Celebrate MPR's 30th Anniversary

MPR and Me: 4

My earliest recollection of listening to MPR is a Saturday late afternoon/evening in the summer of 1978 or 1979. This soothing, foggy voice was chatting about his hometown of Lake Wobegon. Not being a native Minnesotan (I'm from IOWA) I wasn't sure if the place he was describing was real or fiction. Either way, it sounded much like the small towns around which I grew up and made me feel at home even though I was 250 miles away from "home".
After moving to the St. Cloud area in 1981 I listened to the morning program from KSJR with Garrison Keillor as the host. He even played Beach Boys music then! I still listen to the Morning Program regularly and enjoy it as much or even more. Thanks for all the years of enjoyment. And, yes I am a member and have even volunteered during a fund drive.
Shari Samuelson, Coon Rapids, MN

1. One of my first MPR memories is being spooked my Michael Barone's wonderful program Pipedreams in the middle of a pounding thunderstorm that eventually produced a tornado. I was in an apartment working for a weekly newspaper in Olivia, Minn., in the summer of 1991. It was a little like being in my own, private horror movie. I expected Dracula to burst into the basement of the building where me and my dog were hiding in fear.
2. My favorite MPR memory involves golf and Grieg. I live in Grand Forks, ND. It was in the late spring, a beautiful time to be in the Red River Valley, and I was out on a little driving range at one of the courses in town. It was early evening, and I was just practicing, so I had my headphones on and was listening to a live broadcast of Grieg's music from Peer Gynt. I was just lofting balls out into this empty space, listening very intensely to the music. Finally, I lined up a shot and took a slow backswing just as the music was coming to a conclusion. As I reached the top of my swing, the music ended. I turned and hit the ball in the 1 or 2 seconds between when the performance ended and the applause began. As a perfectly struck 6 iron arched across a cloudless blue spring sky, I got to hear something usually reserved for golfers such as Tom Lehman: Thundering applause! As I walked down the open field, I raised my hand and waved to the crowd hidden among the surrounding towering pine trees, only to look into the adjoining fairway to see a group of golfers looking rather strangely at me. What they thought, I have no idea. I just waved and laughed out loud.
Andrew Braford, Grand Forks, ND

No MPR met us when we moved to the Twin Cities in 1963, but we greeted its founding four years later with enthusiasm - imagine day-long good music, without commercials. It sounded like an impossible luxury to ever appear, but it worked, with support from a few interested people and some businesses. I'm not sure what year we sent in our first contribution, but it was early in MPR history in the Twins - my wife at home listened with greater regularity than I did, and she sent the first of our annual payments, which I think was $25. Then, as now, we seldom listened to any other station, have learned to hate commercials more than ever, and strongly appreciate what MPR does. We further blessed MPR when the station in Bemidji went in, so we could get music and news at our lake place in the summer. Again we cheered at the mitosis that produced both a music and a news station; and again when that happened in Bemidji. Our service continues in excellence, and we are grateful for non-commercial radio, for the fine staff, for the many original programs originating here, for PRI, for the Fitzgerald Theater and emergency support for the SPCO -- many more blessings brought to us. And all in thirty years! Keep growing, keep thriving, and augment membership. Minnesota nice? You betcha!
William L. Downing

Probably my favorite memory of MPR is actually a memory of my son who, when he was learning to talk in about 1976 would describe something really big or something of large quantity as "two-nigh." For the longest time I could not figure out where he picked that up, but pledge week happened at some point and the announcers kept saying 290-9190 over and over again and it occurred to me that he thought "two-nigh" meant a lot.
Other memories include the morning Prairie Home Show, Jim Ed Poole's chicken, Curtis, and the Transom Hotel, as well as the early years of the present Morning Show and the Captain Don DuCoyne, Dr. Larry Kyle, and other sketches.
I really miss the early news people Dulcie Lawrence, Connie Goldman, Greg Baron, etc. They were so good and so human. I miss the more straightforward style of news reporting from when the news announcers and reporters were not so disdainful and off-hand about every story. I liked being able to listen all day going from an occasional Sousa march at 6:00 a.m. in the Garrison Keillor days to a Randy Newman song to more substantive news periods to classical music to All Things Considered in the afternoon. I will never forget Kevin McKiernan's coverage of the stand-off at Wounded Knee. Bless Dale and Jim Ed for playing Ethel Merman and for their ever-more-subtle, but still irreverent, humor. Bless them also for playing that execrable song "Little Potato.". I think I have never hated any piece of music as much as I hate that one.
My children grew up with MPR, playing on the grass in the sculpture garden at the Arts and Sciences Center in the summer during Prairie Home Companion shows, listening to the news from Lake Wobegon, noticing their piano lesson pieces being played on the radio, listening to the Star Wars series, laughing through Car Talk, and hearing news reports with substance.
Although it is understandable that MPR's, as well as NPR's, survival depends on the move to blandness and the excision of in-depth, critical analysis of current events, I will always most fondly think of MPR as it was from about 1975 to about 1988 or so when it was apparently less dependent on big money and the approval of the establishment and could take real risks in presenting perspectives that were not always mainstream.
Linda S. Taylor, Minneapolis, MN

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