If you've found yourself at this corner of the Internet you're likely a friend of mine on facebook. Or just stumbled across this thing.
I'm a young journalist in Kentucky who grew up in St. Paul listening to Mischke, and I heard the terrible news this morning that his show was cancelled.
My reaction was strange. I felt profoundly sad. I realize it's just a radio show, but it was a part of my story. Figured I'd carve out a little space on the Internet to write about it.
I know I'm not alone, so I encourage anyone reading this to email me your story at mischkefan@gmail.com.
As I'm writing this I'm realizing this is all starting to sound like some twisted support group. Maybe it is. I work in a small town, and like a lot of bloggers I have a lot of time on my hands. I also really miss good ol' St. Paul. Maybe this will become a blog about St. Paul. I dunno.
Who knows, there might be somebody at KSTP that stumbles across this or the handful of other Mischke fansites. (Check out http://www.mischkemadness.com/ or http://mischke1500.blogspot.com/) and change their minds.
Anyway, looking back at the posts so far, they're rather somber. The Mischke Broadcast was far from somber, so let's try to lighten this thing up.
Good Luck and thanks for reading.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
My Quick Mischke Broadcast Memories
I don't remember the first time I heard the Mischke Broadcast. I know it was late at night. It could have been the famous sing-song Edmund Fitzgerald interview, but I don't think so.
It could have been during a prank call to whichever poor operator happened to be on duty at the telephone company. It could have been during a call from the late-great Undertaker Fred.
I'm not sure.
I know it wasn't during the infamous night of dead-air. I do, though, remember that night. I was a teenager, I think, tuning in for my nightly dose of ol' Tommy. I remember frantically searching the dial of my 10 dollar clock-radio only hearing crickets, static, and Mexican music on each side of AM 1500. I was honestly scared. I was the type of kid who worried about nuclear war, terrorism, and losing distant radio voices to freak accidents. I guess that's how I found Mischke.
I've always been terrible at sleeping. For some reason when I was 9 or 10 I turned the radio onto the AM dial to lull me to sleep. I came across Art Bell's old show, which only made my fears worse. I'd fall asleep all those years, white knuckled and dreaming of alien abductions. One night I tried to get to sleep early and stumbled across the man that in someway has become a hero to me.
But back to the infamous dead-air night. I was scared. Being the paranoid kid I was I was scared until I heard the pre-recorded Summit commercials. Then I knew old Mischko was up to something.
I listened every night. Like the old poem goes, Mischke became part of my life — all my girlfriends learned of Mischke. I wore Mischke t-shirts, and one time in high school I even reenacted "Big German Bank" at an open mic-night.
I dreamed of the rails, read Kerouac, listened to Bob for hours, and did the other things suburban boys growing up in the strip-mall that is West St. Paul, Minnesota do to find manhood. Manhood or maybe it was just looking for something worth doing.
And Mischke was part of all of that. Every night.
I grew up. Moved to good old St. Paul. Went to college at Hamline University. Got drunk on college nights with Mischke in the background and then disappeared into 100 year old college houses on Midway nights. The houses swayed and sweated with hundreds of co-eds trying to understand my long stories about what "Mischke said tonight".
Then I went to Brussels, Belgium to study journalism and the European Union. I drank the best beer in the world — Belgium beer — with EU politicians and students from around the globe. I saw Europe from narrow alley pubs and the hollowed halls of government. I wrote home about all the characters I'd met, all the things I'd seen, how fantastic and frantic the world (Europe anyway) was, but it was in Brussels where I found out what homesickness meant.
By that time Mischke was on in the afternoons. I stayed up late into the Belgium night waiting for Mischko. I swilled terrible grocery store beer after the pubs closed, dreaming of Summit, waiting for him to come on the Internet. A lot of the time I couldn't stay up — I fell victim to cheap beer in the land of beer Gods or I just had class in the morning.
