Snow, Part I

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As a Christmas present to my readers I have written a story, a Christmas story. You don’t have to wait until December 25^th. You can start unwrapping this sucker now, one word at a time.

Enjoy!

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She was there then, suddenly, gone. What had happened to her those years ago, he wondered.

Corn husks and snow blew across the road illuminated by the headlights of a seventeen-year-old ‘48 dodge. It rattled up a hill on the single-lane dirt road to KBGF Channel 5, serving Northeastern South Dakota.

The small, teal blue cinder block building soon emerged from the dark and the blowing snow. It had originally been a remote transmitter for a radio station but the TV station’s owner moved the entire operation to the hill among the corn fields to save money; the one thing that Sidney was particularly good at.

Tom’s tires crunched to a halt on the cold gray gravel. The dust and snow blowing horizontally made him grab his jacket lapels tight at his neck before exiting the car and trudging to the windowless door.

The dark and silence inside was soon broken by the buzz of the fluorescent lights. The reception area was decked in cheap Christmas decorations: a two foot white plastic tree sitting on the counter, some white garlands and a paper Santa with limbs hinged on little rivets taped to the wall. Santa’s arms and legs had been left in physiologically impossible positions.

Outside he could still hear the prairie wind whistling through the guy wires of the antenna tower behind the building. Tom kept his coat on as he started flipping switches on the transmitters, amplifiers, monitors and bright studio lights. A color monitor showing the CBS feed from New York was already active. The color hit the end of the road right there as KBGF was one of the last remaining black and white only stations in the country. A growing chorus of electric hum and a city of glowing red vacuum tubes assured him it would get warm eventually in the otherwise unheated building—Sidney saving money again. Tom just hoped his breath would no longer be visible by the time he went to air for the morning farm report.

What was her name? All the other kids called her “Moon” but her real name was… Rrrr… something. Rita? Rachel? No, it was longer.  Rrrr… Biblical maybe, he thought.

The Indian head test pattern faded into the monitors while coffee percolated in the little glass window on the coffee pot. There was a coffee ring on the FCC log he jotted some readings into before switching the transmitter to full power. A swell in the hum followed the ‘clack’ of two big switches. The test pattern, accompanied by a one kilohertz tone, emerged out of the snow on the small TV in the control room as well as a few dozen others in farmhouses throughout the region. Tom scribbled in the rest of the readings into the log before heading into studio A. There was no studio B. He focused the sole camera on the empty news desk.

Where was she now. Close by? Another state? Was she married? He could still remember the Christmas song they made up and sang together: "My oh my, I want some Christmas pie. Santa's fat there's cookies in his hat..."

4:55AM.

Tom ripped long scrolls of paper off the two teletypes, one with agriculture news, crop and livestock prices, the other: the AP News wire. He quickly underlined some top stories and key ag prices; hogs and cattle mostly this time of year. He grabbed a copy of last evening’s paper and circled a couple stories almost randomly.

“Salvation Army Donations Up This Christmas.”

“Aberdeen Town Counsel Votes Down Highway Project.”

He didn’t bother checking the station’s ill-maintained weather instruments or calling the meteorologist. He jotted an improvised weather forecast next to the hog prices. Having seen twenty-seven South Dakota winters in all of his twenty seven years, his guesses were often better than the weather service.

He was also supposed to call the overnight dispatch at the sheriff’s office in over in Aberdeen to see if anything had happened over night but he knew better. Tom muttered lines as practice and experimenting with several versions of his own unwritten copy.

He quickly matted some flyaway hairs with a can of Aquanet kept on the sink in the single-seater rest room. He stepped quickly to the studio and put on the brown suit jacket that was left on the news desk chair. The evening news guy wore it too. He tapped the mic on the desk and craned his head to see if he could see the needles move in the control room. Just like every other morning, he could not.

Tom cued up a 3/4 inch tape machine that had the national anthem and news opener. Commercials and some national promo spots were ready to go on the other 3/4 inch deck.

Tom hit the play button and switched from the test pattern to the tape. The national anthem began to play. On the monitor an American flag waved in slow motion dissolved to a montage of national monuments and natural vistas and city scapes.  He flipped the on-air light. There was no one else there to see it but he liked knowing it was on. He walked into the studio and sat at the news desk. There was no live speaker on the set, so he watched the video monitor for his cue to switch to his live camera and stop the tape. This was all accomplished with a bank of buttons Al, the station’s engineer had installed under the desk.

