On our last episode of the expanded edition of Inside the Cover, I interviewed Mike Matson, the author of Courtesy Boy.

It soon became clear that one show would not be sufficient.

I felt that Mike's candid discussion about his life experience with alcohol addiction was too important and too powerful to rush through.

Mike kindly agreed to remain in the studio for a part two of our discussion.

It is now time to go inside the cover.

Good evening.

Welcome to another expanded edition of Inside the Cover here on PBS Kansas.

If you were able to see our previous episode where we talked with Mik Matson, author of Courtesy Boy, you'll remember that we just didn't really weren't able to have enough time with Mike and talk about the book.

So he has kindly agreed t come back and he's with us again here in the studio.

And so we want to begin part two of our discussion of Courtesy Boy by Mike Matson.

Mike, welcome back.

So good to have you.

Thanks, Ted.

I appreciate that.

And I'm not going to try to review our prior show.

We had a lot of discussion about your book, came out in 2022.

And it's a very personal story by you of, I would suggest, some 16 plus years of your life and your career.

But perhaps most importantly your experience with addiction during that time and how you were able to conquer that addiction.

And so I wanted to-- there was just so much that we didn't get to talk about in our first show.

So, again, thank you for coming back.

You bet.

So let's just pick up where somewhat where we left off.

And in that first sho you talked about, and your book begins in a first section called Woodgate.

And beginning with right shortly, the day after your graduation from Wichita Heights, and you move into this relatively to your new apartment complex here in Wichita on 21st Street with a couple of your chums.

You were 17.

I think they were both 18.

And so let's pick up there.

And you write about three relatively shiny new adults, freshly minted and diplomas, diploma, high school graduates and now roommates.

Did you really consider yourself at the time to be an adult?

Oh, at the time there was no doubt.

Right.

I wa I was chock full of confidence.

I was ready to to to leave home.

My father was strict and he was hard.

And I wanted nothing more than to get away from him.

That was part of the addiction problem I learned later on.

And so when I had the opportunity to move out with two friends who were already 18, I wasn't quite yet 18.

So we'd bent the rules a little bit because you were supposed to be 18.

I jumped at the chance.

And at that point in time, and this is just a footnote, could 18 year olds buy beer?

18.

You could, yes.

And of course, I had a fake I.D.

so I was buying beer long before that as well.

Well, and I was going to ask you, as I got as you moved in to Woodgat and described your experiences as young adult and party animals, if you will.

I'd wondered if you had drank before this time.

Oh, yes.

I started drinking when I was 16 years old.

Isnt that interesting.

And you remember no you're talking about the cooler and one of the your coworkers had told you about this fringe benefit of talking about your roommates and you refer to them in the book by name.

Are you still in contact with those individuals?

That's a great question.

Right.

So one of the things that I wanted to do in this book was to be accurate, right, the journalist in me wanted to make sure I had the facts down and the truth coming out.

And so there are a lot of characters in this book.

And I wanted to make sure that I had their permission to use their real names.

And so all of the character in the book that I could find, right?

Some of them are gone by now.

I had a purposeful conversation with them.

Many of them said Yes, by all means, please use my name.

Others said, Nope, I prefer not to.

So there were cases wher I changed the name in the book.

Everything in the book is true.

Everything.

Every event happened.

Some of the names were changed to protect the innocent.

Well, and let's just-- I want to jump ahead, because one of the things I found so interesting from an historical perspective, again, we talked about it on the earlier show.

Your review of the seventies and eighties in Wichita, but there are several names that you mentioned.

And so let me just namedrop, if you will, Jack Oliver, D.J., who's still active on KEYN here in town.

You talk about Don Hall who unfortunately is no longer with us.

You talked about Bob Davis that you met I think in Hays.

So these were individuals you reached out to during the process of writing your book?

Yes, that's a that's true.

Jack, My first my first professional job in broadcasting was as the all night DJ at KAKE Radio.

And the individual who had tha job before me was Jack Oliver.

And so I learned a lot fro Jack, right, at the time I was I was running an all night tech master contro button pushing job at KAKE TV.

But I wanted to get into radio.

And so Jack was the individual that helped introduce me to Gene Rump, who at the time was the program director of KAKE Radio and of course, hosted the television show as well.

So Jack's the one that introduced m to Gene that led me to that job.

But to answer your question, yeah, Jack, when I shared with him what I was writing.

I asked if I could use his real name and he said, of course.

And Bob Davis.

The same way I encountered him in Hays.

And let me just you know, this is as we talk and have conversation, you said something there.

Why did you want to move into radio?

I had...

