There was a time when 8.30-WCCO Radio was THE radio station in the upper Midwest. You got weather reports, news reports, listened to Twins baseball with Halsey Hall and Herb Carneal, and to a host of announcers and personalities who were more than just voices on the radio, they were our friends, our family.

And of that host, Roger Erickson was the funny uncle everyone wanted to sit next to at Thanksgiving. He and his longtime partner, Charlie Boone, got us up in the morning with a laugh, and kept us smiling and chuckling throughout the day.

I had the good fortune to interview Boone and Erickson back in Albert Lea, and we talked about their ability to create scenes and stories in the imaginations of their listeners. The “Theater of the Mind,” they called it.

I got to be a part of one of their sketches one time. It was the weekend of the 1982 Iowa-Minnesota football game at Memorial Stadium, and they wanted to report to their viewers the masses of Iowans who were traveling up I-35 early Saturday morning for the game. They set up a list of people along the route. I was the city editor of the Albert Lea Tribune, right along the interstate, so I was one of their “correspondents.” They called about 6:30 a.m. and I described the ribbon of headlights coming up from Iowa, and all the Iowans who stopped at Buzz Hagen’s truck stop to fill up their gas tanks.

They asked if I had minded getting up that early, knowing ahead of time that Marijo and I had just had our first child a couple of weeks earlier. I got to mention our new son, Michael Patrick on the radio for all the listeners to hear.

“Ah, Michael Patrick Sweeney!” Roger exclaimed in a pure Irish brogue. I was never prouder of my son.

Roger died this week, and Minnesotans who recall the days of Boone and Erickson, Jurgen Nash, Maynard Speece and Steve Cannon can also mourn the end of an era. It was so much fun while it lasted.

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Kevin Sweeney has been the managing editor of The Journal since May 1985. A native of St. Paul, he worked at newspapers in LeSueur and Albert Lea before moving to New Ulm. Contact him at ksweeney@nujournal.com.