One of the "rules" of the internet is that you "Express yourself".  That means dumping a bunch of trivial information about yourself onto a page like this, so complete strangers know more about you than most of your girlfriends ever did!  If you're daring, you'll also mention something you did as a kid, so when your parents check out your site, they ask you things like, "What fire in the backyard!!??"

If you've made it this far, you'll see that this a Web Site.  Don't confuse this with a Home Page.    A Home page is singular.  The Home Page, in my humble opinion are those things that your friends e-mail you  to look at, which contain nothing more than a list of links to other places like Yahoo and "all my friends pages".  They usually have a ton of cute little graphics and lots of blinky things!  This site may not put you on the edge of your seat at all times, but at least it has some original content.  O.K. enough of my beating a point into the ground.

disclaimer:
This little story has been injected with humor, to make it a little more interesting.  After all, most of us were born, went to school and that kind of boring stuff, so I've spiffed it up for your enjoyment!
May your life be as adventurous! 

BABY TALK:
I was born at a very young age. It was a Saturday morning at 7:14am.  Couldn't miss cartoons, ya know!  

I'm barely a Leo (August 21st). However, when you read astrology (for entertainment only!) the traits of the Leo birth sign fit me well (Extra Large-Tall!).  Maybe it's just because I'm such a neat guy...and so modest (ask anybody!)   I was scheduled to be born in September, but was delivered through a man made incision prior to  my due date.  They gave me the equivalent of an 'oil change', and put me in a neat little thing that looked like a habitrail starter unit for pet mice.  I fought!  I survived!  I burped up on Grandma! Life is good!  

This Used To Be My Playground:
My life has always been a plethora of excitement and fun facts. I should have been a magician.  Everything I come into contact seems to disappear.
In Hutchinson, the Hospital I was born in apparently decided they could do no better after I was born, so they closed. The house I first lived in is now a parking lot (I assume they tore down the house...the front stairs would be a little rough on the ol' alignment!).
As the grown ups say, my "K through 6" education was at the now defunct ANTIOCH ELEMENTARY SCHOOL.  It was turned into a Wellness center for an adjacent  hospital. It was rumored at one time to house the offices to the psychiatric department.  YES...my spirit indeed lives on!  I would be really tickled if somebody who went to school with me found this page.  Drop me a line!  The neighborhood has changed (dern fools closed down the Safeway!), but time goes on and thanks to modern technology (and the KCTV Channel 5 City Cam Network), you can catch a view from a top the Shawnee Mission Medical Center!  Click below to be dazzled.

Back to the lament...The first stadium I saw a major league baseball game in is gone, but the Kansas City Royals are still alive! (I grew up in a suburb of Kansas City). Thankfully, the Shawnee Mission Public Schools left Milburn Junior High standing.    Now it's called Antioch Middle School. If you happened to survive being a Milburn Trojan, Drop me a line! 

More disappearances:  The Posh, Fancy 70MM capable, 2 auditorium,  premiere "Glenwood Theatre" where Star Wars made a million dollars and I first saw Close Encounters...now a strip mall!

The list of fate and destiny's "garage sale of life" goes on and on. So I have never developed much of a need for the material things, since it all seems to disappear. (Ewww, that sounds goth and depressing, doesn't it!  Fade in Marilyn Manson...)  Next thing you know, we'll get word that my first girlfriend has been renovated into a linebacker.

Lori Wright, Dan Raetzel, and a whole list of other classmates names for internet Search Engines:
Grade School.  Piece of Cake.  You learn to read, write, add, subtract, then in 4th grade you watch "that film".  Two years later everything they warned you about kicks into full effect.  So, what do they do?  Send you away to another school where you'll learn how to interact with a bunch of other people you don't know (or die trying!)  

