GaryOsberg.com

“You just need to find your authentic swing!” Advice from Bagger Vance, a character in the movie “The Legend of Bagger Vance”, released in 2000 and directed by Robert Redford. Doing well at the game of golf is akin to doing well at the game of life. I am here doing what I do, loving what I do, to a large degree because of luck. Being in the right place at the right time.

I had no idea what I was “going to be when I grew up”. My two quarters at the U of M in 1961/62 were a disaster.  I once signed up for the “Phillips 66 Gas Station Management Program”. Those of us in the program wore company uniforms but I don’t remember having to wear “the cap”. They taught us how to properly check the oil and wash the windshield while keeping an eye on the gas pump.

One day in 1962, my sister’s boyfriend Barry Larson asked me if I had any skill with “drafting”. He had a side job that he needed help with. I was living with my mother recovering from a back operation and I told a fib, but I got the job. When he came to pick up the finished work, he was not happy. “Don’t you know the difference between an object line and a dimension line?” Clearly, I did not. I bought an instruction book on “Drafting” and did the work over again. I ended up working as an Engineer Aid on the Polaris project at Honeywell and I even designed a part for a gyro used in the missile. I own a tie clasp with a submarine on the face of it. I probably still have that instruction book in a box somewhere. When I left that job in 1965 to go back to college, they gave me a very nice compass set and a briefcase to carry my books.

Over the last 61 years I have had twenty three jobs, in three different industries, drafting, office equipment and radio.  I started my radio career on the third floor of Wimmer Hall on the campus of St. John’s University in October of 1999.  It is hard to believe that soon, it will be 24 years working with Minnesota Public Radio.

“Wisdom is what is left over after we’ve run out of personal opinions.”  Cullen Hightower