50 Years of Radio
I had a deja vu experience on New Years Eve day. It was a mild, snowy day on the farm. I needed to get out of the house, so I drove the snowy road to Crookston. Now when I was growing up, Crookston was the city we went to for major shopping and school clothes. It's also the city where I was born. (The hospital has since been torn down.)
As I drove the streets and walked the sidewalks, I relived the days walking with my parents and siblings exploring the wonders of the "city". Like most rural cities, Crookston has changed since then. J C Penny's is gone. So are S&L, Woolworth's, Rexall Drug, the music store and Gamble's Hardware.
Munn's Jewelers was having a store closing sale, after 84 years in business. I found out that the guy behind the counter was father to the girl who married the son of our best friends. Follow that? (Everybody is connected to somebody.)
I got my first watch at Munn's. It was a Wyler watch, a confirmation gift from my parents. The man said Wyler was one of best watches they sold, great mechanism at a modest price, $35. That was in 1962! I bought a few gift items at 50% discount and moved on.
On the corner where there was once a drug store is a nice coffee shop. I bought a cup of their specialty coffee. The lady brought me the newspaper. I sat there, drinking coffee, reading the local paper, watching the snow fall. Across the street, I noticed the Eagles Building. The building fascinated me because the third floor once housed the studios of KROX radio, "the voice of the Valley" at 1260 on the dial. Growing up, we listened to KROX a lot. That's how I got hooked on radio. Those were the golden days of local radio, with the Swap Shop, local sports, and personalities you knew as friends.
Radio was a big part of our life on the farm. We listened in the house and in the barn as we milked cows One summer, i bought a small AM table radio at the Coast to Coast store It cost $16. I worked for my dad on the farm that summer. Every Saturday night that summer I .brought my one dollar to the Coast to Coast until the radio was paid for. Late at night, I'd lay in bed tuning in stations from Omaha, Dallas, and listening to the zaniness of DJ Dick Biondi on WLS from Chicago.
Some of my high school heroes got there start at KROX: Dino Day and Larry Norness. I listened to and imitated Don Mulvaney and Les Lightning. I hung out in the on-air booth with Gary Opdahl, watching as he cued up the old 45's, ripped news off the AP machine, read commercials, and twisted dials. I was fascinated. Something inside of me was captured by those visits.
One Sunday afternoon in 1962, Arnie Bakken arranged for the youth choir from our church to sing on KROX. We were ushered into the big studio. When the big hand hit 3:00 straight up, the man behind the glass announced us and we were on the air live!
My first real radio broadcast was reading the school news. Everyday, KROX did remote broadcasts from the small towns in the area. Our local reporter, Duane Knutson, would pick us up at school, drive us to his home, where we did an update on all the happenings at the high school. My live radio debut!
KROX has since moved their studios to a less glamorous storefront a block away. But seeing that grand old building made me wonder what was on the third floor where that radio magic was produced years ago. I walked across the street, up the flight of stairs to the second floor and asked the Eagle's lady what was in the old radio studio. She said it was just storage.
I explained my history and asked if I could take a look. She unlocked the room and I entered the old studios, now filled with boxes, bingo equipment, Christmas decorations, and old files. The call letters had been taken off the wall, though you could still see the outline where the letters had been. My memory was correct The walls of the studios were placed just as I remembered. I walked past the accounting and sales area into the "big" studio, only it didn't seem very big anymore. This was the studio where our youth choir sang. This was the room with the clock tuned to National Observatory Time, which gave the tone at the top of every hour. This was the room where the manager read the noontime news everyday.
I rounded the corner to the on air control room. The shelves that held hundreds of 45's were empty now. The studio still had the old cabinets but the turntables, the tape machines, the microphone that hung from the ceiling, the booming monitor speakers were gone. No continuity book holding the commercials. No paper program log. Just the bare bones of what had once been the pulse of the community and the inspiration of my lifelong dream to work in radio.
I've gone on from my boyhood of playing radio in my bedroom and producing radio programs on the tractor. By the time I got my first real radio job, I had done hundreds of radio shows. Over the years, I've worked for large radio networks in Minneapolis and Chicago. I currently work for an international organization that has built 400 radio stations around the world. I suppose those roles make the little 1000 watt AM station in Northern Minnesota look insignificant. Yet, as a young boy, God placed something in my heart that charted a map for the rest of my life.
God creates us with a DNA that prescribes for us certain passions and abilities. For me it was radio. For me still, it is music, writing, speaking, communicating and technology that are driving patterns in my life.
So, as Charles Osgood says, "See you on the radio!"
