Two Decades

Confessors, I feel I have let you down.

You've been kind enough to join me here for the past several years to talk Ticket.  Here we are coming up on the biggest Ticket date in forever, and I disappear.  No excuses.  Well, I have some, but who cares?  I finally tore myself away from other stuff I needed to do at least get one acknowledgment of this event up here before it passes entirely.  Thank Jah for A P1 Wasteland for throwing up some solid content for you.

I don't have a topic.  Oh, I got a bunch written down, but none of them are good for an event of this magnitude.

So I'm gong to meander a bit, toss out a few Tickety thoughts as they occur to me.

I moved to this area in 2004.  I was happy to do so, for Mrs. Plainsman's family was down here, and it's a wonderful family, and Mrs. Plainsman is wonderful.  And Mrs. Plainsman was from here, and had moved to my city Up North to pursue and marry me, a goal in which she thankfully succeeded.  And Mrs. Plainsman had job prospects down here.  And many friends.

I wanted to stress all that about the great family and great Mrs. and my pleasure in making them happy by moving down here, because I'm trying to take some of the edge off the pathos when I report that I had no job prospects, no family of my own, and no friends in this area.

But I had a car.  It had a radio.

I don't know the date of my first tune-in to The Ticket, but I know exactly where I was to within a few feet of roadway.  I believe the first voice I heard was that of George Dunham, although it took me quite a long time to figure out who was who and even the name of the damned show (was one of them named "Donovan Miller"?) -- at that time I didn't tune in at 6 AM where the Musers introduce themselves.  For some period of time measurable probably only in days, I believe I thought it was George's show, with Craig as his sidekick and Gordon as local color.  That didn't last long and eventually I sorted everyone out.

I loved the humor and the sports talk, but what really drew me in was the cadence and tone of the show.  It wasn't blustery, it wasn't announcerish, it wasn't stagey or overly bit-driven.  There were topics that served as a pretty loose skeleton for conversation, but that's what is sounded like -- conversation.  It wasn't intimate or too-inside, it just hit the right balance between holding you at distance as an audience to be entertained, and inviting you in as a friend.   It never bored.

I don't have a strong recollection of my introduction to the other shows.  I'm sure I left 1310 on in the hope that I'd actually found an all guy/sports station for DFW in that unlikely spot on the dial, and sure enough, here comes along The Hardline, and BaD, and even Norm.  That turned out to be the last good time for The Hardline, and a good time it was.  Mike was fully engaged, Greg was a native wit, and Corby filled in some gaps that needed to be filled.

I don't recall how I discovered 104.1 FM, it wasn't right off the bat -- but it was where I parked for almost ten years.

Eventually I got a job,  Got some better ones as time went by.  Family kept growing.  As you know from past reports, I've never really warmed up to the Metro, but when you spend several hours a day with The Ticket, you really don't need to be much of anywhere else.

But one thing was missing:  No one I knew listened very much to The Ticket, not even the male relatives in that great family I told you about.  Those who did know the station didn't listen to it for hours at a time like I did and so didn't have same attachment to it that I did.

And because of the nature of my job and my time commitments, I didn't really make any guy friends (more pathos) and so when I'd think of stuff that interested me about The Ticket, I didn't have anyone to talk to about it or say "hey, did you hear  .  .  .  .?"

So on  Tuesday, June 30, 2009, at 8:38 p.m., I tossed up the first post on My Ticket Confession.

And now, I have lots of friends.

Thank you.

And thank you, George Dunham, and Craig Miller and Gordon Keith and Norm Hitzges and Bob Sturm and Dan McDowell and Donovan Lewis and Mike Rhyner and Corby Davidson and Danny Balis and yes, Greg Williams, and all JV past and present, and the stout leatherlunged Tickermen and hearty and unthanked board operators, and by Jah, Jeff Catlin and, why not, the whole damned CTO.

See you at Ticketstock.

ThePlainsman1310@gmail.com

@Plainsman1310