It Was Twenty Years Ago Today (and the two days before) Part XX

It was Wednesday, December 18, 1985.

I'd spent the long weekend in Jamestown, hanging out with friends and my family, catching up with the few friends I still had in Jamestown, just relaxing - satisfied at least to know that finally had a job to come back to - of which more later).

I went to a dance at the college on Friday night, caught up with a few people (including this person, who took over the college paper from me, if memory serves). It was a kick to tell people I had a job, even if I hadn't started yet.

Sunday, I headed back to the Cities. I drove to Fargo, had dinner with a friend of mine who was still at North Dakota State, and set back out on '94 to the East. Over dinnertime, a snowstorm caught up with me; visibility dropped to 1/4 mile. Which wasn't bad, until a semi would pass on the left; the slipstream whipped up enough snow to make it feel like driving inside a ping pong ball. Time after time - two or three dozen times on the trip - I gripped the steering wheel and kept the car pointed as straight as I could, hoping the road would still be under me when I gout out the other side. Luckily, it always was - but compared to Thursday's three hour jaunt, it took the better part of five and a half hours go to from Fargo to Minneapolis.

I spent Monday and Tuesday the 16th and 17th knocking around town, enjoying that most glorious of feelings; having a job, but not needing to be there yet.

Finally, it was the 18th; I showed up at the station at 12:30 in the afternoon. I met Dave Elvin, Don Vogel's producer. He took half an hour to explain the arcane art of talk show phone screening while we waited for the cab to bring Don to the station.

"By the way", said Dave, "I should explain; Don is blind". This brought some twists to the job; beyond answering the phone and screening out boring, repetitive and dull callers, I was supposed to pass the next caller to Don through the "talkback" into his headphones, preferably right around the time he needed them.

Don showed up around 1 to begin the daily ritual. Tapping his cane in front of him, jovially bitching about the cold, he made his way back through the "hall" between the backup transmitter and the studio equipment stack, back to the talk studio. I'd grown up working at stations with spartan appointments; KSTP-AM, in its old studio on Highway 61, felt like working in a submarine; cramped, equipment everywhere, some rooms actually with waffleplate floors and steel stairs.

Dave led me into the studio - a cramped little room, maybe 12 by 5, with a glass window along the long side that looked into the control room. There were three seats with microphones along a desk in front of the window. Don sat at the host's seat, with an ancient push-button telephone controller and a large, gray steel braille machine.

Don sat down heavily. "Sorry I'm late, gentlemen. I was at the bank. The woman behind the window was..." Don switched into a John Houseman accent "...an idiot. A moron".

I spoke up. "I've been having trouble with my bank, too."

Dave turned to me. "What bank's that?"

"The S**t P**s F**k Bank".

Don broke up laughing, with the gusto that so many native Chicagoans bring to laughing about scatology. "I think you're going to fit in just fine!"

The rest of the meeting was taken up with Dave and I tossing out topic ideas, and Don knocking most of them down. Finally we settled on some things - a few newspaper articles and magazine pieces Dave had come across. The last half hour involved dictating the ledes of the articles, and things like the weather forecast, to Don, who typed them out in braille and arranged them on the desk in front of him.

Then, Dave took me into the control room. I sat down at a little chair wedged between Dave's control panel and the glass wall of the studio, with a five-line telephone and a microphone. "Just answer the phone, screen them, write down the ones we want to take, and pass them through to Don", Dave instructed as ABC News played on the monitor overhead and a large man who looked for all the world like Tip O'Neill ambled heavily into the studio. "Mitch, this is John MacDougall", Dave announced. "News Guy".

Mac flipped his glasses down his gin-blossomed nose. "You're Don's new screener?" he asked in a crotchety-sounding baritone, glaring over his glasses frames.

"And here we go". Dave at the control board fired off the theme song.

I don't remember much about that first show - it was the same as most of the subsequenct 13 months' worth of shows that Don, Dave, John MacDougall, sports guys Bruce Gordon and Mark Boyle and I did; juvenile banter, heckling, mocking and ridicule of the news and the people in it.

I do remember that about a minute into the show - before Mac had finished the newscast - line 1 on the phone lit up. I picked up; "Don Vogel Show".

"We are not of this world" said a raspy, geriatric-sounding voice. "We are of the infinite world".

I hesitated. "Excuse me?"

"Stanley Hubbard is the devil! He will be sent to hell with all the other evil sinners!"

My first call was an insane crank.

I knew I was going to love this job.

Posted by Mitch at December 18, 2005 10:05 PM | TrackBack