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December 24, 2005

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, Part XXI

It was Christmas Eve, 1985. I'd been working at KSTP-AM for a week.

The bad news: it was a part-time job that started at $3.35 an hour.

The good news: I'd managed to find a mid-day board-operator shift that the Executive Producer, Rob Pendelton, was working. "Why should a highly-skilled executive like yourself be working the board?" I asked; Rob agreed, which gave me two more hours a day.

My budget was looking like it was working out like this:

  • Half of my money was going to my rent.
  • A further quarter was going to my commute - from south Minneapolis to Maplewood, northeast of Saint Paul. As the weather got colder, my car's mileage got worse; during one cold snap that first winter, I figured that I was getting about 8mpg.
  • The rest of the budget - $100 a month - was for me.
I was so stoked!

I worked through the day - Vogel had a fill-in, as I recall. The snow started around mid-day; it was cold, and it began snowing heavily.

At the end of the day, the guest host took off like a shot. It was 6PM, and dark, and the only people left in the studio were producer Dave Elvin, newscaster Cathy Wurzer (yes, that Cathy Wurzer) and me.

I went out to start my car. Nothing. Zip. Not even a click.

I went back into the studio and started calling garages from the Yellow Pages (handicapped by my ignorance of the geography of the area; I had no idea what 'burbs to look in, or for that matter that I was probably a mile from Saint Paul, or for that matter any idea of what part of Saint Paul was where). Nobody was available - or the ones that were cost a lost more than I could afford on Christmas Eve.

Dave offered to drive me home, and Rob Pendelton could give me a ride to work the next day, Christmas.

I took him up on it. Dave dropped me off at my apartment in a slushy, white-coated South Minneapolis, and I went inside.

My roommate was visiting family in Wisconsin for Christmas, so I had the place to myself. For that matter, I had South Minneapolis to myself; there was no traffic on Minnehaha Avenue to speak of.

I pulled out and baked a Tombstone pizza - at $3, a bit of a splurge - and a couple of beers (Stroh's, as I recall), opened a couple of presents I'd gotten from my parents, and turned on the TV. I had two beers left, and ran through one of 'em as I called my family (my brother and sister were still living with my parents, whose divorce was still five years in the future).

By 9-ish, that was pretty much it. I kicked back on the couch, ate the pizza, drank the last beer, watched the Pope's mass on TV, read the book Dad gave me...

By 11ish I was bored. The TV ran an ad for "Gab Line", a phone chat line back in the era before Chat Lines got their seedy reputation (or at least when I was just off the turnip truck and didnt' know about their seedy reputation). "Only 10 cents a minute". I dialled in.

There were two people on the line; a very drunk-sounding black woman who'd just moved up from Chicago, and a guy who sounded like he'd lost all his teeth and could neither pronounce nor enunciate. I don't remember what the conversation was about - and with a drunk and a guy who in retrospect was probably a meth addict, does it matter? - but it killed half an hour and $3, yet another big splurge on this red-letter Chrismas Eve.

I hung up and sat down on the couch, playing guitar for a bit, thinking about things.

Downside: I was nearly-broke, I was alone as I could be on Christmas Eve, and my car was an inert lump of rotting metal in a parking lot in Maplewood.

Upside: Things were moving, finally. I had a job - I knew that I could get a job, that I wasn't completely unemployable and worthless - and I knew that I could get by for a while. I enjoyed the job, as crappy as the pay was. And after the holiday, I could approach the whole music thing with a clear mind and, now that I was employed (more or less), some mental energy.

All in all, not bad.

Posted by Mitch at December 24, 2005 08:54 AM | TrackBack
Comments

Wow Mitch, your stories always cheer me up. I have had some crappy times, but your life sounds so much worse.

Merry Christmas!

Posted by: Tracy at December 25, 2005 02:28 PM

Life's not bad! I actually look back on that Christmas Eve as a good time (with 20 years to look back).

Posted by: mitch at December 26, 2005 03:16 PM

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Posted by: at June 28, 2006 12:36 PM
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