It was Friday, July 19, 1991.

A few weeks back, Joe Hanson had tipped me off that KSTP-AM was looking for a new “Executive Producer” – sort of a Program Director, but less power.

That night, I wrote a resume.  It took some stretching; the sum total of my experience was…

• A year and change at KEYJ/KQDJ back in high school.  A great learning experience, to be sure – I reported news, did sports, and wrote and cut commercials as well as spinning records – but it was a year and change of part-time work.
• A summer at KDAK in Carrington, ND as a full-time jock, play by play guy, and the station’s main commercial production guy.
• Another couple of years part-timing at KQDJ in college.
• My year and change at KSTP-AM, producing Don Vogel and Geoff Charles and doing my weekend graveyard show.
• The year and a half watching the needle bob at K-63 and answering phones and running the occasional board at KDWB.

I guess my talent as a writer didn’t start with my blog.  I came indoors from some yard work to a message on the answering machine (!) from Ginny Morris, asking for a call back about perhaps talking about the executive producer gig.

I called back, and got through to her secretary.  She wondered if I could come in to the station on Monday.

I sure could.

I hung up, and frantically scoured the house for my suit.  I reassembled it, and whispered a silent prayer than it hadn’t shrunk.

And then I started trying to figure out how to convince Ginny Morris I was management material.

———-

Does it seem to you that this opportunity dropped into my life suddenly, even abruptly?

It seemed that way to me too, at the time.  I heard about the opening one day in June.  I sent the resume the next day.  And while I kept my fingers crossed, that’s about all the thought I put into it.  I’d pretty much given up on anything happening.

Until it did.