Interview With Mark Minnick of WOC Radio in
Q.
Well, it's been a few years, and we are delighted to have you back before a
microphone at WOC, Mr. President.
The President. Well, I'm very pleased
to be here.
Q.
Some things haven't changed. There were long velvet curtains when you were in
the studios above
The President. Oh, well, I have to
tell you that, no, this was very lucky. I graduated in June of that year, 1932,
and went back in order to get some money in those dark Depression days. It was
the very depth of the Depression -- and went back to the job that I had been
doing for 6 previous years for the summer and that was lifeguarding
in the
So,
I started out hitchhiking around to find a station that would give me a chance.
And this one I came to, and crossed the river and came here. And Peter MacArthur was the man who gave me the very unusual audition
when he heard sports announcing was an idea of mine. He stood me in front of a
microphone and told me when the light came on to start broadcasting an
imaginary football game, and I did for about 15 minutes. And when I came back,
he told me, ``Be here Saturday. We'll give you $10 and
busfare. You're broadcasting the Iowa-Minnesota
game.''
Q.
I don't think they had the Floyd of Rosedale trophy at that time, but they've
since come up with this pig that they give away to the winner of the game. At
that time, I noticed in your book you said you were hired, fired, and rehired
at WOC. [Laughter]
The President. Well, yes. Then, after
several football games that I broadcast were over, there was no place regularly
for me, but they said they thought there would be. And so, I went home, and I
waited until around February before I got a call that there was an opening. And
then I became a staff announcer, who, on the side would handle sporting events.
And I came here, and one night I felt it my duty to introduce the mortuary
feature in which we used the mortuary's organ for popular music, and so forth.
But nobody told me that the arrangement was that they got a kind of a
commercial plug in return for furnishing their facility and their organ. And
so, I just sounded off without it and that caused a little rumpus. [Laughter]
But
anyway, there had been a man that they had been talking to and offering a job
to for some time before. And he came here, and I was told that I was out. But
he came, well, when he found out that -- he had thought that there was an
actual vacancy. And when he found out that, no, I was leaving, he insisted on a
contract to guarantee that --
--
Q.
Which made the folks blanch.
The President. And they wouldn't do
it. And so they came to me and told me I was unfired. [Laughter]
Neil
Reagan
Q.
Friday, we've had very good luck of having a couple of Reagans.
Moon Reagan, your brother, I believe -- --
The President. Yes?
Q. -- -- came to work here. I don't remember. I
think he was a program director for a time.
The President. Yes, yes. And then he
left the actual broadcasting business to become a vice president of
McCann-Erickson Advertising Agency. But yes, he'd graduated from college a year
after me. He's my older brother. But in the Roaring Twenties, when he got out
of high school, that was before the crash. Everybody seemed -- the job seemed
to be so good that, never mind college. But when I made it for 1 year, working
my way through, he decided that, well, maybe he'd like to do that, too. And so,
having played on a championship high school team between myself and the coach,
we managed to find a job for him on the campus, and he came to college. So, I
became the older brother, and I was the sophomore, and he was the freshman. But
then when he got out of school, he came over to see me, and I ended up getting
him some things to do.
Sports
Announcing
Q.
The thirties, you know, have given us a lot of the programming ideas that we
still use today, perhaps the most important decade. I think you did a football
prediction-type show in between records, more or less invented that or the
first time it was done in Des Moines, at any rate, and -- --
The President. Yes.
Q. -- -- and your brother joined in on that?
The President. Yes. As a matter of
fact, that's how it started, that they then gave him something to do. He was in
the studio, and when I was making my predictions on Friday night for the
Saturday games and how they were going to come out, I'd see him shaking his
head that I was wrong on one. And he was sitting in front of a microphone, as
you are, opposite me, just visiting and doing -- and I said, ``My brother's
here with me, and he seems to disagree with -- '', and I asked him, I said,
``Well, who and why do you think that such-and-such a team is going to win?''
Well, we finished a program with a conversation between us, and then, Peter MacArthur, very generously knowing that he was out of
school and out of work, gave him a fee for -- and we turned over the football
predictions to him, and the scores.
Q.
You did a lot of baseball games. A lot of our listeners don't have any idea of
doing a baseball game from a tickertape, but you did
hundreds.
The President. Yes.
Q.
A lot of the Cubs' games, both here and in
The President. Well, yes, I had an
operator on the other side of the window, and he had the earphones on and was
getting them Morse code from the ballpark and, with a typewriter, he would tap
off what the play was, send it through to me, and I would -- well, it would
have to come through pretty worked-down. For example, he'd hand me a slip of
paper that said S - 1 - C. You can't sell any Wheaties
saying S - 1 - C. So I would say, ``Dean comes out of the windup, here comes
the pitch, and it's a call strike, breaking over the corner toward the
batter,'' and so forth. And on this particular day, it was ninth inning, tied
up between the Cubs and Cards, and Billy Jurges at
bat, and I saw Curly typing, so I waited. And he starts shaking his head. And I
thought it must be some sensational play but when the slip came to me, it says,
``The wire's gone dead.'' [Laughter] Well, in those
days, there wasn't one fellow broadcasting the games as there are today. There
were a dozen stations doing the same game. And I knew that if I said we've got
to play a musical interlude -- --
Q.
Nobody's buying that.
The President. -- -- I'd lose the audience. So, what he
handed me was I had a ball on the way to the plate. So, I had Jurges foul it off, and then I looked back, and he just
shrugged. And so I thought, well, that's one thing that doesn't get on the
scorecard, so I took a chance, and I had Billy foul off another one. And then
he fouled one that only missed being a homerun by a foot. And then I described the
two kids over behind third that got in a fight over the ball, the foul ball
that had gone in the stands.
And
I was having Dean pitch very slowly, he was rubbing the rosin bag all the time
and shaking off signs, and pretty soon I'm really beginning to sweat because I
think now if I tell them, they'll know that I've been stalling here and this
hasn't been true. And just then Curly started typing. And when he handed me the
slip of paper, I could hardly broadcast for giggling. It said Jurges popped out on the first ball pitched. [Laughter]
But
you know, there was no record of such a thing. But for
days, I'd meet people in the street who'd stopped me and say, is there any
record of anyone ever hitting that many successive foul balls? And I'd say,
``It was quite a few, but I don't think there is any.'' [Laughter]
Drought
Relief
Q.
If we could talk a little bit about the drought. You've been through southern
The President. Well, right now, that's
on the floor in the Congress, and we really have a bipartisan group together.
And Secretary Lyng, who's with me here, our Secretary
of Agriculture, has been working on this and been working with the people on
the Hill. And it's a program that is not going to invade and try to rewrite the
farm legislation as it is, but is to provide for help, emergency help to these
farmers who are so beset by this drought all over the
And
what I saw down there in
Q.
How long do you think there will be -- to turn this around and get something
signed?
The President. Well, I think it's a
very limited time. They know that there's a time pressure on it, and I think
it's ready to go through. And, of course, I'll sign it the minute it's
delivered to me.
Q.
Okay. Well, speaking of time, the clock on the wall says we've just about run
out of time. On behalf of the staff and management of WOC Kick Stations, we
really are delighted that you could be here with us. We appreciate it.
The President. Well, I'm very pleased
to have been here, too. And I know what it means about getting off on time. So,
I'll try to be -- I've usually been -- I'm used to being on the side of the
table that you're on, asking the questions.
Q.
Perhaps next year, if you have nothing to do. [Laughter]
The President. Well, I thank you.
Q.
I thank you very much.
Note: The interview
began at