with his own radio station, WZON in Bangor, as he did not buy that until October 1983. 

Randall, about 35 at the time of his sacking and suicide, was a hippie type with a lot of gray in his long hair and a smoker. Also something of a drinker, he had worked at WOKY for five years. 

The owner and station manager, Roger Lathrop, was married, to Maddy. He was about 40, a smoker, and “good looking.” 

The other sacked DJs were Tommy Lake; Chip Ripley, who weighed 306 lbs and whose real name was Chester Robichaud (he is somehow reminiscent of Henry Leyden, the DJ of many characters in
Black House
); and Greg Starr. After automation Tyler Bracken, a 22 year-old college dropout, was to manage the radio station. Thin, with thick horn-rimmed glasses, he had been around the station since he was 16. 

A number of the media outlets mentioned in this script appear elsewhere in King’s fiction. WJBQ, the radio station Bob Randall was to join after leaving WOKY, is also mentioned in
The Mist
, where it was briefly on the air after the storm and Steffy Drayton managed to tune into it. WIGY, the radio station to which Chip Ripley was moving, is also mentioned in
The Mist
, as it was also on the air shortly after the storm. WLAM, the radio station in Lewiston, Maine Greg Starr was to join is mentioned in
The Body
. Bob Cormier, a DJ there, was a contestant at the pie-eating contest in the Lard Ass Hogan part of the novella. WCSH, the TV station on which Tommy Lake got an announcer’s job, is the station in Portland, Maine on which executions were televised live in
The Stand
(
Complete and Uncut
edition only). 

In King’s interview with Chute he gave away some of the storyline: “It’s a story about the owner of a radio station in western Maine. He fires all his disk jockeys and imports this computer radio thing. It’s one of those automated radio voices, with this syrupy, totally mechanical voice, totally divorced from any real human being. One of the deejays commits suicide, and after that the machine starts to take over. It’s saying things like, “And now the latest from, and
blah
,
blah
,
blah
and fuck you, you’re going to die; I’m going to kill you.” I’m having a good time writing it.” This clearly indicates more was written than the short piece held in Box 1011 at UMO. Hopefully, the extra scenes will one day come to light. 

We can presume Randall has come back to haunt the radio station (the automated voice would have allowed for plenty of potentially hilarious mayhem, particularly with regard to the tracks playing at any given point in time, and for the threats noted by King). The fact that his body was not buried, but lay in a vault, would also have allowed for a plot development such as the corpse’s disappearance, but that is entirely speculative. Where King was actually going with this script we will probably never know but should he ever choose to return to the concept (having delivered haunted houses, hotels, hotel rooms, bathtubs and hospitals, among other places) his fans could well be in for a treat. 

¹³⁶
Feast of Fear: Conversations with Stephen King
, Tim Underwood and Chuck Miller (editors), page 79