Strode into work this morning just after 3 a.m. to find a pleasant surprise on my desk: a fresh box of business cards.
Kids, this is where you ask an old person near you what a business card is.
In my particular case, this couldn't have happened at a better time, because it was just last night that my professional existence came into question. Again. There's a game some radio shows play when it comes to people of note. It's called, “Dead–Or Career Dead?” A celebrity's name is introduced, usually someone who enjoyed a great deal of fame a long time ago, someone who has since faded from memory. Thus, the question: they've been out of the loop so long, we have to ask if they're dead, or if it's just their career that's expired.
A busy Tuesday morning at work morphed into an equally productive one at home, too, as I spent most of the day dealing with tasks both personal and professional, one of them involving a trip to the post office, a journey ending just as happy hour at my corner tap was starting. And, with a wife who had a late-day appointment at the salon, I figured there's no sense sitting home alone when I could quaff a pint AND get some stuff done on the phone, too.
A stool was found, a beer poured and e-mails enjoined when a nice couple roughly my age sat down next to me. After a while, they asked if I was who they thought I was. Yes, I admitted, I was the Mueller in Reitman and Mueller. We exchanged memories and a few laughs before they asked a question I hear a lot.
“So,” one of them wanted to know, “how's retirement going?”
Awkward pause. Clear throat. Respond in measured tone.
“I'm still working. Bob's the one who retired,” I said.
There isn't a week that goes by where this doesn't happen. Honest. I'm coming to find out that there's a big, big chunk of folks out there who think that, when Reitman called it a career in December of 2006 at the Riverside Theater, that I faded into the sunset, too.
I didn't. I have the sleep loss and bags under my eyes to prove it, as well as a stack of outdated business cards from Journal and Scripps to prove it.
Fact is, I stayed at WKTI after 24 years with Bob. The arrangement lasted until May of 2007 when management invited me down the hall to join John Jagler and Wayne Larrivee on the WTMJ morning show. Those two have since moved on–Jagler to a seat in the Wisconsin Assembly, Wayne presumably to a soft, warm bed where he rests between other professional obligations that don't have him up at the crack of dark. I've been on the self-proclaimed Biggest Stick In The State just two months short of 12 years. Really I have. I have the new business cards that prove it.
Not that the idea of retiring hasn't crossed my mind–far from it. I turned 62 last month, the age when some decide to cash in their chips and seek warm-weather real estate. The need for health insurance combined with the desires of a spouse who has ideas about remodeling, traveling and eating are putting such moves on hold until I reach 65, at the very least.
Then there's the job I do. The one a lot of you think I'm no longer doing.
I love hosting Wisconsin's Morning News. It's an honor to sit in the chair once warmed by the likes of Gordon Hinkley, Jim Tate, Robb Edwards, and others more recent. I lift nothing heavier than a coffee cup and get to be in the middle of everything happening at the start of each new work day. I get to ask questions of newsmakers, shoot the breeze about sports and hang out with some of the coolest kids at the Milwaukee radio table: Jane Matenaer, Doug Russell, and Debbie Lazaga not to mention other co-workers who are younger, sharper and far faster between the ears than yours truly. They don't let me act my age.
And, I want to keep doing all of the above for the foreseeable future. Â At least until I qualify for Medicare and can take a fuller pull from Social Security, or until I start drooling while making less sense on the air than I already do.
So tell your friends. Ask your neighbors (wait, that was Gordy's thing). If my name ever comes up in polite radio conversation, feel free to let folks know that I'm still making the needles bounce here at WTMJ. Or, if you see me warming a bar stool near you, feel free to say “hi,” pump my hand and ask, “So, how's Reitman doing?” (folks do, as if they're the first ones ever to broach the subject). I'll tell you that he's doing just fine, last I heard, hosting a Thursday night show with his son on WUWM and living the life of a pensioned radio lifer.
That's because he's retired. I'm not. Â
And, if you're nice, I'll even hand you a spiffy new business card to prove it.
