Category Archives: Personal History

Cliff Birklund

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I’ve been thinking a lot about advertising these days. Radio advertising in particular. I have met hundreds of radio sales people during the past 30+ years. My father sold for many years.

Cliff Birklund (I don’t remember how Cliff spelled his name) was hired to do news at KBOA but eventually moved into sales. In a previous life, he was a commercial artist and I’ll never forgive myself for not saving more of his doodles. This one is a classic (have I posted this before?) but I’ve always liked this self-portrait.

Update: Bob Heater asks how Cliff could have –in 1978– doodled something on a 1989 calendar page. I left KBOA in 1984 so I must have salvaged the drawing on a later visit to Kennett.

Where is Mike Neely?

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When we last heard from him, boyhood friend Mike Neely was living the good life in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. But the last email address he used is bouncing. Mike, send me your current address. Joe Browning wants it, too. If anyone else has any contact info for Mike, please send it to me at stevemays at Hotmail.com.

Update: Joe Browning came up with Mike’s phone numbers and address. Won’t post them here but will provide upon request.

Great places to work

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The firm where Barb works had a fund-raiser today for the hurricane relief effort. Her boss, prominent attorney and fun guy Harvey Tettlebaum, agreed to wear a clown suit if they raised $2,400.

And everyone in my department at Learfield Communications received this email late this afternoon from our chief financial officer:

I’ve scheduled an off-site meeting the afternoon of September 14 at Clyde’s (our CEO) house. This is a very important meeting and I expect you all to attend if you can. We will watch the movie “Office Space” and drink beer. Please mark your calendars.

Smoker’s Math

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While I’m on the subject. One of my co-workers is trying to quit smoking. She proudly reported that she’s down from a pack-a-day, to just five cigarettes. She seems to really want to stop and I hope she makes it. But the math kept nagging at me.

Let’s say she starts smoking when she gets up at 7:00 a.m and has her last one before retiring at, say, 11:00 p.m. So she consumes 20 smokes over a 16 hour day. On average, that works out to a cigarette every 48 minutes. And if it takes 5 minutes to smoke one, every 40 minutes she’s reaching for the Virginia Slims. That can’t be right, how would she ever get anything done? So I went back and asked.

“Well, I usually had about three cigarettes before I came to work. Maybe three or four during lunch. And the rest after work. Oh, and we usually take a couple of breaks during the day but only long enough to smoke one.” Okay, let’s re-run the numbers:

07:00 – 08:00 — 3
08:00 – 12:00 — 1
12:00 – 01:00 — 4
01:00 – 05:00 — 1
05:00 – 11:00 — 11

That only leaves 6 hours to smoke 11 cigarettes. One every half-hour until bedtime. My mom smoked two packs a day, every day. If she was awake, she had a Winston in her hand or in the nearby ash try. It was hard but satisfying work and she loved it.

Remembering The Bomb

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The Sundance Channel will air a documentary film tonight (7pm) titled Original Child Bomb that features portions of footage shot by U.S. military crews and Japanese newsreel teams, in the weeks following the atomic attacks on Japan almost 60 years ago. The public did not see any of the newsreel footage for 25 years, and the U.S. military film remained hidden for nearly four decades. I’ve got the Tivo set to record.

Anyone who grew up in Kennett, Missouri, in the 50’s has memories of B-52 bombers roaring overhead on their landing approach to the Strategic Air Command (SAC) base at Blytheville, Arkansas (about 30 miles away?). They were undoubtedly hundreds of feet up but it felt like you could throw a rock and hit them. Even as children, we knew they carried The Bomb. As we got a little older, we came to understand that a Russian ICBM was almost certainly targeted for our little corner of the world. But we certainly had no understanding of what it would mean to get “nuked.”

The atomic bombing of Japan probably avoided an invasion that would have cost countless lives. I seem to recall my dad (in the Navy, in the Pacific Theater) telling me he might have been part of that. So, I’m glad we ended it when we did, the way we did. Shit, I might never have been born if pop had bought the farm invading Japan.

But that was then and this is now. And George Bush has his finger on The Button. Is there anyone I trust less? Maybe.

Family

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I spent a few days with my brother and his family last week. They’re home for a six month furlough and it’s been more than two years since I saw them. We assembled a basketball goal and caught up on (too many) missed birthdays. Basketball (my eyes tell the story) has become a traditional part of each visit and I fear the next time we play, Blane (47) and I (57) will no longer prevail over Ryan (15) and Spencer (13). More to come on the visit.

“Dead Celebrity” party

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“My name is Joy and we are having a “dead” celebrity Halloween party and I stumbled upon your invitation (of) the death certificate. It is fantastic! Do you know where I can find a copy of a blank death certificate to make our invitations with? I thought you might be of some help since you have done this before. Your help would be much appreciated. Hope to hear back from you soon!”

I love that she is having a “dead celebrity” party and using fake death certificates for the invitations. I love that she somehow found her way to The Basement Diaries. And I love that her name is Joy.

I believe in yesterday.

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A year ago I asked: If you experienced the worst day of your life…something truly horrible…and there was a drug that made you forget the previous 24 hours, would you take it?

I was reminded of this today when I had to send my Thinkpad back in time to a “restore point” where life was good. To a time (last night) before it got so screwed up it wouldn’t even boot up. Man, what a great feature and pretty damned close to a time machine.

Some of us would wear that Button out, hoping for a better day today. Might work if we only got to use it, say, three times in a lifetime. Yeah, today sucked… but do I really want to use up one of my “go back to yesterday” options?

It only works because –with my laptop– I can change the future. I know what I did to screw the pooch so I won’t do that again. Could we be trusted with that knowledge in life?

Gnomedex 2005

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Gnomedex officially gets underway tomorrow but there was a gathering of the geeks tonight at the opening reception. I chatted with half a dozen co-attendees and the common thread running through every conversation was a passion for blogging. I was reminded of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. All of these unconnected people (Steve Lacey, Steve Duncan, Jason Laskodi), irresistably drawn to this common location. They didn’t know what or why, they just knew they had to get there. Similar vibe.