It was Tuesday, November 1 8, 1988. 

Although I fully expected to be moving to New York before too terribly long, I’d long since learned that job leads weren’t a gift horse you could look in the mouth.  And there was a station in the east suburbs that wanted to talk with me. 

The program director was a guy who’d audibly lit up when I called, the previous Friday.  “You’re Mitch Berg? From the Don Vogel show?”   He’d been a huge fan.  He’s also heard my old weekend graveyard show – he’d caught it on the way to do his own airshift a few times.  In fact, we had met, at one Don Vogel remote or another.

“I’d love to talk with you!”.  He hosted the station’s morning show, and he wanted a news guy/sidekick type. 

Sure, I was interested.  Anything to get me out of the bars, until something in New York came through.

He gave me directions to a bar in Stillwater for Tuesday at 1PM.

Election day.

“Yeah”, he laughed when I quizzed him, “the bar is open on election day.  It’s kinda ‘under the table”, he said, audibly nudging and winking.

And so I drove out to Stillwater.  I took a right off of Highway 36 and drove down a frontage road that led to the bar – the Club Tara, a funky-looking little roadhouse. 

I walked into the bar.  “Miiiiiitch!”, the program director – a very Minnesotan-looking fellow in his early fifteis – yelled, waving.  He had a half-empty pitcher and a big basket of fries on the table in front of him.  Another guy, thin, sharp-faced and younger than me, sat with him.  Both were nursing beers, although seemingly nursing them pretty quickly.

I sat.  The program director introduced me to his Operations Manager.  We chatted for close to an hour – mostly about politics, Don Vogel, and what a fun place the Tara was.

The Ops guy checked out, and another guy – the Sales Manager, another, pudgier guy in his late twenties, checked in.  We talked for about an hour and a half, polishing off another pitcher and a plate of mini burgers in the process as we talked about…politics, Don Vogel, and what a fun place the Tara was.

It was about 3:30 when the Sales Manager left – just as another sales person, this one Cathy, a mildly zaftig and plenty-cute mid-twentysomething woman with light auburn hair and in high heels, walked in.  We sat until 6PM, knocking off probably a pitcher and a half between us, talking about…yep, politics, Don Vogel, and what a fun place the Tara was.  Oh, I may have flirted a bit; Cathy lived in Saint Paul, as luck’d have it. 

Finally, we all had to leave; the three of us talked until close to 7PM in the parking lot, exchanged business cards, and promised to call later. 

I took the back roads back to Saint Paul that night. 

I followed up a few times in the next year; they never quite got the money bit worked out.

UPDATE:  D’oh.  As Flash points out in the comments, Nov 1 was not election day – November 8 was.  I forgot that election day was the first Tuesday after the first Monday. 

I get the dates (and, occasionally, info) for some of these “20 Years Ago” bits from various notebooks and journals I wrote over the years.  Others, I reconstruct from proximity to other events.  This’d be one of them; there was a long, sloppy loopy job interview at a bar on election day – whatever the date was.