Okay, it's been since April since you heard from Margaret and me. A bit has happened since then, so I'll give you the end of the story first: I'm out of work, Margaret's working, we're in good health (no emergency room visits for either of us), and the house, cats, and cars are all just fine. Families on both sides are well also, so this would be a terrifically upbeat e-letter if I had a job. (And if you don't have a thing for details, you can stop reading now. If it's the fine print you want, read on, and I'll lead you through everything roughly chronologically.)
April 2002 - My radio show of the last 10 years, "Crap From The Past", made the finals at the NFCB's Golden Reel Awards. My show was one of four finalists in the category of Best Local Entertainment/Music Series. Fame and fortune did not immediately follow. Surprisingly.
May 2002 - My brother Kenny flew in for a weekend, and boy did he pick the right weekend! In the span of two days, Kenny went to an ADC party (all funded by the employees) over the border in Wisconsin, complete with a live band (ADC employees), a few deep-fried turkeys, and a whole lot of seafood. Margaret adopted a crawfish. ("No, honey, it's food." "But I want one!") We took it home in a big coffee can, and she kept in the backyard in a huge flower pot that held around 30 gallons. She came up with a name after about two days of deep thought: Claude. Claude lived happily for a few weeks, which is a few weeks longer than anybody would have guessed. Margaret attributed some human qualities to Claude ("He looks happy today."), and all were amused until Claude passed away a few weeks later. And no, we did not eat him.
One day after the Claude-adoption party, Kenny got to attend the bestest party ever, thrown by us: Cinco De Mayo, Gerber-style! The menu was straightforward - microwave burritos for everybody, and you had to eat five (cinco) of them. For the record, only Kenny and I had that many. And for dessert, a mountain of Little Debbie snack cakes. I vote, Best Party Ever.
The rest of May was dull.
June 2002 - Started off DJing a wedding in Hibbing, the hometown of Bob Dylan, which is about 3-1/2 hours north of Minneapolis. I was the DJ and Margaret was a guest, so I'd have company on the road - a good thing. When it came time to load up my car, I had a flat (dang!), so I took all of Margaret's junk out of her car and replaced it with my junk, and off we drove. About 30 miles into the drive, the muffler gave way and started dragging on the ground. Long story short - Margaret, after years of experience with her Pinto and '83 Accord, successfully climbed underneath the car and tied up the muffler with some bailing wire and a large piece of cable. It made noise like a jet engine, but it didn't drag on the ground, and we were able to get back on the road after a delay of only about 90 minutes. We made it up to Hibbing, and I got the equipment set up and ready to go with a whole 9 minutes before the ceremony started. Sweet!
Now normal people would have rented a hotel room and driven back the next morning. But not me - I had another DJ gig the next morning at 9 AM. So we drove back, and I pulled into the driveway about 4:30 AM. The next morning, left at 7:30 with the same noisy carload full of equipment, and did my gig. I don't remember much about the second one, to be honest. Later in the day, we got the muffler fixed properly, and I bought two small compressors that plug into the cigarette lighters, one for each car. Then I got my tire patched and we lived happily ever after.
Last weekend in June - My cousins threw a surprise anniversary party for my aunt and uncle, who were married 35 years! Margaret and I took a weekend off and flew to Washington DC for the party. (DC in June? Not hot & sticky at ALL!) It was a major affair, and they invited around 75 people to the restaurant, including family members I'd never met before, and my 91-year-old grandmother who flew up from Florida. It went flawlessly - my aunt cried, and my uncle (a lobbyist who has never ever been at a loss for words) was at a loss for words. Magnificent. There's a special place in heaven for my cousins, who arranged the whole thing.
While out in DC, Margaret and I had a few minutes to kill at some point, and wandered into a dollar store. Since I have a strange fascination with off-kilter food, we found ourselves in the cereal aisle. (Recall that last year, I mailed four boxes of Kaboom cereal to my house in Minneapolis from my sister-in-law's place in Tampa. Ate two, two left.)
This store in DC carried a whole line of not-quite-right knock-offs: Corn Pops became Corny Toots, and Frosted Flakes morphed into Frosty Flakes. And just like Kellogg's had Tony The Tiger, this off-brand had their own trademarked spokesman for Frosty Flakes: Berg. Yes, Berg. (Because frosty means cold with the iceBergs, I suppose.) This Berg creature was a trademarked character, and I can only imagine the fine line of Berg products that blossomed from Frosty Flakes...
