MANCHESTER, Vt. — It starts with a phone call or certified letter from an independent agent, or a station broker or a company executive. And it's directed to Brooks Brown.

He's the tall, lanky, slow-talking Texan in wrinkled khakis with tools hanging on his belt. He might be on the floor rewiring a console. He might be atop the 180-foot tower fixing the antenna.

But sooner or later, Brown takes the call or opens the letter, because that's what you do when you own one of the last remaining independent, rock radio stations in the country, and corporations want to gobble you up. Then Brown, who founded and owns WEQX, 102.7 FM, just says no.

Sometimes he says it this way: "I wouldn't sell to you if you were the last (expletive) station on Earth, because I don't like what you do with the stations you buy."

But most of the time, he says, grinning, "It's not very complicated: How deep are your pockets? Send me your first born as a non-refundable down payment, and we'll go from there."

It's been 25 years to the day since WEQX started broadcasting from a converted Victorian in Manchester, Vt., playing rock music for listeners in the Capital Region and other parts of New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. The station signed on at 10:27 a.m. Nov. 14, 1984.

And for 25 years, Brooks has remained true to his vision of running an alternative radio station. He's rejected all offers from companies buying up independents and draining the life out of them. He's never changed formats, starting out playing modern rock, still playing modern rock and in recent years furnishing the bands for some of the Capital Region's best festivals.

"Brooks is like the old-time radio-station operator, where the same guy owned it for years and years. And he knew what it was all about," says Peter Rief, a radio aficionado from Malta who for years was WGY afternoon news anchor and now works on radio shows including the nationally syndicated Mike Gallagher Show. "He may be a little bit quirky. He may be a little bit odd. But you knew what he was about.

"Nowadays, radio stations change hands so fast that you don't know who's at the wheel. It's usually some banker somewhere in New York who doesn't really care. Brooks cares," Rief said.

WEQX is the only radio station serving the Capital Region that has not changed hands in the past 25 years, excluding college and religious stations, said Joe Reilly, president of the New York State Broadcasters Association.

"Brooks is unusual in that he has not succumbed to the temptation of the almighty dollar," Reilly says. "He's run the station his way, and he's made it work."

Brown, 62, scratches Fred, the station cat, who leaves trails of orange hair on a conference table. Moments ago, Fred was eating from his dish on the kitchen floor, and Brown's wife, Mimi, station general manager, was washing dishes in the sink.

In the second-floor studio, deejay Alexa Tobin is featuring music from 1995 as the station counts down the years, one each day, from the present back to 1984, as part of its "25 years in 25 days." Outside, paint peels from the old, three-story house, and the railing is broken leading to the porch where the sign hangs: 102.7 FM WEQX ROCKS.

Brown wears tools on his belt — Leatherman multi-tool, Maglite flashlight, tape measure, Sharpies — because he's always fixing something. The tools are so much a part of his personality that his wife has to remind him to take them off when they go to a formal affair. He's even tried to wear them through airport security, forgetting they're there.

"He literally built the facilities," says Willobee, operations manager and program director, who goes by only one name. "He was involved in actually physically erecting the tower atop Mount Equinox, building the transmitter room there and building the studio and offices here.

"I think he's a genius — a mad scientist/genius. He's a true renaissance man. He still goes up the mountain and fixes the transmitter and climbs the tower to work on the antennae," Willobee said.

Why does Brown continue doing this? Those interviewed give these reasons:

WEQX is his baby. The station and employees are like family. Now and then Brown yells at "the kids" to clean the (expletive) bathrooms.

It's been his dream to run a radio station ever since elementary school in Houston, when his science teacher started an amateur-radio club in third grade. After moving to Manchester in the mid-1970s to work for a ski company, he tried to buy an ad on the local radio station for students to unload the moving van. There was no local station, and the ones nearby were "horrible." He declared: "I can do better than that."

He's a savvy businessman. He saw a need and a market niche.

The right buyer hasn't come along — one that meets Brown's criteria of caring about radio as much as he does.

He enjoys frustrating greedy corporations by not letting them have what they want.

Or, it might be as simple as this:

"Maybe it's because I'm (expletive) nuts," says Brown, spelling the last two words, slowly, right to the "s" in "nuts," grinning the whole way through.

Tom Keyser can be reached at 454-5448 or at tkeyser@timesunion.com.