So I share with this in the book.

Right.

Courtesy Boy is the name of the job that I had at a supermarket in northwest Wichita.

Mr. Ds IGA and Mr. D was Lowell Deniston, and he had he had started supermarkets throughout Wichita.

It wasn't a complicated business model.

He built supermarkets where people were moving to, and he succeeded.

Courtesy Boy was what title that was given to those of us that were 16, 17 years old who would sack and carry out and stock groceries.

Deniston wanted this notion of courteous service, and so that was the title that he gave to us.

One of the things that I did at Mr. Ds was intercom specials, right?

And so I had this ability.

I remember that.

I had this gift, if you want to call it that, to ad lib.

And so when it came time to announce the three minute specials on Hi-C fruit drinks, they'd they'd call on me.

And so I would ad lib those over the intercom and somebody said, you should be on the radio.

And so that was sort of that.

That's where that seed was planted for me.

Well, and that also reminds me and of course, you and I have talked, Mike that we have so much in common with regard to our experience working at a grocery store.

Of course, in northwest Missouri.

We were jus plain old sackers or bag boys.

But I loved working at the grocery store and stamping the prices and that sort of thing.

Cars, baseball.

Girls, beer.

And we had a lot in common.

But one of the-- Going back to the radio question, you start right on early on in the book about a life dream of yours being a play by play announcer for Major League Baseball.

So was that part of th connection with radio as well?

Yeah.

Think it'll give you a sense of how naive I was, right?

At age 18.

I wanted to be a major leagu baseball play by play announcer and I thought, okay, I'll just become one, right?

I'll just figure out how tha that works, and I'll go do that.

And then then, you know, real life kicks in and you recognize you don't just walk into the booth at the big leagu stadium and start calling games.

You have to pay your dues and you get involved.

And so that was what I did.

And that's called the optimism of youth.

Exactly.

Yes.

And of course I wanted to be a third baseman for the St Louis Cardinals, and I realized what it took.

And I also realized I didn't have what it took.

Let's-- we talked about i just briefly in our first show.

But clearly, in my opinion and you can agree or disagree, but your relationship or lack of a relationship with your father, James Matson, was hugely influential on your life.

You write and this relates to your move early on.

“These are the things you can't do when you live at home with your solid, respectable, middle class white bread parents.

Whether your old man i a hard***, a possible fugitive on South Pacific Beach or Howard Cunningham from Happy Days.” And so tell us about your relationship with your father.

And when did you realize that it was less than ideal?

Oh, probably about the time I became sentient.

He was... Wow.

He was an adult child of alcoholics.

And he was he was strict.

He was rigid.

He was hard.

He was profane.

He was mean.

He was verbally abusive.

And so early on, I knew that I was going to escape at my first opportunity.

That also ties in with the addiction and the alcoholism.

That's not a unique story among those who have suffered from addiction.

They often have difficul parents or difficult home lives.

So I don't want to sit her and tell you that that's unique.

But that was clearly a driver in me.

And so the first opportunity I had, I wanted to get away from him.

Well, and let's follow up on that.

This is, again from the book.

When you refer to your new life at Woodgate as being, quote, “out from under the **** thumb”, end of quote, that is a powerful statement.

And searingly honest.

Well, I think that's true.

I would have to agree with that since I wrote it.

That and that summed it up.

Was that your effort, Mike, to shock the reade or inform the reader, or really what was your purpose of being so blunt?

I was trying to share exactly the way I felt at that time.

Right.

That's how bad it was.

That' what drove me to leave, right?

That's what I literally moved from a very rigid sort of this is the way your life is going to work system to the next day with my two new roommates, you can do whatever you want.

Right?

And I did whatever I wanted.

Right.

And that that's that's what I was trying to portray.

Now, I need to also follow up that as as a part of the recovery from addiction, I was able to mend that relationship with my father.

And so that's a huge part of my recovery.

So at the end of his life, he and I were in pretty good space.

Right?

He we had deep and meaningful conversations about his childhood, about the genetic predisposition in our family to addiction.

And so we were able to mend what was a really, really difficult relationship.

Yeah, well, and that, I think is very healthy, very good.

And I'm glad for you and your father.

Another thing we had have in common is a beginning, working at an early age.

And you talk about that you had a paper route at 12 that you were a janitor's assistant at age 15, actually at your father's, one of your father's schools.

But your first real jo was busing tables at Angelo's, which we've talked about there.

Where did the Wichita Club come into this?

Yeah, I was right before I left Wichita to go to tech school in Minneapolis.

I needed to earn a lot of money because I had no idea what I was going to be able to do in terms of earning mone once I got to the Twin Cities.