There's a particular Italian restaurant here in town that my friends and I go to for lunch on Wednesdays. It's a long-standing tradition, well over 2 years at this point. When they bring out the check, they always leave a handful of Dum-Dum lollipops, and we go out of our way to avoid the "Buttered Popcorn" flavor. When one of our little group said that he likes the Buttered Popcorn Dum-Dums, the restaurant gave him a huge bag of just Buttered Popcorns that they filtered out from their assortment. The novelty wore off quick (2000 nasty lollipops - ack!), and the bag sat untouched for a few weeks until Weimin, a co-worker, discovered that he likes them. We gave him the whole bag, and all was well for a few months until he got a toothache and had to stop eating them. And just for the record, the official Dum-Dum Pops website said that they stopped manufacturing the Buttered Popcorn flavor as of Nov 2001. Apparently, nobody likes them at all.
July 2002 - For the first time, it was legal to sell and use sparklers in Minnesota, so we threw the Best July 4th Party In History. Keep in mind that my family never got to play with sparklers or fireworks of any kind, so we never got past the pyromaniac phase of development. Much to Margaret's dismay, we set fire to EVERYTHING on our concrete patio (Woo-hoo!), and when we ran out of stuff, we sent some friends out to buy more! Unfortunately, the only place that was still open was Walgreen's, and they returned with a package of gauze and a bottle of rubbing alcohol. Which worked quite well, actually. And we left a permanent stain on the patio.
End of July - Margaret found a nice set of Oster clippers, like the barber uses. She suggested that she cut my hair, using the logic that I didn't have very much of it and no one would notice if anything bad happened. (The same logic that says that since I don't have any cavities, that even Margaret could be my dentist.) The first time we tried it, it came out OK. Pretty good. Looked just fine. Nice job.
The second time she tried it, I heard "Oops" after about 15 seconds. OOPS?!? Without even looking, I grabbed my keys and drove over to my barber, where I explained everything up until Oops, and asked him to fix it. We laughed and laughed, and he fixed it, but it came out mighty short. Plus he gave me a little paper temporary tattoo, the same one that he gives little kids when they try to cut their own hair and mommy brings them to the barber to fix it. Did I mention that my hair was now mighty short?
Well, chronologically, we were up to mid-summer. I think it's time I brought you up to speed on my job situation.
By April, I knew my job (as an optical engineer) at ADC (a telecom company) was in jeopardy. WorldCom, one of our biggest customers, filed for bankruptcy sometime in early '02. Adelphia, a cable company and another big customer, made headlines when charges were filed against its top management for embezzling millions. Great. I ain't no Harvard Business student or nothin', but I figured out that if all of your big customers go bankrupt, then you're in deep trouble.
And that's what was happening at ADC. We figured out when the layoffs come, down to the day. They started on Aug 1, 2001, and continued like clockwork (plus or minus a day) every three months, to coincide with the beginning of every fiscal quarter. Aug '01, Nov '01, Feb '02, May '02. Like clockwork. And somehow they kept me around through all of those.
Until August 1, 2002. They let half our building go, a total of about 75 people. They let the other 75 go three months later on Halloween, thereby eliminating all of photonics from a company that had essentially bet the farm on photonics. I predict there won't be much left of ADC in a year or two.
So the days got a lot longer for me in August. The first two weeks were great. The weather was gorgeous, and I put a whole lot of effort into planning some Crap From The Past shows, which came out sounding spectacular. After two weeks of not working, though, I got a bit restless and underfoot, since the house belongs to Margaret during the day and I'm not really supposed to be there.
End of August was the Minnesota State Fair, always a highlight of the summer. There was the ever-present food on a stick, and this year's novelty item was deep-fried macaroni and cheese on a stick. Ish! But still better than last year's deep-fried candy bar on a stick. Margaret and I showed up extra early on a Thursday to beat the crowds and to see the llama judging. She likes her llamas.
Aug 31 2002 - I got a new pair of comfortable Rockport shoes that I've worn every day since. Black, slip-on, no laces, dignified enough to wear to work, although the work thing wasn't much of an issue for me.
