------
After a final summer working at WCLO/WJVL it was time to pack the car and head to Des Moines, Iowa.
I was blessed to have a new radio station to work - KDMI-FM, a 100,000 FM station that covered much of the state with its signal. My interview was in the summer around the time of Drake University's freshman orientation and I started after I arrived on campus.
One of the more interesting things to remember is that the car my folks let me take to college (since I had an off campus job and needed to get there) a 1972 AMC Ambassador. I got all of my stuff in the car and had room for all the stuff of Craig and Drake Classmate, Susie, to get all of her stuff into the car.
It seems to me our son Mark needed two cars to take just his stuff to Ball State!
The class at Craig was big enough that while I knew who Susie was, it wasn't until we were the only ones from Janesville heading to Drake that we became friends. We weren't close friends, but it was nice to know someone from back home wasn't too far away.
Moving in didn't take all that long - and I met my roommate, Scott. I asked him if he wanted to go in 50/50 on renting a fridge for the year, he said yes, and I went to get it. I don't think we talked again for another couple of weeks.
There was no rift, he went home frequently since he lived less than 30 miles away and kept different hours than I did. It wasn't a bad start though, we roomed together for three years and he was the best man in our wedding. He had a wry sense of humor, an encyclopedic memory for pop and rock music, and was very - very smart. A double major in Math and Inorganic Chemistry - with an Academic Scholarship, he was waay smarter than me and in areas that I were not my strong suit. Maybe that's why we got along so well, sharing pizzas most every night and becoming close friends.
The job at KDMI kept me busy - two long shifts on the weekend and 2 hours a day during the week - and helped me pay my portion of the school's cost. An on-campus job was just a couple hours of week in the J-School Library, and it helped some too in my effort to keep the bills up to date. My parents and I more or less split the cost of school and I was very blessed to graduate with just one loan when I was done.
Classes were a bit intimidating - sitting in large auditoriums of students as we all slogged through intro courses in various subjects.
Starting as a freshman, I still had a girlfriend back home, who came out to visit with a friend for the Homecoming game and the dance - I arranged a date for the friend. It amounted to an amicable farewell waltz around the dance floor - not an uncommon happening during first year at school.
Living in the big freshman dorm, Goodwin-Kirk, meant lots of activities and stuff to do. For reasons I still don't know I was a panelist on a "Dating Game" type activity and amazingly, was chosen by the contestant! She liked my answers, but it seems that once she took a look at her "prize" that her option was to throw me back. Oh well, she was a "Greek" anyway, so it wouldn't have worked out.
Freshman year was fun - learning how to study, how to stay up till 2 and get up at 6, balance work/class/study/fun, and get introduced to some great folks at Trinity Lutheran Church. Trinity was the Campus Center for a bunch of us and we attended worship together and had fun in our College Fellowship Group. The drinking age was 19 in Iowa at that time, and while we didn't go out to drink, we would go dancing - and since I was still just 18 (as was another person in the group) that meant sneaking through the doors. When caught, we went in pursuit of another dance floor.
The radio job was a great compliment - time to study during my 9 hour weekend shifts, while during the week I would run errands to the Post Office and handle various production tasks. It was on the weekends I got to be on air - not for long - we were a Christian Station with limited music to play, mostly it was taped programs. Still, it was radio and what I hoped, at that time, to do with my life.
So far, so good, for an 18 year old Cheese head.
Comments
Post a Comment