![[IMAGE]](http://mfinley.com/gif/finley.gif)
Politically, Larry is what you'd call progressive or left of center. He is passionate about delivering the goods of democracy to everyday people. He's no dilettante. Most of his life he's worked with his hands. But a year ago his annoyance with right-wing radio made him vow to go back to school and become a progressive counterweight to the Rush Limbaughs of the world.
As a career move, it was quixotic. Larry is about 50, older than by a titch than most vo-tech students. But off he went, to study broadcasting at Brown Institute and emerge shiny and bright this year as a trained radio guy.
The world was his oyster. Well, Emmetsburg, Iowa anyway, where he read news and farm reports for several months, making only modest incursions into Limbaugh-land. When WCCO, the Emerald City of regional radio, invited tapes for trial talk show hosts, Larry sent in his tapes. Remarkably, he was invited up for a two-week tryout. I was one of his first guests.
Let me tell about WCCO at night. First, people who complain about parking downtown are just there at the wrong time. I parked kitty-corner from the station, and after only ten minutes of banging on the door while scary-looking late-night Minneapolis people gave me the once-over, I was let in.
Second, once they let you in, you are in Radio Valhalla. The place is a shrine to regional AM radio gods. The images of Halsey Hall, Howard Viken, Jergen Nash, Boone & Erickson all greeted me as I entered. I wasn't sure whether to take pictures or genuflect.
Larry sat me down at the mike and soon we were on the air, where we would remain from midnight to 5 AM.
We got lots of calls about computers. Virginia from Omaha, who worked in Rock Island during the final days of World War II, wanted to know if an electronic typewriter was a good way to break into computing. (Answer: while it is good to be able to type, it's better is to start with an actual computer. The fastest growing group of computer users is people over 65. Virginia should latch onto a friend having fun with the Internet and spend some time with that person.)
Ron from Spicer was on the verge of ordering a home computer by e-mail, but wanted to know which was better, a fast Pentium or an equally fast Pentium Pro. (Answer: the Pentium Pro is fastest for Windows NT, for large networked business systems. But the cheaper Pentium, maybe souped up with an MMX multimedia chip, is better for small-system Windows 95 use.)
John from Apple Valley revealed that he helped program only the second commercial computer ever installed, an IBM 650 for Cargill. (No question to answer there, but I volunteered the knowledge that the 650 had no keyboard. You used switches to program it.)
Throughout the calls and commentary, I observed that Larry had the touch. He bopped from topic to topic, switching to the news and weather, he reluctantly hung up on an angry caller from Wisconsin, and he kept people queued up on the phone lines waiting for as long as an hour without complaint. He was down-home and good.
But it was not all smooth sailing. I had a bad cough, and periodically I would forget to switch off my mike, and the mike would pick up my cough and broadcast it to the world, which would call back and say, won't someone give that guy a cough drop.
Also, Ron wanted to know if EDO RAM was better than the ordinary kind. I had no idea, but I ventured a guess which turned out to be wrong. (EDO RAM is just a wee bit faster than regular RAM.)
In the morning, Larry and I adjourned to the Ideal Cafe on Central Avenue, where Larry rewarded me with a humongous breakfast. Everyone at the counter knew Larry somehow and stayed up all night listening to him. They took turns giving him a point by point critique of which calls they thought worked and where the program went a bit flat. It was like a focus group with hash browns. If you spend 100 times more time on the Internet than listening to radio, like me, you had to be impressed.
That's the story. I don't know yet if Larry's audition won him a regular gig at WCCO. I hope my coughing didn't torpedo his chances. I do know I was proud of him -- for going back to school and going to work in Emmetsburg, and for winding up on the mike here, talking to the cab drivers, clean-up crews, night workers and insomniacs of Good Neighbor Land.
Computer users who want to learn more about this radio thing might want to connect to http://www.wcco.com. The domain combines items from the entire WCCO empire, including TV's Channel 4000. Someday, they'll have a page for Larry Dunham. Maybe.
Meanwhile, I've got to get me one of these radios.