By September, I had plenty of time to fill, so I started doing more work at KFAI, the all-volunteer radio station that runs "Crap From The Past". I even got to host a morning show, which increased my visibility at the station about a hundred-fold. Miraculously, a show called the Friday Night Poker Party decided to call it quits after a 7-year run, and I (after a slow but thorough selection process) inherited the Friday night time slot. Blam - from graveyard to prime time, starting at the beginning of October. So CFTP now airs on Friday nights from 10:30 to midnight, and normal people can listen now, and I'm not dopey on Mondays for the first time in 3-1/2 years. (Not that I need to get up on Mondays right now, but I will presumably have a new job at some point.)
End of October 2002 - I didn't have anything better to do, so we rented a van and drove to Margaret's hometown of Yuma, Colorado. (Recall that during our last trip to Yuma last summer, I caught the bubonic plague from a diseased bunny. Now that cases of the plague turned up in New York, I don't look as crazy as you thought, eh? Somewhat of a trendsetter, I must say...)
So off we drive to Yuma in a cargo van the size of Connecticut. At least that's how it drove. We filled it up with stuff from Margaret's mom's house, and drove back. All pretty uneventfully, actually. And because Margaret's mom takes pictures of the oddest things, I now have pictures of the actual bunny that gave me the plague. Stupid bunny.
November 2002 - I told my barber to give me the shortest haircut ever. He did. It was plenty short. A few weeks later, I took the plunge and cut my own hair with the adjustable clippers that Margaret found over the summer. My hair is now about 1/4-inch long all over my head, and I've rendered my barber obsolete. I feel kinda bad about that because I really like my barber, so I'm trying to get some friends to go there and replace me.
For those of you that haven't seen me in a while, there wasn't a whole lot left on the top of my head anyway. Rather than go down the comb-over route, or the unwieldy Gallagher/David Crosby route for that matter, I'll be keeping my hair supa-short from now on. You won't even miss it when it's gone.
And I figured that as long as I was updating my image, I may as well get new glasses. My old frames are circa 1991, and the little round glasses are fine for Harry Potter, but Margaret voted them off the island. Intrigued by a small mom-n-pop optical shop that we discovered way across town, I decided to get new frames. And not just any new frames. Margaret always said that I look like my grandfather in his wedding picture, so I brought in my grandfather's wedding picture from 1936, and had them copy the frames and lenses. As you might imagine, the small staff there went bananas over it, and my job was probably the highlight of their month. I now have a pair of rimless glasses, with sorta-hexagonal lenses. The guy at the optical place had been doing this for 30 years, and he immediately recognized the design as frame xxx, manufactured by company yyy, located right here on page zzz of their catalog. (I forget the specifics, but he sure knew his stuff.) My new glasses look pretty cool, I must say, and the shape of the lenses exactly matches an antique pair of sunglasses that Margaret already had - apparently this was a very common shape back then. I'm hoping they won't look as dated as my last pair in 10 years, but after 66 years, I'm not too worried.
And another item to make me feel old. I was talking with a friend who's 8 years younger than I am. He said he used to listen to Rush back in high school. I told him that I used to listen to Rush aw well - those Canadian guys could rock! He said no, he meant Rush Limbaugh. I was verrrry disappointed.
And a friend noticed that you can go into any restaurant and order a "kicker". It can be a drink, an appetizer, a rack of ribs. Darn near anything. But it's always on the menu...
Last year, as part of the holiday festivities on the radio show, I did a show devoted entirely to the work of pop songwriter Holly Knight (punnily called "Silent Night Holly Knight"). She's not a household name, but her songs were huge in the '80s: "Love Is A Battlefield", "The Warrior", "Better Be Good To Me", "The Best" (that Tina turner song that shows up in TV ads), and over 20 others. The show came out great, and I've been in touch with her since then.
This year, she agreed to do a phone interview with me, and on the Dec 6 show, she sat in for the entire 90-minute show on the phone, talking about her career and all sorts of interesting music stuff. I was in heaven, as you might imagine, and the show came out great. I'm a bit awkward for the first 10 minutes because I'm inexperienced as an interviewer, but she was terrific start to finish. It was certainly a high point for me, and I think Holly enjoyed it as well. Can you imagine - she had all sort of media attention about 15 years ago, and out of the blue, this radio guy does a serious 90-minute interview with her because he thinks that she deserves more recognition for her body of work from the '80s. Must be pretty cool, and I only hope that my radio work is remembered in 15 years.
In a strange development, my radio show is now heard on *2* radio stations: KFAI in Minneapolis, and GoldRush Radio in Lawrence, Otego, New Zealand. Yep, CFTP airs on Saturday nights at 7 in New Zealand! The station there doesn't have a website, but I think they're a community-run station just like the one here in Minneapolis. What a hoot!
