Grandpa Letter #5

Wednesday, November 18, 2015.  9:23 a.m.  Provo, Utah.

My Dear Noah;

I have certainly been enjoying your emails to me.  They are most salubrious to my daily outlook.

I have included a photograph of me, standing in front of radio station KIWA in Sheldon, Iowa.  I was the News Director for the station back in about 2009.

Here’s how I got the job:

A year earlier I had been News Director at KICD Radio in Spencer, Iowa. But one morning, as I was putting together my 6 a.m. newscast, I suddenly had an overwhelming desire to go back to Mexico again. I had been there as a young man, before my Mission, studying pantomime.

So I decided, on the spur of the moment, to resign and go back to Mexico, this time to teach English. (By the way, this was a BAD decision – very hasty. I don’t recommend hasty decisions, unless you really get a burning in your bosom about them from the Lord.)

So I enrolled in a TEFL course in Guadalajara, Mexico. I already had a TEFL certificate from Thailand, but I figured if I got one in Mexico it would be a lot easier to get a teaching job. TEFL stands for “Teaching English as a Foreign Language”.

But halfway through the course I was robbed at knife-point as I was walking back to my hacienda from the school. The robber didn’t get much money, but I was so scared and outraged by the incident that, again, I decided on the spur of the moment to leave Mexico and never come back again!

So I did.

I visited my mom up in Minneapolis when I got back, and – surprise! – she bought me a brand new car. I didn’t ask for it, she just up and did it on the spur of the moment. I guess we Torkildsons do a lot of stuff on the spur of the moment.

So I drove my new car back to Spencer, Iowa, to see if I could get my old job back. They said “Sorry, Charlie – no can do”, or words to that effect.

Disheartened, I drove aimlessly around all day – wondering what I was going to do for a living. When I passed through Sheldon, Iowa, kind of on my way down to Oklahoma (where a lot of circuses are located; I thought I might get a job down there.) I noticed the KIWA Radio station on Main Street, and decided, on the spur of the moment, to drop in and ask if they needed a News Director.

Lo and behold, they did!

So I got the job and went back to getting up at 4 a.m. every day so I could get the 6 a.m. newscast ready. When I got to the station I would call the local city police, the county sheriff’s office, and the state Highway Patrol, to find out if there had been any crimes or accidents overnight. Then I would call the Farm Bureau in Des Moines, the capital of Iowa, for any agricultural news they might have about Northwestern Iowa, or Northeastern South Dakota (Sheldon was not too far from the state border between Iowa and South Dakota. Your great grandfather Donald, my dad, was born just outside of Vienna, South Dakota.) Then I would splice together any old taped interviews I had on file from interesting or important people who had stopped by the station in the past week for some free publicity (politicians, sports players, religious leaders, etc.) and use that as my last ‘news’ story.

The rest of the day was taken up with taping more interviews with anyone who wandered into the station and wanted to be on the air. I would also call certain people who were in the news already in Iowa, to do taped phone interviews. I also taped many commercials and had to record some live feeds from the Chicago Stockyards and Schwab’s Financial on pork belly futures, etc.

I was supposed to have Saturday off, but I never did. The demand for news stories every day was insatiable, and I did not have an assistant.

On Sundays I also worked as the DJ, operating the board all morning long for two live church services in town – one from the Methodist Church, and one from the Dutch Reformed Church. They both paid the station to broadcast their church services. I can’t remember any of the sermons – they were super boring. And the choir singing was not as good as ours by a long shot.  

I worked there about a year, and then, on the spur of the moment, I went back to Culpepper & Merriweather Circus as their Publicity Director.

I guess I’m just naturally peripatetic!