The DJ
When I was in high school, a disc jockey from the radio station in Fort Dodge came to Spencer to play records for our teen dances. I got to know him well, and after the dances I'd go with him, and we would drive around and drink gin and talk about radio and music. One week-end he invited me to the station in Fort Dodge, and we sat and drank beer while he was broadcasting. At the end of his three hour show, I was so drunk I didn't think I could make it through the night. The disc jockey gave me my first benny, and in a matter of a few minutes I felt sober and full of energy. We went to one of the night spots in Fort Dodge and drank gin and talked radio and when it began to get late, we started to drive his car north. He had three Texas fifths of gin in the car, and he told me that if I wanted to be hard-core that I would have to learn to drink it straight. So I did. When we got to Estherville, we broke into their radio station and stole mikes and tapes and recording equipment and filled the trunk and backseat with the cache. I couldn’t drink myself drunk. There was something magical about the pills. When we got to Okoboji, the day was getting light and a soft snow began to fall. I felt that the snow might cover our tracks. The people in the lakes area were preparing to go to church and we slid unnoticed through town and drank our gin and talked radio and three hours later, I stood in the disc jockey's apartment in Fort Dodge. His wife was angry and she threw her piggy bank at us, and the disc jockey took me to my car and I drove back to Spencer. On the trip home I drank gin and listened to the radio and pretended that I was talking to the disc jockey about radio.