So it's mid-December and I'm not working, but Margaret is. When my benefits ran out in October, she got a job at Williams-Sonoma, a high-end kitchen store at the Galleria, an uppity mall just over the border in the uppity suburb of Edina, about a mile from the house. The hours aren't bad, her co-workers are pretty nice, and I appreciate the effort she's putting in. I'm not altogether comfortable with the role reversal - the laundry is done and the house is spotlessly clean, but the food is not as good as when Margaret was cooking. And I've noticed that Margaret's co-workers are the most attractive women in the state, all somehow squashed together under one roof. She pointed this little factoid out to me, and I had to check it out with my own eyes. It's true, although I don't understand how. (Powers at work that are far greater than my little brain can comprehend.) It's fun to go visit, knowing that I'm the only straight guy in the store who wants to be there...
I've gone on a few job interviews so far, but nothing yet. Each time I get my hopes up, I get crushed like a bug. Which is why I haven't written lately - I'd been hoping for some shred of good news so I could end the letter on a happy note. But no.
...And now, time for the rebuttal. The car would have been fixed much faster, but we had wasted time trying to find a garage in a crappy, awful, little town called NORTH BRANCH that no one should ever, ever visit. You would think two city slickers with a busted car and a credit card would be any small-town mechanic's ..., um, "dream", but this horrible blight of a town just kept telling us, "Well, we always close at noon, and it's almost noon. Bye." So, I used a coat hanger, a tomato paste can, and some JB Weld to fix the muffler. It lasted five minutes, then back to the soothing strains of jet wash rumbling out from under the car. How can a lowly imported four-banger sound like a cargo plane? There were two ironies that morning: 1 - I had to argue strenuously with Ron that he couldn't take "all that crap" out of the back of the car. ("Oh, come on, there's an empty can in there! And a coat hanger! Why do you drive around with all this crap in your car?") 2 - since we would be traveling through some long stretches of nothing, I had taken the precaution of putting "deer whistles" on the front grills of both cars. They are supposed to emit an ultrasonic shriek that scares deer from running across the highway. "Good for blank hundred feet" the package said. All the way up, and all the way back, I really don't think the deer ever got a chance to hear the whistles because they had been deafened by the muffler about 3 miles before we got near them.
When we went to Washington, D.C., we stayed in the outskirts and drove into town to rendezvous with the family. Every time, we passed a street called Gibbon. Every time, I did my best imitation of one. Ron said it got old. Not for me!
Ah, Williams-Sonoma. It is very, very strange. The rest of the country is in the grip of a recession, but not at that location. It's the #1 selling location in the U.S., no qualifiers, #1. It's even doing better this year than it did last year. The doctor/lawyer neighborhood it's located in is apparently recession-proof, also, as a small "boutique" mall, we are the only ones with any kind of real parking. So people who drive up from Iowa to do Christmas shopping hit the Target across the street, then shop in the snooty mall because it's easier to get to than a "real" mall. For all their huge money-making, Williams-Sonoma refuses to pay benefits to full-time employees, claiming that we are "casual" employees even though we work full-time and don't choose our hours. Hmmm... I also don't think they hire straight men. Demographically, the employees are a bit abnormal. But all very nice and friendly.
Ron's new "do" makes him look a little like Matt Lauer from one of the morning "news" shows that I can't figure out what their purpose is. If you're going to work, you don't have time to waste watching someone else's weather. If you're not working what do you care what the weather is anyway? Oh, well, I'm complaining because we can't afford cable anymore and broadcast is a Vast Wasteland. After cable, even PBS sucks.
Ron forgot to mention that on the way back from Yuma, we were forced to spend the night in Iowa and were subjected to the local election ads. Oh my god, Iowans are not nice at all! Their ads were the worst, slanderous, most mudslinging collection of exaggeration I have ever seen. The Saturday Night Live skits didn't even come close to the real things we were subjected to. Oh, yeah, the hotel was across the highway from some kind of bar called "The Icky Nickel" located in the midst of some stockyards. I'll let you speculate.
So at the end of the year, all goes well except I'm unemployed. (If you've got an extra engineering job in Minneapolis, then we need to talk.) Looks like the Emergency Room Competition will end in a tie at 0-0. Could be worse, I suppose. Here's hoping that you and yours have a warm and fuzzy holiday season, and we'll talk to all y'all soon.
Ron & Margaret Gerber
