lincoln

Lincoln, Nebraska

The Daily Nebraskan and
KFMQ, Lincoln's Best Rock
I went to high school in Bellevue Nebraska. In the
summer I did ag work one year. I detasseled corn in 110
degree weather. Not for very long though. I came home
exhausted and wrung out.   One day I got separated from
the rest of the crew I was working with. Up ahead as far
as I could see was the muddy row, the corn towering
above and arcing over my head. In back of me the same
infinite tunnel of corn. I broke into a blind panic and
began to run. I tripped, and tumbled face down into the
mud, regaining my senses. It was a satori of sorts, an
awakening of something deep inside of me. A nameless
dread.

The next summer I worked as a janitor for the school
system. I worked at a little elementary school with an
elderly man who seldom spoke to me and listened to easy
listening radio station KFOR. I remember the haunting,
ascending electric piano of Stevie Wonder on "You are
the sunshine of my life" all summer long, the chills that
tingled up my spine when the piano hit G# and twinged
the central nervous system. I was lost in a dream,
pushing my mop bucket down the long empty hallways.

The next year I started selling records and stereos at the
Brandies department store.
That's where by chance I met radio announcer Jimmy
O'Neill.

Jimmy O'Neill was working at WOW in Omaha. He was
famous. He had been the host of the ground breaking
1960s show "Shindig" on TV. I use to watch him in
Spanish when I lived in Puerto Rico. I watched him work
intensely on the phone doing a remote for the store. He
gestured fanatically as he delivered the commercial.   He
enunciated every word. Boxed with the consonants. He
literally shook when he talked he was so intense.
He was as kinetic as hell even planted in the corner of
the record shop. Between stop sets I asked him how to
get into radio. I wanted to do what he did. I was already
shaking. He told me I should go to the Columbia School
of Broadcasting in Kansas City.
I almost went. I got the catalog.
I got some broadcast training in a special program in high
school. I had decided that I wanted to be on the radio.
That much I knew.
I played guitar in the church choir. I played in a USO
band. I played in a basement band called Queen Anne's
Revenge which morphed into Grunt. I spent all my time
playing guitar and piano. Don Fawn, a friend and guitar
player in all those incarnation contacted me recently. He
has a tape of us playing Carl Perkin's "Honey Don't."
I didn't.
We played the state prison once We got paid in cake.
Another job one night promised real cash. It was at a
church dance somewhere out in the country. We climbed
into the van and did the dance. When it came time to be
paid, the minister scratched his head and shrugged his
shoulders. He mumbled bible words. We didn't get cash.
We got a carton of hot dogs and a case of Orange Crush.
We drove the van to the local drive in and watched "Fritz
the Cat" the rest of the night, gorging ourselves on the
best hot dogs and orange soda I ever had.
We had it made.
That is my work experience, summed up in three stories.
I was still playing guitar and singing in a weak voice when
I went to college. It was a big part of my self image and
identity. The Italian blues kid.   I sought out opportunities
to play.
At the Centennial education program, Jeff Table let me sit
in with his bands, Crumbhunger and the Permanent
Waves. Ric Marsh, my advisor and friend tolerated my
lack of focus, timing and pitch and jammed with me.
At the University one night I went solo. I played did a
night in a little coffee house in the student union.
It was big time.
And truly awful.

I decided that night that I would never be a great
performer. Music went from 100% of my life to zero
overnight.

I decided to write instead.

I got hired by the Daily Nebraskan in 1975.
Vince Boucher was the editor at that time. I could write
music and art pretty well. I was groomed to replace the
star writer of that time, Dave Wood.

My parents moved to Florida that year, leaving me at
school in Lincoln. I started off at the University of
Nebraska majoring in Journalism and Political Science. I
was in the School of Broadcasting where I was told by the
head of the department that there was "something wrong
with my voice." I didn't sound like anybody else there. "I
didn't have the pipes."

