The Schlockministers

Toward sundown. Announcer Paul Kal-linger hunches on the edge of a straight-backed chair, unplugs his mellifluous bass voice, lets it pour into the microphone. "How do you do? How do you do? How do you do? If you've just joined us. we're sure glad to have you out there listening to our program--Gospel Request Time." The first request is a hillbilly item called / Saw the Light, and when it is over, Kallinger uses the light for a transition into a five-minute commercial: "I hope many people will see the light tonight and ask Jesus to forgive them, ask Jesus to come into their hearts. And I hope many of you people who need a laxative will ask us to send you . . ."

The widest radio audience in the U.S. is commanded not by any U.S. station but by Mexico's XERF. just across the Rio Grande from Del Rio. Texas. XERF's transmitter boasts 250,000 watts, five times more than any U.S. station is permitted, and it can even be heard across the Canadian border. Moreover. XERF is gloriously free of the restrictions that the FCC puts on U.S. stations. Such a setup seems made to order for huckstering baubles, panaceas-and marked-up thingumabobs that cannot get airspace in the U.S. --and it is. But XERF's prime evening time is given over to what the radio trade calls the schlockm'misier (from schlock, a Yiddish word for junk).

"That Woman Down There!" From 5 p.m. until 2 a.m.. Disk Jockey Kallinger alternates hot gospel platters, patent medicine commercials and high-decibel "evangelists," who pay station XERF $87.50 per quarter-hour. The preachers do not come personally to XERF; they tape their spiels in the U.S. and send them in.

Some of the preachers are healers, like Brother Glen Thompson of Hot Springs, Ark. Thompson takes about four minutes to work himself up to a scream of healing: "That woman down there with arthritis, send in your request!'' he shouts. ''And that woman in her kitchen just now that is suffering with a bad tumor--God wants you to send in your request! And that woman that is sitting there by the radio and is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Oh. God, don't doubt this broadcast. Be sure that you help me now. Obey the voice of God in you for giving me as much as you can, and God will give back, and if you send in $5 or more, request the beautiful nativity Bible. Oh--it is such a beautiful Bible, with maroon binding. 1.152 pages."

"Don't Let Me Worry!" Brother J. Charles Jessup of Gulfport, Miss., specializes in high-pitched nasal prayer for whatever his listeners suggest, and he prides himself on his gift: "The angel appeared unto me in a dream and commissioned me to give myself to prayer.'' He also has a gift for extracting folding money from his slack-jawed listeners: "Friends, is it not right that I should ask you to help support our work? You don't owe us anything. You write me whether you've got any money or not to send. But if you have something that you can send to us to help pay for our broadcast. God will bless you. You enclose your tithe, a little offering, a donation, whatever the Lord lays on your heart, and we will thank you, thank you, thank you. from the bottom of our heart. God will bless you. Don't let me worry about finances. Send your donation now-so that God will lift this burden from my heart."

What scklockministers make is a secret they do not share. Neither Thompson nor Jessup lives with much ostentation, though they drive big. new cars. Jessup gets about 300 letters a day with contributions that he says average less than $1, spends $6.000 a month for radio time. Both have other interests--special services, revivals, a faith-healing hotel--and work long hours. The happiest men in schlockm'mistering may well be the Mexican owners of the loud radio voice that profits from the indisputable fact that when the American people are asked to send money, they do.

-One of the earliest panacea peddlers to cross the Rio Grande was Dr. John Richard Brinkley, the ''goat-gland" tycoon who exploited his failing listeners' yearnings for potency to the tune of some $1,000,000 a year before he died bankrupt in 1942.

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