Back in the old days, 7th graders didn't look like they just came out of the day spa.  Boys had crushes on girls back then simply because their hormones were going whacko;  No other criteria necessary (Although I think any Gallup Poll would say Lori was darned cute for a 7th grader!).
Soon the illusion of a content world, where everything revolved around me would shatter--much like the fluorescent lights I tossed off the roof, onto the sidewalk at Vacation Bible School.  There's a few simple rules that go along with adolescence.  When the Junior High (that's what they used to call Middle School) equivalent of Ricky Martin begins to push your buttons, you are doomed.   Any major conflict at 13 boils down to the fact that the other guys G.I. Joe action figure has the kung fu grip and yours doesn't.  Therefore, the young gals are more impressed with the other guy.  Since we didn't have guns we had to use other methods to wooo women.  The most meorable highlight of early playboyhood was the night Lori and I wandered around bored together for 3 hours at the Valentine's Day dance...shouldn't that THAT count for somethin!  (Oh yea, there was that little kiss on the cheek when I gave her that cheesy heart shaped box of chocolates!  Maybe life isn't so unfair after all)  When you kick off the teen years, life is small.  I always assumed I'd know where to find everyone.  Now I probably wouldn't recognize people like J.J. Hicks if he came up and kissed me on the lips.  

John Deere Green
Right after my first year of being an evil Junior High brat, lost love and the second year of continuous showings of Star Wars at the Glenwood Theatres, my parents moved to a small town in Nebraska.  Yes, McCook has a website, yet wasn't modern enough to have a McDonalds when I lived there. Good News!  The old Drive Inn Theatre was razed in favor of a the golden arches in the late 80's.   (Are we still keeping track of things removed from my life, as if I were a member of the Witness Protection Program?)  I will always cherish that Drive Inn.  You could see the screen from the High School parking lot, and pick up the radio frequency they broadcast the movie on in your car...cheap date!

Downtown McCook, Nebraska.  
Would you believe me if I told you it STILL looks this way today?  This is one of those neat little towns where people named Esther, Maxine and Flora live. 

Let us not forget Rob and Karen who were two great people among the 8.404 citizens.  Rob was the poster child for COUNTRY.  

If you're in a small Nebraska town and find a guy who has the "Best Of Red Sovine" on 8 Track, you know you have found a true bud!  Karen was an import from Grand Island.  She was the BEST female "just friend" any guy could ask for.  In return I gave her preferential treatment, my constant attention and gentleman-like conduct without having to deal with annoying things like kissing.  But who has time for smooching when the new Journey tape is on sale at ALCO for Pete's sake!!  We must go cruisin!  When I question our friendship I recall the night we drove around for 5 hours listening to ABBA's "On and On and On" (which she kept rewinding and playing...on and on and on...).  If I was able to survive that and still pass her notes in the hall the next Monday, then I'm confident I was a true friend.  Why does everybody think I had a crush on her? (he asks innocently).
My second most fulfilling fantasy during the wonder years of high school was music and theater. I forget how many band teachers we went through. We were rough on em! My brightest moment may have been my only band "solo".  It was me, exiting the field during half time, alone.  The clip adjustments on the "one size fits all" band geek pants both gave out on the field.  Exit, stage right!

Theater was much more pleasant and by law we had to keep our pants on. My gift was stage falls. I don't know why, but I could do them without hurting myself, yet had the body mass to create the needed BOOM. (The very same sound the gals in the theatre department made when I would ask them out!).  

Two things.  I do tend to slam myself a lot.  That's because I know my short comings and am fully aware that people do some really stupid things in life.  I figure if I make the wisecrack before somebody else, I win!  It also keeps me from being some egotistical arrogant freak who believes they are above anything or anybody else on the planet.    Secondly, I realize that I talk about the ladies a lot and that risks sounding like a sexist pig behind the keyboard.  In reality, I'm a season ticket holder when it comes to admiring the female gender.  I'm quite shy, so  it all works out and nobody gets hurt!  Besides, you must realize there are only so many options in McCook Nebraska on a Friday night, and if they hold over the movie in town for a second week, your options go WAY down.  That leaves you with "hanging around the Sale Barn" or "Hanging around Lori (one blonde, the other red headed), Lisa, Angie (Dairy Queen anybody?) and Ginger (Tell your sister hi for me)".  Which would YOU pull up an old brown church basement folding chair for?  The Livestock or the Ladies?  Exactly!

