Riders Radio Theater

A bleak and unhappy Christmas spirit has descended upon our peaceful and bucolic Valley. Nowhere is there joy and laughter, nowhere except in the rank and dimly lit backroom of the Dry Gulch Saloon. Thanks to a devious transaction scheme that has left Tumbleweed Valley penniless, Slocum and Charlie are laughing their way to a faraway Dry Tortugas bank. Can Riders In The Sky thwart this yuletide disaster?!

The Christmas shopping season is short and frenzied in Tumbleweed Valley. And with the daily chores and the added work of preparing for the hard winter freezes to come, it’s not until the week before Christmas that residents do their shopping. Tumbleweed City merchants have stocked their stores in preparation for the weeklong stampede. It’s the evening prior to the Valley’s big shopping spree, and at Harmony Ranch, Sidemeat is fixing his infamous Christmas stew…

One of the most eagerly awaited days of the year in Tumbleweed Valley is New Year’s Eve. All day long there are lots of friends dropping by, and a real festive feeling is in the air. But the real celebration is saved for the evening in the kickoff of the Barbwire Conference football championship, the Bean Bowl. The Riders are in their home on the range preparing to leave for the big game…

It was the day before Christmas, and all through the land, everybody was bustling with last minute plans. There was shopping and wrapping and baking to do, as all awaited a visit from old you know who. The valley was glistening with fast falling snow, and the Riders rehearsed for the big Christmas Eve show…

Titanic II has sailed from Southampton and is en route to New York City. Meanwhile, Sidemeat has become enamored with the beautiful Rose, who is engaged, and Slocum and Charlie are posing as English lords. Their nefarious goal is to steal the largest diamond in the world, but an inadvertent skewing of the global positioning system has changed the ship’s course from New York City to Florida…

On April 14, 1912, at 11:40 PM, the largest movable manmade object the world had ever known, the unsinkable Titanic, scraped her starboard bow in the frigid North Atlantic, and the sinkable did the unthinkable. 88 years later, she’s back bigger and better than ever. It’s the year 2000, and Titanic II prepares to set sail on her maiden voyage. But tucked away in the deepest depths of the Floridian ocean lives a foreboding formation ten times bigger than the biggest iceberg ever known to man…

It was near the end of October 1999, and business was good. Unemployment was down, all economic indicators were up, and the only clouds on the horizon were Y2K, the millennium and Kenneth Starr. In the Starlight Rooftop Garden, high atop the Quality Hotel in downtown Norwood, OH, a live rumba music program is underway. But a sudden series of interruptions will change the course of the broadcast – and world – forever…

Slocum and Charlie are well on their way to building a roller coaster empire in south Florida. The fact that their evil scheme could cause the ruination of one of America’s greatest national resources, the Everglades, mattered little to the two fiends. But it mattered to Riders In The Sky, who after thwarting the villains with the inadvertent help of a vacationing High Sheriff Drywall, are now in hot pursuit of them down interstate 95… featuring Danny Davis!

After using the “Snake Charmer’s Yodel,” Ranger Doug saved Riders In The Sky from certain, snake-filled doom, and the chase was resumed. Meanwhile, Slocum and Charlie rolled High Sheriff Drywall into a little ball and crammed him inside a runaway D10 Caterpillar. Unbeknownst to the villains, the D10 careened out of sight towards Everglades National Park, where a group of highway patrolmen set up a howitzer to blow the machine to smithereens…

Riders In The Sky have been thrown into a deep, snake-filled pit by the villains Slocum and Charlie! Fortunately, America’s Favorite Cowboys landed on a small ledge in the pit just out of snake striking distance. Meanwhile, High Sheriff Drywall, who has just finished the dike, has come to realize what Slocum is up to and has threatened to stop it… featuring Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer!

All our principals are now in the Everglades of Florida, where Slocum has tricked Sheriff Drywall to build a dyke to drain 10,000 acres of Everglades, which Slocum acquired for some unknown nefarious purpose… featuring Walter Ostanek!

High Sheriff Drywall – thinking he has mercury poisoning from driving a 1958 Mercury across the country – sits huddled on a stump, the only point above water in the 100 acres of his newly bought land. As you might expect, it is a long night for the High Sheriff, but as with any dark and miserable night, it soon ends and day breaks… featuring the Nashville Mandolin Ensemble!

Slocum and Charlie, realizing the Riders are hot on their trail, have purchased Delbert’s Roadside Attraction which featured Big Alice, the world’s meanest alligator. Slocum then disguised himself as Delbert and tricked the newly arrived Riders into thinking the pond was a swimming pool… featuring Floyd Cramer!

After stopping by the Florida Foundation for Development Development Development and picking up some spurious permits and clearances, Slocum and Charlie leave Tallahassee and head east across the panhandle. Around noon they pull off the highway at a rest stop in front of a building shaped like a huge hot dog…

High Sheriff Drywall is delivering a ’58 Mercury to a car show in Miami. After dropping the car off, the High Sheriff plans to check out 100 acres of land he bought in South Florida that he read about on the back of a matchbook cover. In the muggy subtropical heat of Tallahassee, Florida, two jazzy looking Vipers drive down a side street near the capital building…

Special Treasury Agents Riders In The Sky are still in hot pursuit of Charlie and Slocum, and their search has led them to the famed southwestern theme park Reality Land. It was there America’s Favorite Cowboys decided to ride the park’s most famous ride, the Financial Rollercoaster, unaware of the bomb placed at the top of the attraction by Charlie the night before… featuring Charlie McCoy!

At the request of the United States Treasury, Riders In The Sky have been tasked to track Slocum and Charlie, who are now wanted for their counterfeiting spree. On a lonely straight stretch of western highway, two high-powered Viper automobiles are flying at speeds approaching 200 mph. Meanwhile, Riders In The Sky have stopped at a small truck stop on the Eddy Dean Highway… featuringTricia Walker and the Mudcats!

The villains Slocum and Charlie have burglarized the Federal Treasury building and stolen a set of plates used to print authentic $100 bills and the special paper used to make currency. Several days later in Tumbleweed City, the vault of the First Rational Bank was stuffed with bogus bills, and the aforementioned fiends were seen riding off into the sunset in brand new Dodge Vipers…

Slocum and Charlie attempted to short circuit the alarm system that guards the United States Treasury. This caused a communications breakdown in our nation’s capital, and as a result, the Pentagon’s war room computers reported that America was being invaded. With the President out of town, the Vice President – hiding in his bunker – was left to make a tough decision… featuring John Hartford!

At the conclusion of Monster from Mystery Mountain, the villain Slocum and the doofus Charlie were arrested by Sheriff Drywall and charged with a most serious crime. But even the most heinous of criminals are due their day in court, and it is on that particular day that this tale begins...