My instructor sent me off to a doctor to get the vocal
nodes sliced off my vocal chords like baloney at a deli.
After the doctor stuck a mirror down my throat and
noodled around for awhile, I passed on the operation.
Despite the alleged grunge on my throat I carried on.
I did OK in broadcast news and photography. I did good
interviews and framed things well. I learned my base
radio skills on the air at KRNU, the University of
Nebraska radio station.

A friend of my brothers, Dennis Dorgherty, who was the
resident manager at my dorm knew Doug Agnew, the
station manager at KFMQ. He was the son of Steve
Agnew, the owner of the progressive rock station. Dennis
got me an interview. He knew they were desperate for an
overnight personality. They had just lost their night
announcer. Doug was going down to the station with a
case of beer and a couple of friends to keep the station
on the air.

He usually shut it down by 3 a.m.

They hired me for the midnight shift. I didn't have the
pipes, but I was the first one in my class to get a radio
job. Steve Agnew, the extraordinary air personality and
engineer hired me.

They told me not to talk.

Maybe it was the uncut baloney on my vocal cords, I don't
know.

I do know I ended up talking anyway. They let me. I
played "good sets" and segued records really well.
Roger Agnew, who had the best radio voice I ever heard
got me up to speed. He said they had hired someone
from California to come and take over, but after he got to
the station I could do weekends. He told me to have a
good time. I was sad, but exhilarated to be on the air at
alI. I was working seven days a week, midnight to six in
the morning.

The guy from California finally arrived. He got off a bus in
the middle of the night and came down to the station. It
was over just like that. Or so I thought.

It turned out that he had a few problems. He was at the
station 24 hours a day telling people how to cut
commercials,how to run the station, what music to play
and how to be on the air.

He had all the signs of someone with a strong PTSD. He
drank all the time. He didn't sleep. He couldn't stand to be
alone. He was locked into his anger. He was a control
freak.

They fired him and hired me.

I continued to work seven days a week. I'd sleep two
hours in the morning and get up and go write and edit for
the Daily Nebraskan.
The fired guy called me a couple times a night.

I could not get him off the phone.

He said he didn't want me to get fired like he did.
He'd tell me how to survive.
He started off friendly and got increasingly hostile. He
broke into the station one night drunk. And stole records.
He threatened to castrate me.

I was getting to the point where I was carrying empty coke
bottles into the parking lot in case I needed something to
defend myself.

As Senator Dave Landis said, "A coke bottle, now there's
the weapon of choice."

Dave did a jazz show on the weekends. David Kappy,
Captain Classics, the guy who did the weekend classical
show agreed. I finally told the program director and the
station called the police. It turns out he had just gotten out
of prison for assault and did not want to go back.

That was my introduction to radio.

KFMQ was a one hundred and fifty watt station, one of
the last in the country. The big ones were usually a
hundred thousand watts. What you would call a "big stick
station." We covered a tristate area, and sometime were
heard as far away as Canada and Wyoming.
I was there for ten years.

That is my fourth and final telling work tale.

I left ten years later to the day I was hired.

On the staff at the Daily Nebraskan I did Columns as well
as news stories and editing. I was there for eight years.
The bi-weekly column was very popular. It came out of
the haze of grief after Michelle died. I worked on the air
the night she died. I didn't sleep afterward. I was going
around the clock. My friend Doug Wiel (Rueters in Great
Britain) and Carla Engstrom, then editor of the Daily told
me they were convinced I was not going to make it. I'd
come in looking so beat.

Despite the hard times, something happened that I have
yet to duplicate. As I said, the column was very popular
for it’s time. They are funny and emotionally congruent. I
got a lot of mail and was invited to a lot of parties as a
result.

Included here are a few examples of the columns that
aren't too chewed up my cats to read. The only reason I
have them at all is that my dad took the time to clip them.

The time is the early 80s.
The characters, Jason and Marie (and me) walk through
the dreams of the time. Life is love and friendship. Time is
a frozen Popsicle stuck in the empty 'o' of our mouths.
It's an existential thing.
The future coming on like a freight train.
But it has not arrived yet.

I started work on my first novel.

To the left is a poster from my first reading at the Student Union of the
University.
It was a well attended event. And kicked off my fiction writing career.