Maggie's Farm

I remember the '79 eclipse. There was a partial in southeast Nebraska where I happened to live at the time. Very memorable.

This year I am just outside the total eclipse zone but I think I'll drive the few miles it takes to see the total.

I believe '79 also had the crescent moon/star occurrence that we see on the Muslim flags.

I believe '79 was also the year skylab came back to Earth.

When skylab was in its final decaying orbits, there was going to be one where we could see it pass overhead in daylight. Well, we were going to see the sunlight reflecting off of skylab, but still . . .

Anyway it was in the early evening and I was sitting at home drinking beer and listening to an FM rock station that had a young woman DJ. She was really into the space program and was advising her listeners as to exactly when skylab was going to pass overhead.

At the scheduled time she told her listeners that skylab would be passing in a minute, so she put on Elton John's Rocket Man while she went out side and watched.

So skylab crosses the sky and I get to see it. Very cool. I go back inside and Rocket Man is still playing, . . . but when it ends all you heard was kir-kuh . . kir-kuh . . kir-kuh as the stylus had hit the end of the record. . . . And it probably did that for five minutes.

Finally the breathless DJ came back on the air and told her audience that she had indeed gone out to watch skylab but had left her station keys in the studio and locked herself out.

I think she got back in by going to the gas station across the street and calling the station to have someone let her back in after beating on the door didn't work.

I imagined it could have been used as a scene for WKRP.

Ditzy woman . . .

Ya shouldn't egg me on by complimenting me on story telling Doc, because that inspired me to tell you my only other story about DJs though it has nothing to do with eclipses or Skylab. I am only relating it because it involves Kansas and I know you are familiar with the state.

In the early 80s a college friend lived in the area where I now reside and I would occasionally come up from Hutch and we would pretend to still be college students and drink beer all weekend.

So late one Saturday afternoon I was up here and we were listening to a country FM station down in Kansas. I don't think it was Norton or Oberlin, some other little town.

Well, he had started regularly requesting music from this lady DJ who was on the air and he said she would play anything he asked. I sort of called BS on that. Yeah, maybe they did play his requests . . . sometimes . . . when they got around to it, but not all the time.

So he said, "Oh yeah?" and picked up the phone.

He asked me, "What would you like to hear?"

I didn't have time to really think as he was dialing the station, but I suggested

Faster Horses, By Tom T Hall

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnvMcX95G20

I got the horse by Mel Tillis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPg67jiq7As

and This Cowboy's Hat by Chris LeDoux

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LISd-jkRI-M


So, she answered the phone and they exchanged pleasantries and he requested those three songs, and I thought, sh*t . . . now we will have to listen to this station for the next three hours to see if she plays them. I mean, no one would play your requests immediately, right Doc?

Doc? . . .

Those were the next three songs the station played . . . in that order without a commercial break beforehand.

I was awestruck.

To make a long story endless my friend and the DJ kinda had a phone relationship for some months. He even sent flowers to the station on her birthday but I don't believe they ever met. Anywhere else but here and you would be accused of being some sort of psychotic stalker, but back then it was all in good fun.

Weird huh?