There was genuinely not much to report in the three weeks since the last “Twenty Years Ago…” piece.

Life had basically fallen into a very predictable routine:

• Mondays and Thursdays were for job-hunting. The Sunday and Wednesday Stribs had all the new job listings. I diligently trekked up to the library at Lake and Minnehaha both mornings, read the paper, copied down the information, then walked home to my apartment on 37th and cranked out cover letters.
• Most mornings I’d go to the Rainbow on Lake and Minnehaha. I’d wear a couple layers of clothes – jacket, sunglasses, etc; I’d walk around the store and graze on all the samples once, then shuck the jacket and shades and go back around again. I’d get a fair-to-middlling meal out of the circuit. I doubt I fooled anyone.
• Saturdays, I’d take the 38 bus over to Little Tin Soldier for a day’s worth of wargaming; Saturdays usually had some sort of “modern micro-armor” (little lead models of World War II or Cold War tanks and other equipment) battle; it was always open-play, and someone’d always lend me a company or two of vehicles. It was the cheapest eight hours of entertainment going.
• In the evening, I’d play guitar and try to write music around my roommate’s kitchen table; he worked swing shift, so it was easy; my upstairs neighbors were (apparently) Ukranian squat-dancers who jumped around on their linoleum floor all day in wooden clogs, and then either fought or had loud sex on mattresses made out of old transmission parts all night, so I figured I could get away with a little acoustic guitar and quiet warbling. I figured since I’d moved here in part to be a rock star, I’d better write some music.
• Sundays, I’d take a hike. On days like this – chilly, foggy, a stiff wind – I’d hike down Hiawatha to Minnehaha Park, walk down the endless wooden stairways to the creek, and walk down the stream course through the woods to where Minnehaha joined the Mississippi River, by the Vets hospital. It was cold, and fairly quiet (only the cars on the Ford Bridge and, occasionally, the horns of passing tugs; I’d sit against a tree for an hour or two and watch the river go by and just think, the chill settling into my bones in a way that felt almost satisfying after a week’s worth of the burning anxiety of being in my sixth week of looking for a job.
• I’d call KSTP every Wednesday, more to keep a routine going than out of any expectation for a job.

After my encounter with Tom Myhre at the demonstration a month earlier and the unsuccessful interview with Jean the Producerthree weeks earlier, my contact – executive producer Bruce Huff – told me to call back periodically. I did – weekly, on Wednesdays. I never actually reached him again. It was on November 27 that I finally got through to someone.

“Bruce Huff is no longer at the station”.

My heart didn’t especially slump; this was typical of radio, people disappearing from stations on no notice. I’d pretty much given up radio as a career – in fact, part of me didn’t want to work in the racket again.

“But I’ll put you through to Rob Pendelton”.

I waited a few minutes on hold, and Pendelton came on the line, in a voice that didn’t sound especially made for radio in the classical sense. He was the new “Executive Producer” – Huff had left…

…and there was a chance that another position was going to open up.

“Call back next week”, he told me. I made a note.

Next Wednesday.