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    Old Snapshots Volume 1: Quirky Short Stories from Out of the Past
    Old Snapshots Volume 1: Quirky Short Stories from Out of the Past
    Old Snapshots Volume 1: Quirky Short Stories from Out of the Past
    Ebook84 pages1 hour

    Old Snapshots Volume 1: Quirky Short Stories from Out of the Past

    By Jeff R. Lonto

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    About this ebook

    "All of these stories could have happened...maybe." An underground radio station with a mysterious "seductive" voice. A psychedelic party at Grandma's house. The friendship between a lonely young woman and a 12-year-old boy. A rock 'n' roll band that tried to "get with the '80s." Teenage boys bested by a 13-year-old female cousin. A cute and sweet girlfriend from hell. The misadventures of a nightclub dee-jay-for-a-day. A junkyard where the neighborhood kids hung out. How a young waitress handled an unruly teenage friend. A beer can monument and the woman who hated it. A really, really nasty old man hosting a bizarre public access cable show. The adversarial friendship between a cynical male writer and his younger female editor. A civil defense alert.

    They say every picture tells a story. Well these thirteen stories develop pictures. Old snapshots from a time that really isn't all that long ago, but now seems far, far away. Faded photographs from yesteryear come to life in the articulate writing style of author Jeff R. Lonto.
    Lonto, author of four non-fiction print books, dozens of articles and the Chronicles from the Analog Age Blog, presents his first e-book. "Old Snapshots, Volume 1," a compilation of "Quirky Short Stories from Out of the Past." The stories in "Old Snapshots" are based on people, places, events and slices of life the author has observed, written with a particular flair for detail and a slightly twisted sense of humor.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherStudio Z-7 Publishing
    Release dateMar 9, 2015
    ISBN9780966021301
    Old Snapshots Volume 1: Quirky Short Stories from Out of the Past
    Author

    Jeff R. Lonto

    Jeff R. Lonto is a writer, publisher, blogger and historian residing in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He likes music from the 1960s, B movies from the 1930s and '40s, cats, beer and sugared soft drinks. His first published article, a history of Minneapolis-St. Paul television stations, appeared in a small local tabloid called the Hornet (printed on yellow paper, of course) in September 1985, courtesy of his friend and mentor, Darrell Mulroy. In the 1990s he wrote a regular feature for the Pavek Museum of Broadcasting Newsletter called "It Happened on the Air," chronicling various aspects of broadcasting history. In 1997 he founded Studio Z-7 Publishing, and in 1998 he published his first book, Fiasco at 1280, a behind-the-scenes story of Minneapolis radio station WWTC. Springing off of that, he hosted panel discussions featuring former personalities from that station, and was invited to discuss the book on WCCO Radio's Tim Russell Show, and on, of all places, WWTC Radio. Soon he published a second book, a history of the Grain Belt brewery in Minneapolis called Legend of the Brewery. This lead to interviews on Minnesota Public Radio, KARE-11 News, the Fox 9 KMSP morning show, and even WWTC Radio. He has been invited to speak at events at or near the Grain Belt brewery from time to time as well. In 2007 he published a third book, It Happened on the Air, a compilation of his Pavek Museum Newsletter columns, and in 2010, his first version of Chronicles from the Analog Age, a book covering a wide range of 20th Century pop culture topics, was published. In addition to his books, Lonto has written and had published a number of print and web articles, which have been referenced in a number of places. In 2000, the original version of his web article "The Trading Stamp Story," published on a now defunct website, was referenced in the New York Times ("Clicks, Not Licks, as Green Stamps Go Digital" by Michelle Slatalla, March 9, 2000), and more recently, the revised version on studioz7.com has been referenced in the Rochester, New York Democrat & Chronicle ("What Ever Happened To...trading stamps?" by Alan Morrell, July 21, 2015) and in an ebook, "Let's Close a Deal: Turn Contracts into Paying Customers for Your Company, Product, Service or Cause" by Christine Clifford (2013), National Public Radio's "Planet Money," as well as Wikipedia. As a media historian, Lonto's published articles were referenced in the print book "Media Tales: Stories of Minnesota TV, Radio, Publications and Personalities" by Sheri O'Meara and Martin Keller (D Media, Inc., 2007), he was a contributor to a radio industry print book called "Ain't Misbehavin' Just Conclavin" (Billboard Radio Monitor, 2005) and in 2014 he was invited to give a presentation to the St. Paul Radio Club Annual Banquet at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, on the history of broadcasting in the Twin Cities area. The transcript of the speech was published in an ebook, Twin Cities Broadcasting in the Analog Age. More recently, Jeff Lonto has published an ebook collection of short stories (some of which he originally wrote years ago) called Old Snapshots--Quirky Short Stories from Out of the Past. He has been a contributing writer for the online Minneapolis Happening magazine, and Pixable.com, he has given presentations about brewery history and collectibles at the Minnesota State Fair and the Autum Brew Review (a craft beer show in Minneapolis) for the Minnesota Craft Brewers Guild, and he occasionally posts something on Jeff R. Lonto's Chronicles from the Analog Age Blog (theanalogage.blogspot.com).

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      Book preview

      Old Snapshots Volume 1 - Jeff R. Lonto

      OLD SNAPSHOTS

      Volume 1

      Quirky Short Stories from Out of the Past

      By JEFF R. LONTO

      Copyright 2015 by Jeff R. Lonto. All rights reserved. Published by Studio Z-7 Publishing, Minneapolis, MN, via Smashwords.

