TBT - AND THEN I WROTE . . .

What good is a blog if the author can't brag a little, right?

Okay, I have dropped pieces of my many, many years in this blog before but let's put them all in order.

I was born and raised in Stanley, a tiny town in North Dakota not far from the Canadian border.

Me and my dad

Even as a wee tot I struggled manfully to survive the deadly climate I was forced to live in.

Me and my big brother

Rushing on ahead, when I was in my early teens I discovered electricity and then ham radio, which helped me through those long wintry days and nights.

I moved on to college, where I was known as a diligent scholar.

That was also where I first worked for a commercial radio station, KEYJ in Jamestown and met a fellow I worked with and maintained a friendship of more than half a century with, Dan Brannan or, as I've always called him, Danny Bananas.

Even back then Danny didn't know enough to come in out of the rain

Beginning my "real" life in the outer world I landed a job at KCJB Radio in Minot, where I was known as the rock and roll disc jockey Bruce on the Loose.

That lasted a little while until I got fired and ended up with a t.v. job in Aberdeen, South Dakota . . at KXAB-TV.

Covering the birth of the Fischer Quintuplets

Then it was back to North Dakota and a job in both radio and television at KFYR in Bismarck.

I had a mentor, Bob MacLeod

And later I mentored, in turn, Bob Barclay

I learned to interview newsmakers live on television . . .

Newly elected Congressman Tom Kleppe and I

. . . and how to film politicians while walking backwards in front of them . . .

. . . I got a handshake with Chet Huntley, back when he was doing the Huntley-Brinkley report.

(I also met his partner, Brinkley, and I have such a story about him but I can't tell it here!!!)

. . . and I met the legendary and lithe UPI man, Ed Stattmann . . .

. . . and a pal I later followed to Indianapolis (and Ed followed us both), Orly Knutson who retired after 50 years as a radio announcer.

The Happy Norwegian at the Indy 500 during practice around 1969

During a 3-year stint at WIBC and WNAP in Indianapolis, I met a couple of young tyros, Tom Cochrun and Chris Connor.

Cris, as you can probably tell from this picture, was the dj;

Tom and I, in our ties and striped shirts, were the newsmen

Those ties were kept around our necks by the news director, the late Fred Heckman.

Then, before you know it, it was off to Phoenix with a new wife, the storied and fabled SWMBO.

There I landed a job with KTAR-TV, which later became KPNX-TV.

Weekends spent writing and producing newscasts were gruelling

But I got to have some fun with some big stories.

A "stand-up" in front of the U.S. Capitol with Baseball Steve

Giving reporter Ron Talley the benefit of my vast experience during the Sandra Day O'Connor Supreme Court nomination hearings

Wally Athey, Talley, Linda Alvarez and I feeding a story from Washington home to Phoenix

And I worked with some great people there.

Bill Redeker, later of ABC News

Diane Kalas, veteran of the radio wars in Pittsburgh, Boston and San Francisco

Jerry Foster, Bill Denney, Kent Dana, not long after "crossing the street"

Lin Sue Cooney and Mark Curtis

Lew Ruggiero, Baseball Steve Torbeck, Karl Kindberg & I

I even made enough money to be able to afford a month-long tour of Europe with SWMBO in 1985.

Well, shut my mouth!

We came back from Europe and a couple of months later I walked out of Channel 12, due to a variety of reasons.

A couple of years later, we moved to Mexico, where we were met by some welcoming gringo expatriates.

Brent Bogdonavich & Terry Taylor (no relation)

We met a lot more people down there.

The ones still alive are still our friends.

We also celebrated our 20th anniversary with many of them.

We spent a little more than four years living in the land of palm trees and eternal springtime sunshine in the Guadalajara area before moving to Austin, Texas.

Less than two years there was enough and it was back to Arizona.

Judy worked in a used bookstore for a couple of years and then we built our own, Bookends in Prescott Valley.

It survived 7 years before we gave it up.

I still had a couple of years to go to retirement so I went back to radio, working as the news director at KYCA in Prescott.

One of my compadres there was big Jeff Demand.

Finally in 2006, I cashed in my chips for good and have been (mostly) enjoying retirement ever since.

That's the short version.

One of these days let me tell you about . . . .