By that time the show was also being podcast, so I wrote to Tommy to thank him. I was, and I think, still am his biggest fan in Belgium and he read my letter on the air. For some reason that's the closest I ever got to being on the show.
I came home, back to good old St. Paul.
I had a girl that couldn't see me anymore after I had graduated. It was a combination of all sorts of things — things that happen to 23-year-olds. It all ended the day the bridge fell. What followed was a long period of sadness for everyone in Minnesota. Me, for losing young love, and anyone lucky enough to call themselves Minnesotans for losing our own on 35W.
It was dark for a long time. We had the Minnesota get-together to cheer us up soon, though, and me and the old flame still had concert tickets for the Allman Bros. at the fair (I think it was the Allman Bros., it doesn't matter really). The break-up wounds were still gapping, but I see now that this woman cared for me, even is she wasn't gonna be with me. She knew me at least — because the first thing we did was to head over to the KSTP shack and one of my Heroes got to meet his biggest fan in Belgium.
It was a quick meeting. A few words, told him how I was interning at small papers in the area, he gave me some words of encouragement. We shook hands. His show continued. Afterward I finally smiled and bought a long overdue Summit.
I hit the road a year ago and ended up working at a small daily paper in Kentucky. I came home for Thanksgiving this year, guided the whole 14 hours by Mischke's podcast. Somewhere in the miles of tollways surrounding Chicago I narrowly missed falling victim to a semi carrying gigantic car parts. I was laughing too hard to see Illinois toll booths.
In Minnesota, I drank too many Summits, and hit all the old spots in St. Paul and Big Time. I decided that my time in Kentucky had to end soon.
And then today, hearing the news that it was all over, I knew it was time to come back. Hell, I'd missed his CD release show, which almost kept me from going back to the hills of Kentucky in the first place.
I'm sure Mischke will find an outlet. Genius like his endures. But, and I know this is profoundly cliche, part of me ended when I heard the news.
To be even more cliche, part of me grew up. I won't have that St. Paul voice helping me fall asleep in the hills of Appalachia anymore. I'll have to find home some other way.
But, as I said, Mischke will find a way. St. Paul will have to find a way too. It will. After all, it's just a radio show.
The bleak, barren tarmac of University Avenue will be around for a long time. Long after Mischke or anyone else. Someone will find the voice to tell its stories. Instead of booming over 50,000 watts, the stories will likely be told over a Summit or two, in O'Gara's or the Dubliner, or in Midway garages, or on sweaty college nights.
As long as the Mississippi snakes on down through to New Orleans, as long as freight trains interrupt Saint's games at Midway stadium the stories will be told.
Or so I hope.
It could have been during a prank call to whichever poor operator happened to be on duty at the telephone company. It could have been during a call from the late-great Undertaker Fred.
I'm not sure.
I know it wasn't during the infamous night of dead-air. I do, though, remember that night. I was a teenager, I think, tuning in for my nightly dose of ol' Tommy. I remember frantically searching the dial of my 10 dollar clock-radio only hearing crickets, static, and Mexican music on each side of AM 1500. I was honestly scared. I was the type of kid who worried about nuclear war, terrorism, and losing distant radio voices to freak accidents. I guess that's how I found Mischke.
I've always been terrible at sleeping. For some reason when I was 9 or 10 I turned the radio onto the AM dial to lull me to sleep. I came across Art Bell's old show, which only made my fears worse. I'd fall asleep all those years, white knuckled and dreaming of alien abductions. One night I tried to get to sleep early and stumbled across the man that in someway has become a hero to me.
But back to the infamous dead-air night. I was scared. Being the paranoid kid I was I was scared until I heard the pre-recorded Summit commercials. Then I knew old Mischko was up to something.
I listened every night. Like the old poem goes, Mischke became part of my life — all my girlfriends learned of Mischke. I wore Mischke t-shirts, and one time in high school I even reenacted "Big German Bank" at an open mic-night.