      International Standard Book Number: 978-0-9660213-0-1

      SHOCK ALERT

      Stories in this book include casual references to smoking, drinking, garden-variety violence and bad words, but so does real life. Get over it.

      CONTENTS

      1. Dr. Tim and the Subliminal Seductress

      2. The Saturday Spectator

      3. Down at the Junk Yard

      4. Going New Wave

      5. Kathy and the Kid

      6. Harold's Blue Ribbon Monument

      7. Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue

      8. Love, Crystal

      9. A Trip at Granny's

      10. YOU CALL ME MISTER FORD!

      11. Family Restaurant

      12. Um, Could You, Like, Play Some Dance Music?

      13. Operation Skywatch: Survival Under Atomic Attack

      All of these stories could have happened…maybe.

      Dr. Tim and the Subliminal Seductress

      In 1971 a pirate radio station called WUCK-FM was broadcasting from the top floor of a three-story Victorian-era house located at 2737 Halifax Avenue South that was rented and inhabited by four young men in their early to mid twenties. The radio station was strung together by a long haired, bearded 24-year-old engineering student who called himself Doctor Tim Treeman, with a hand-built makeshift transmitter set up in one of the third floor rooms, a studio in an adjacent room that included a hand-built mixing board, microphone, two turntables and a reel-to-reel tape deck all set up on two old wooden desks, all of this wired to a rooftop antenna that could broadcast from a radius of several blocks to a few miles, depending on conditions. The station broadcast on the 107.3 frequency and didn't interfere with any legitimate radio stations, so it stayed under the radar of the Federal Communications Commission.

      Programming was mostly progressive album rock. Everything from Mott the Hoople to Frank Zappa to Quicksilver Messenger Service to the Grateful Dead was played. But program director/operations manager/disc jockey Dr. Tim didn't have any real set limits on music, as he also played obscure pop singles and B sides if he liked them, plus a little jazz and blues. Music was supplied by a local store, Karma-Mantra Records, in exchange for frequent mentions on the air. In addition to music, Dr. Tim would do a little psychedelic poetry, much of it jotted down moments before he read it on the air. There was also editorial content about such things as the Vietnam War (against), pot (for), the draft (against), the brotherhood of man (for), the Establishment press (or pig press) (against), the Underground press (for), plus public service announcements for such services as the free clinic and suicide prevention hotline. All in all, it was a pretty professional-sounding operation.

      This is WUCK-FM, I'm Dr. Tim and I'm here to play phonograph records, he would say in his deep voice, up close to the microphone, before hitting the start button on an already cued-up record on one of the turntables. When that song played through and ended, he'd go straight to another cued-up record on the other turntable, put a different record on the first one and cue it up, and so forth. At least once every half hour came an announcement that would go something like, Music on WUCK-FM comes courtesy of Karma-Mantra Records, 1605 Roosevelt Avenue. Karma-Mantra is now your eight-track headquarters with the widest selection of eight-track tapes, plus eight-track car stereos. Get an eight-track stereo for your car. It's what's happening, baby!

      Elsewhere in the house on Halifax Avenue, there was usually a party going on. Dr. Tim and his roommates Barry S. Wilson, Kevin Leer and Eric Carlsberg turned it into quite a psychedelic mansion with colorfully mismatched furniture on the hard-wood floors, colored lighting, posters on the walls and a constant supply of beer and booze, and maybe some decent marijuana and other substances to make guests feel at home. And if somebody brought their own stuff and wanted to share it, that was beautiful, man.

      There were other voices heard on WUCK-FM besides Dr. Tim. Barry, Kevin or Eric would often go up there and do a show for a couple hours, or a houseguest who was interested in trying it out, or someone who wanted to say something to the community at large. And then there was a mysterious, sultry female voice who would take over the airwaves from time to time, calling herself Renee the Subliminal Seductress. People within listening range of WUCK-FM wondered who she was, and whether she was affecting their subconscious minds broadcasting subliminal messages. Rumors began to spread that she, in fact, was.

      The mysterious Subliminal Seductress was actually Renee Torgerson, the 21-year-old youngest daughter of well-known local businessman, Larry Torgerson. Renee was blonde, blue-eyed and gorgeous, and in case you didn't notice she was gorgeous, she'd tell you so. She enjoyed a comfortable upper-middle class upbringing in a lake front home, although she was sent to public school. Growing up, she was close to her father and coddled by him when he was home, which usually wasn't often enough with all the business trips, conventions and long meetings he had to attend. Meanwhile, her mother was more aloof, and was the one who kept her in line.

      Renee was going to college with the goal of becoming a school guidance counselor, mostly at the behest of her parents. But upon getting there and being away from home for the first time, she felt the need to rebel, at least a little bit. Her new friends in the women's dorm, mostly from well-off families, introduced her to such things as alcohol, cigarettes and parties. She was much enamored with 1920s-era art deco fashion and so she liked to wear twenties-style dresses and smoke using a cigarette holder, fancying herself more as a modern-day flapper than a contemporary hippie. She had helped her father campaign for Richard Nixon in 1968 and continued to share his Republican leanings.

      It so happened she and her college girlfriends went to a party at the house on Halifax Avenue, where she met Tim Treeman, and she immediately found him alluring. He was so completely different from the kind of guy her parents envisioned for her. He had long hair, a beard and wore dark glasses. His background was blue collar, his education was from trade schools, and yet he was a deep, intelligent thinker. She listened intently as he spoke on

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