Ten seconds to go…

He was thinking of Moon, the girl he had played with as a child and kissed behind the barn. It was just play but he loved her as much as one can at the age of twelve. Then, one day her family was gone from their home. He never saw or heard from her again.

Daydreaming about his childhood friend had not come out of the blue. Verna, his fiancé had broken off their engagement the night before and just days before Christmas. The pain was bearable as long as he thought about Moon. the blond girl with he infectious laugh who loved to sing silly songs, and loved horses.

The red tally light glowed on the camera. As if it were a light bulb going on over his head, he got an idea.

“G’mornin Red, this is Frank… you watchin’ the news?”

“No, got th’ radio on.”

“Well turn on Channel 5.”

“Why, Martians invading?”

“Don’t, know. I don’t know nothing cuz the dern fool’s just sitting there.”

“What?”

“The news man, he’s just sitting there.”

“Well what’s he sayin’.

“That’s what I’m telling ya, he’s not sayin’ nothin’; just sittin’ there.”

“Just sittin’ there?”

“Just sittin’, staring straight out.”

“Dulah, switch on the TV there.”

“You see him?”

“Nah, still warming up… Here it comes… Well I’ll be…  Just sitting there… Isn’t that Ray Collin’s boy?”

It was silent except for the low electric hum of the lights and the bigger gusts of wind outside, just a whisper in the studio. Tom stared into the camera lens as if he could see the audience staring back at him. He did not appear agitated or distraught. With a hint of a smile on his face, he looked as though he was listening thoughtfully and attentively to a conversation that no one else could hear. He had been staring into the camera for nearly five minutes.

Time for a commercial.

Tom hit the button for tape machine two then switched from his camera to the tape machine. The red tally light went dark.

The phone lines from Watertown to beyond the North Dakota State line began to light up. Groggy businessmen, mechanics, teachers housewives, and children gathered in front of their TVs rubbing their eyes after waking up to a ringing phone.

“Turn on Channel 5!”

“We’re watching, Norma called us. What’s the big deal it’s just a car salesman dressed up as Santa Claus”.

“That’s the commercial, wait for the news. The guy’s lost his marbles or had a stoke or something.”

Diners switched on their TVs if they had one. Appliance stores opened early and turned on all the sets in their display windows. Despite the early hour, everywhere there was a TV on people started gathering around it to see a man doing absolutely nothing.

Al Kimber was sleeping soundly. He relished in his sleep because for years he had to be up at three AM, five days a week as a television broadcast engineer.

After using parts from an old vision mixer to make a remote and showing Collins how to set, up the station for air, he was able to brilliantly eliminate the need for his presence at that ungodly hour. He had made the morning farm report a single man operation. Henry Ford would have applauded his efficiency. Tom had taken to the idea and the training very well. Al was so confident in the young news host, he had even taken his phone off the hook. It made for a more sound sleep.

So what then was that sound? That pounding sound that wouldn’t go away?

“Al! What the hell were you doing? What’s wrong with your phone?” Sidney yelled when Al finally opened the door to see his boss, the KBGF station manager and owner.

“What’s wrong?” Al yawned.

“What’s wrong? What’s wrong! My future, former future son-in-law is broadcasting himself sitting at the desk doing nothing and saying N-O-T-H-I-N-G like he’s catatonic or something and I’ve got a head engineer who’s hair brained idea it was to let him run the whole show so you could get two more hours of sleep and then doesn’t answer his phone!”

“Uh, let me get my coat.”

“Hurry it up. I’ll be in my car,” Sidney said to the closing door. “Froze my everlovin' patootee off out here pounding on your damn door for five minutes,” he muttered as he walked to the curb.

At the station, Tom came back from commercial with the push on his remote buttons. His audience was twenty fold what it had been before the ads and was increasing every second.

“Sshhh, he’s going to speak.”

“No he’s not. He just sitting there.”

“Someone should call the police.”

“He’s crazy.”

“He’s off his rocker.”

“Someone should call the looney bin.”

“Is he ever going to speak?”

“What’s he going to do?”

Tom calmly addressed their questions: ‘Nothing’ was his silent and motionless answer.

About the only people not watching him were the snowplow drivers.

She was so pretty, so much fun. What was her real name?

Over half a million people were watching him now. He had, before the break of dawn, by simply doing nothing, broken viewership records for the region that it had taken Ed Sullivan and four English boys with funny haircuts to set.

It would take a man setting foot on the moon four years later to break.

Tom coughed and cleared his throat. All of Northeast South Dakota drew to a sudden hush. It would be known for years as the cough heard around the prairie.

On to Part II