My Career in Radio

Come, my little wombats, and I shall lead you down the primrose path of my faltering memory once again -- concerning my footling career in radio. We shall make merry over my redundant indiscretions that consistently caused my speedy exit from one small market radio station after another.

And why not make light of my intractable, nay indefatigable, ability to bring station managers to the boiling point in a matter of months -- sometimes in a matter of weeks? Now a tottering wreck, practically chained to my recliner, I look back on my mad capers in broadcasting only to say:  “So what?” “Who cares?” “Big deal, schlemiel.” In broadcasting annals my stunted career will never rate so much as an asterisk; but I did manage to upset the applecart quite often . . .

For instance, when I landed at KTGO Radio in Tioga, North Dakota, in 1983, after an abortive attempt to find work as a birthday party clown in Florida (old people there would rather look at caskets, and young people have the beach; nobody wants a mundane clown.) KTGO was a daytimer station -- meaning it went on the air at dawn and off the air at sunset. Most days I pulled a 12 hour shift, playing country western records, giving the weather and pork belly futures, and doing a ‘rip and read’ newscast for five minutes at the top of the hour. It was hard to fit in a bathroom break, let alone lunch. Amy fixed me innumerable ham sandwiches on her own whole wheat bread, which I gobbled like a Hun whenever a free minute presented itself.

My bladder was saved from bursting by the extended song cycles of Willie Nelson, who often went six or seven minutes with his barnyard ballads. One fine day I introed one of his songs by saying “Willie is the DJ’s friend -- without his long winded yodeling I’d never make it to the toilet and back to the mic in time.” Dave Guttormson, the station manager, summarily dismissed me at the end of my shift that same day.

Up in Park Rapids, Minnesota, a few years later, at station KPRM, I managed to discombobulate the automated FM station one Sunday when I was put in charge by turning the wrong switch. I didn’t bother to listen to what the station was spewing out -- which turned out to be the same single song and the same single commercial for seven consecutive hours -- but hurried off to church in the morning and then went out fishing in the afternoon. I caught half a dozen eelpout, a ghastly looking fish but rather tasty when fried in lard. Early Monday morning as I came in the door to prepare my newscast I was met by the owner, Ed Delahunt, who informed me of the previous day’s debacle and then invited me to take my carcass elsewhere. Oh well, that’s showbiz.

At KICD, in Spencer, Iowa, I nabbed the job of morning talk show host, where I immediately set the community buzzing with outrage by referring to Storm Lake, a nearby community that sheltered about 1200 Ethiopian immigrants, most of whom worked at the Butterball Turkey processing plant, as Addis Ababa. I was given a verbal warning by the station manager, and told to keep my nose clean. But he said nothing about eggs, so that summer during the sweltering dog days, I did a live broadcast from Main Street, where I attempted to fry an egg on the sidewalk. Alas, the egg I chose to make broadcast history with was from a carton of organic eggs that had been laying around the station for several months, unrefrigerated. They had gone bad. And I mean REAL bad. As soon as it landed on the hot sidewalk my egg exuded a remarkable stench that drove the curious crowds away at light speed. I had chosen to crack the egg in front of a prominent dress shop, and the owner felt forced to close up for the rest of the day -- while I vainly tried to scrub away the egg and the odor with bleach, ammonia, and a quart of Mr. Clean. Naturally enough, in the scheme of things, the shop owner was not only a big advertiser on KICD, but was also the manager’s brother-in-law. He put in the good word and I was once again ‘at liberty.’      

My last radio job was at KRCQ in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. I worked as the news director. The only reason I ever got the job was because the station owner was impressed when I ordered liver and onions for lunch after my interview with him. “That’s a gutsy move” he said to me. “I want a fella who’s got the guts to get the news for me!”

And initially I performed gutsy. My first day on the job I caught a squeal on the police band monitor about a gas leak in town in a substantial residential area. I was the first one on the scene, interviewing the police chief and the fire chief as they supervised the evacuation. My report scooped all the other local media, and even made it down to the Twin Cities, reported by WCCO Radio, using my name. The station owner gave me a fifty dollar raise.

But as the months wore on I turned sour. I was in my late forties, divorced, never able to get ahead in my child support payments, and haunted by an obsession to Make It Big. How could I ever Make It Big in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, for the cat’s sake? My brooding led to a psychotic break -- I began making up the news. Real happenings didn’t interest me anymore. I reported that the North Dakota State Patrol was now stopping all cars coming from Minnesota to look for pennies, which were illegal tender in North Dakota. I ran a story about the introduction of wooden manhole covers in downtown Detroit Lakes in an effort to save money and be more green. My listeners were astonished to learn that with the coming of the railroad in the 1880’s, both the humidity and the rainfall in Becker County had increased by sixty percent -- and quoted faux statistics from the weather bureau to prove it. My piece de resistance undoubtedly was my story on the Fourth of July of a man who blew his head off by mishandling fireworks. I quoted a nurse from the hospital in Hawley saying the head was making a speedy recovery and would be sewn back onto his body within a week.

That was the straw that broke the station owner’s back. During one of my live newscasts, while I was observing a moment of silence on air for the extinction of the passenger pigeon, he burst into the studio, roaring “What the *bleep* is the matter with you!”

That *bleep* was heard by roughly ten thousand people in Becker County and surrounding areas. And when the FCC got wind of it they immediately fined the station several thousand dollars. Needless to say, I got the bum’s rush. After that affair, I turned my back on radio (or, rather, it might be more accurate to say that radio turned its back on me) and I went back to my first love, the circus. Didn’t do much better there, either -- but that is a tale for another day . . .