Finally 1983 rolled around and we all graduated!  We had survived  Mac's Drive Inn (best onion rings on the planet), listening to OLD Country, sun burning ourselves at the "Red Horse" swimming pool (Nice bikini, Karen!), doing the Richard Simmons Workout (yea, right), skunks on the highway (That wasn't a garbage bag!) and my creative birthday surprises.  Rob finally got married (Wooohooo!)  as did Karen, who was last spotted being a big shot nurse type person out in Arizona.  

Radio GaGa
Before we all got matrimonial, I was a brave soul and went away to college (Sioux Falls! Wooo!) to follow my radio dreams. I was Head Announcer at the end of my freshman year.  Thanks to a resignation by a restless Senior I was upped to Station Manager at the beginning of my Sophomore year. Boy was I...annoying. I once kicked a little kid out of the production room who I would meet up with again 15 years later as a top rated night D.J. at Sweet 98 in Omaha!  (My apologies to Joey Lager, you definitely became one of the best!)
As with everyone else in College, I thought I knew it all, so my radio station was a tightly run three ring circus. Between ego trips we had plenty of fun!  (and I'll be darned if the members of the opposing Gender weren't exciting to hang out with every now and then!)
I managed to find a girlfriend, so I suddenly found myself without friends and getting hate mail from hundreds of college co-eds.  There was one girl in particular that constantly reminded me of how good her relationship was with her boyfriend, and how pathetic I was for dating a woman.  I never quite figured that one out.  My other half deduced that she was actually saying the opposite of what was coming out of her mouth.   People are strange! (Well, besides my Devo-Head roommate from California)
By graduation I found myself engaged to a lovely young woman and we were married in July of '87. I landed a job at my old station back in McCook at KICX and got my feet wet in the world of full-time radio. After two years I got the itch to move on and headed east.
New York City? No, 100 miles east to a heavy duty dominating Rock-40 station known as POWER99.  They now rule the Tri Cities with an Oldies Format.
Lincoln Nebraska was my next stop.  I went to work at a News/Talk AM known as KLIN and an easy listening FM, KEZG-EZ 107. Everything seemed to be going well until May of 1992 when I separated from Miss South Dakota and was laid off from work a week later.
(Insert big blur lasting about a year here).
Having a constant DJ hunger (other than the kind we have due to low salary) I got on the phone to my friend from Power 99.  He had recently been appointed Program Director in Lincoln at a now defunct station, KFMQ.. Colin Flynn was fired a month after hiring me and was replaced by an arrogant slave driver. I was released a month later on a whim, missing most of the chaos which followed the deterioration of a perfectly good rock station.  (Where do I get my radio job of the month card punched?)
My next step was Country...not something I ever imagined doing again. I found out how much the music had changed since High School, being hired as the New Country craze was launching (who the heck is this Garth Brooks fellah?) with Lincoln's Hottest Country, 96KX! Jenaustin, Taryn and Ron are the coolest !!!  If you ever work for a GM, make sure it's Julie.
As the rebirth of Country music took place so did the rebirth of Dave (It was right after that icky Divorce thingy I don't talk about anymore).  Everything has turned out good, most everyone lived, and all in time to experience a new breed of radio, drenched in Corporate politics. I am not negative towards the radio business like so many who eventually get out and move on.  In fact,  it is partly because of the changes in the radio industry that I discovered my interests in the computer field and shifted careers.  I'd love to tell you all about it, unfortunately, it's high security and I'd have to shoot ya!  

Somewhere along the way I discovered that my long time friend, Stephanie, was the ultimate female companion and we were married May 19th, 2001.