I dreamed of the rails, read Kerouac, listened to Bob for hours, and did the other things suburban boys growing up in the strip-mall that is West St. Paul, Minnesota do to find manhood. Manhood or maybe it was just looking for something worth doing.
And Mischke was part of all of that. Every night.
I grew up. Moved to good old St. Paul. Went to college at Hamline University. Got drunk on college nights with Mischke in the background and then disappeared into 100 year old college houses on Midway nights. The houses swayed and sweated with hundreds of co-eds trying to understand my long stories about what "Mischke said tonight".
Then I went to Brussels, Belgium to study journalism and the European Union. I drank the best beer in the world — Belgium beer — with EU politicians and students from around the globe. I saw Europe from narrow alley pubs and the hollowed halls of government. I wrote home about all the characters I'd met, all the things I'd seen, how fantastic and frantic the world (Europe anyway) was, but it was in Brussels where I found out what homesickness meant.
By that time Mischke was on in the afternoons. I stayed up late into the Belgium night waiting for Mischko. I swilled terrible grocery store beer after the pubs closed, dreaming of Summit, waiting for him to come on the Internet. A lot of the time I couldn't stay up — I fell victim to cheap beer in the land of beer Gods or I just had class in the morning.
By that time the show was also being podcast, so I wrote to Tommy to thank him. I was, and I think, still am his biggest fan in Belgium and he read my letter on the air. For some reason that's the closest I ever got to being on the show.
I came home, back to good old St. Paul.
I had a girl that couldn't see me anymore after I had graduated. It was a combination of all sorts of things — things that happen to 23-year-olds. It all ended the day the bridge fell. What followed was a long period of sadness for everyone in Minnesota. Me, for losing young love, and anyone lucky enough to call themselves Minnesotans for losing our own on 35W.
It was dark for a long time. We had the Minnesota get-together to cheer us up soon, though, and me and the old flame still had concert tickets for the Allman Bros. at the fair (I think it was the Allman Bros., it doesn't matter really). The break-up wounds were still gapping, but I see now that this woman cared for me, even is she wasn't gonna be with me. She knew me at least — because the first thing we did was to head over to the KSTP shack and one of my Heroes got to meet his biggest fan in Belgium.
It was a quick meeting. A few words, told him how I was interning at small papers in the area, he gave me some words of encouragement. We shook hands. His show continued. Afterward I finally smiled and bought a long overdue Summit.
I hit the road a year ago and ended up working at a small daily paper in Kentucky. I came home for Thanksgiving this year, guided the whole 14 hours by Mischke's podcast. Somewhere in the miles of tollways surrounding Chicago I narrowly missed falling victim to a semi carrying gigantic car parts. I was laughing too hard to see Illinois toll booths.
In Minnesota, I drank too many Summits, and hit all the old spots in St. Paul and Big Time. I decided that my time in Kentucky had to end soon.
And then today, hearing the news that it was all over, I knew it was time to come back. Hell, I'd missed his CD release show, which almost kept me from going back to the hills of Kentucky in the first place.
I'm sure Mischke will find an outlet. Genius like his endures. But, and I know this is profoundly cliche, part of me ended when I heard the news.
To be even more cliche, part of me grew up. I won't have that St. Paul voice helping me fall asleep in the hills of Appalachia anymore. I'll have to find home some other way.
But, as I said, Mischke will find a way. St. Paul will have to find a way too. It will. After all, it's just a radio show.
The bleak, barren tarmac of University Avenue will be around for a long time. Long after Mischke or anyone else. Someone will find the voice to tell its stories. Instead of booming over 50,000 watts, the stories will likely be told over a Summit or two, in O'Gara's or the Dubliner, or in Midway garages, or on sweaty college nights.
As long as the Mississippi snakes on down through to New Orleans, as long as freight trains interrupt Saint's games at Midway stadium the stories will be told.
Or so I hope.
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