The Beloved at her computer. Wednesday. March 30.
2022. She often brags to me: "I can do boring."
She well knows I cannot. That's what keeps
me from doing much with Family Search.
The tap water in Tioga was delicious. That's because they put in a new well in 1991. I reported on it. Because, at the time, I was the News Director for radio station KTGO. Dave Guttormson, manager.
Full Disclosure: I was actually just a deejay, but Dave let me do news on the side just so I could maybe somehow with god's blessing and if there were a blue moon get a regular broadcast news job again so we didn't have to live with the Beloved's parents in the Old Funeral Home. I didn't get paid any extra for it.
I don't remember how I got hired for the position. Most anyone could get a deejay job there. Even the Beloved's sister Ova. The station was a daytimer -- it could only operate from sun up to sun down. I manned the board from noon until sign off. In winter that was just four and a half hours. The station's format was country-western. I have always loathed country-western. Except for Homer & Jethro.
We'll get back to that loathing in a moment, folks.
But first I want to go back to KSAL Radio in Salina, Kansas. After I got released from my contract to be Ronald McDonald in Wichita, I was able to latch on to a news job at KSAL. It lasted all of 2 days. The first day at work I wore a necktie, as was required in the employee handbook. The second day I showed up wearing a bow tie, and was summarily fired for insubordination. For wearing a bow tie. As Jonathan Brewster says in Arsenic and Old Lace: "I have led a strange life."
Anyway. Back to Tioga, with the new well. That water was great. I drank glass after glass. It was always ice cold, coming out of the North Dakota tundra as it did. Everyone drank tap water. There was no such thing as bottled water in town. Except for Perrier -- which only a Rockefeller could afford. Anybody else who drank it was considered a foreign spy or effete Hollywood snob. It was the stuff that Thurston Howell the Third would have on Gilligan's Isle if he could get it.
The best tasting water I ever had was as a kid in the summer. When we'd slake our thirst straight out of the vinyl garden hose in the backyard. After fermenting in the hot sun all day, that tube of water, bursting with toxic chemicals from the vinyl, had a toothsome tang I can still smack my lips over. It's probably why I grew a second liver.
As you can tell, I'm not big on chronology in this memoir/novel/taradiddle. I've given up telling you what year this or that happened. I'm depending on the Beloved to do it. If she wants. She likes detail. I like vagueness.
In the summer at KTGO I was putting in long hours, working from noon until after 9 p.m. At least they seemed like long hours to me. The roustabouts in the Tioga oilfields, of course, were working 48 hours straight. But they were being paid a relative fortune for it. Whereas my salary, if I remember correctly, was a measly five bucks an hour.
I introduced one of Willie Nelsons songs by saying, on the air, "Here's Willie Nelson singing Blue Eyes Cryin' in the Rain. This is a favorite of mine, because it gives me enough time to hit the john."
I got reprimanded for that by Guttormson in a curious way. He demoted me from doing any news to just plain deejay and gave the news position to a friend of his, an itinerant plumber.
This did not sit particularly well with me, although I didn't receive a pay cut or anything. Still, now my chances of getting another news position were beyond the point of nil.
At the same time I had a flourishing side gig going on. Writing Letters to the Editor for the Minot Daily News. They would print all that I sent them. They were humorous letters, along the lines of Petroleum V. Nasby, (Google it -- it's a real person.) So I had high hopes that if a real radio job never came along I might be the next Mark Twain. But I wrote a letter lambasting country western music, saying it all sounded like 'a drunk in a brick alley arguing with a prostitute." It got printed in the Minot Daily News. And for that, Guttormson fired me.
Where did we go after that? I don't remember. Maybe the Beloved does.
I remember we once went to her high school reunion in Stanley. Each alumnus was invited to stand and give a brief history of themselves since graduating. Part of the Beloved's verbal autobiography was: "We have moved 28 times since being married -- and we're not even in the military!"
[The Beloved is too busy folding laundry to add anything to this particular part at the moment.]
(Where did we go after that? (Tim went to Minneapolis and did some job hopping and apartment hunting. He lived with his parents while I stayed with the children at my folks house. I moved the three oldest into the library where it was warmer than staying in the little house. I stayed on the couch in the living room with Sarah’s crib next to me. Sarah was a sweet baby who never cried. My dad formed a relationship with her because she was so quiet. She got pneumonia and had to be hospitalized for a week during that winter. The kids and I went to the hospital to be with her. I worked for the school from time to time as a gymnastics judge. It was money but not very much. Tension was high between my parents and me because I had so many kids there and they had their own family. My little brother was not yet 6 years old! I remember one phone call from Tim where I told him in tears that I was so tired of doing this!) I don't remember. Maybe the (my)Beloved does. (I don’t blame Tim for not remembering the way things went. He was working constantly at forgetting it.)
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I've started taking melatonin again. My current sleep pattern is to go to bed at 11p.m. and then be awake at 4a.m. I'd give anything to sleep a few more hours. When I'm awake so early and the Beloved continues her deep rest I like to write short religious verse for Twitter. Today I wrote:
When God looks down from heaven/I wonder what he sees/to give his heart deep pleasure/and set his mind at ease/The sinner's restitution, and kindness to a foe/I think make him feel better/than any chanting show.
I consider these rhymes as a sort of social media missionary work.
Also this morning I sent some verses to Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal, about the Post Office:
Ben Franklin ran the Post Office/He made it pay its way/Delivery was certain/and came neatly twice a day/The penny post they called it/knitting folks together by/encouraging the writing/of epistles fond or sly/Good Ben I'm sorry to report/the Post Office right now/has slowed to an eccentric crawl/mixed up like stale chow chow/Perhaps your portly spirit/with great humor to deploy/cajoling can get action/from this fellow named DeJoy/Otherwise dear Franklin/I'm afraid the mail is dead/with new trucks blowing greenhouse gas/while sitting in their shed!
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