This was the fall of 1979 and a gentleman about to be made single by a divorce decree moved into an apartment. It was one bedroom, small and cheap, but its presence in east Bloomington held a couple of advantages over the Prior Lake countryside, in which he had previously resided.
One, there was a Chinese takeout place right across the four-lane road, with plenty of MSG in the chow mein to make it tasty.
Two, there was cable.
East Bloomington was the mecca for early cable in the Twin Cities. So much so that when Harry Caray was a White Sox broadcaster, and I requested an interview, we went to the Scoreboard, a 3.2-beer joint next to the chow mein place, and watched a Cubs game.
"How come you don't have the White Sox game on in here?" bellowed Harry after a few minutes of listening to Jack Brickhouse.
First, Harry, you're here, which means the White Sox aren't playing, and second, the Cubs have WGN, the Braves have TBS, and the rest of baseball is saying, "What's this?"
I don't know what cable cost at the start: $20 a month, maybe. I do know all those station options were quite the wonderment for someone who was introduced to television only 25 years earlier with one station — KELO in Sioux Falls — that signed off at midnight.
I can't remember the cable entity that received those first checks. What's clear is the long-term relationship with Comcast that survived many arguments.