And so I had the full time jo as a courtesy boy at Mister D's, and then a friend of mine was waiting tables at the Wichita Club, which was at the time was a very swanky private club in the top two floors of what was then the Vickers KSB&T Building downtown on Market Street.

And she was able to connect me with those folks.

And so I was working a lunch shift at the Wichita Club, 10 to 2, and then I'd work evenings at Mister D's.

But the idea was to earn as much money as I could before I left town.

And we talke about it on the first show, that Brown Institute in Minneapolis.

You really selected that institution because a lady friend was going there.

Is that correct?

That is correct.

In fact, this is how my mind worked at the time, right?

She was the granddaughter of Lowell Deniston, Mr. D. Mr. D, in additio to owning the supermarkets owned at the time KEYN AM and FM, Do Hall was the morning man on KEYN So my my plan was through her to get a job is Don Hall's protege at KEYN.

And so we had a relationship, don't get me wrong, it wasn't that manipulative.

I was in love with her.

And so I di follow her to the Twin Cities.

But that was the plan that I intended to try to follow.

At age at the time, age 20.

Right.

To try to get that career going.

We've talked about earlier at the earlier show that your boo is divided into five sections.

Your next section of the book is Kakeland, which runs from Octobe 12 of 78 to December 31 of 1979.

And one of the things I thought was somewhat interesting, Mike, you made a reference and perhaps with jocularity, maybe with seriousness, but at Woodgate, your preferred beverage was Miller Lite.

In the Twin Cities.

It was old style.

Then back in Wichita, it was Coors Light.

What was your purpose o giving us that sort of detail?

Well, I was trying to indicate to the reader just the progression of the alcoholism.

Right.

It wa the beer was my drug of choice.

And so I made purposeful choice about how you would drink that.

Right.

And I hop that comes through in the book.

And it carries through with respect to where I was living, as you just mentioned.

But I also hope that it shows up in the book that everywhere I went, as my life continued, I was drinking more and more and more and more.

And at some point that reached a tipping point.

And that's what we get to toward the end of the book.

But but my my goal in switchin brands was just to kind of help add some color to to give people an indication of here's the way my mind worked at the time.

Interesting.

Section 4, the title of that section is one that I don't think I'll announce on the air.

Readers will find that, but I took the description of that section, Mike, to indicate it wasn' a very good time in your life.

It was it it was used to sort of describ what was drummed into us at Tech School.

When you get your first entry level job in broadcasting, you're not going to go to the big city, you're not going to go to Minneapolis or Wichita or Saint Louis or Chicago or New York.

You will start in the boonies.

You will start in the sticks.

And we had slang names for those communities, and that's the title of that section.

And so mine happened to be Hays, Kansas, when I was when I was through at KAKE when I realized that that being the all night DJ at KAKE radi wasn't going to get me anywhere.

That's when I said, I'm goin to go into broadcast journalism.

And I and I tried to get that job at KAKE TV and at KAKE radio at the time, but I was 21 years old.

I had zero experience as a journalist.

And they said rightly, You can't just start doing this work here without experience.

You need to go to the sticks.

And so some folks helped me made some calls, and I got a job covering news in Hays.

And so that was that's what led to that title.

And again, I go back t I think it's just so extremely fascinating, Mike, that you we've talked earlier and you candidly said that from age 16 or so, you were drinking beer every day, and yet you're able to focus your professional desire and wishes.

So strategically, it's hard for m to put those two together.

Yeah.

And that's that's really the the essence of the book.

And that's what I hope folks take away from that is, is that you can be a functioning addict, you can be a functioning alcoholic and still have all kinds of problems.

Right.

There is there is no good end to that disease.

Right.

You will either you will either suffer from it or you will recover from it.

And so when you think about when you think abou when I think about my experience and when I tried to write that, that was a huge part of what I wanted to communicate.

And I, again, very successfully and of course, it was I believe in Hays during this time.

And from October 14, 1980, June 4, 1983, that you met your wife, Sharon Kent.

Tell us a little bi how you and Sharon got together.

We were colleagues at the time, at the radio and TV station in Hays, and I was at that point where I was ready to I was I considered myself a young, upwardly mobile professional.

Right.

And that meant a lot to me.

And that's also connected to the addiction, too, because it was at that point, everything was self driven.

This is what I want This is what I'm going to get.

Marriage was a part of that, right?

And so I entered into that marriage thinking that, yes, I love my wife, And yes, we're going to be successful.

We'r both going to be professionals.

But it wasn't health because we were both partying.

Okay.

Yep.

And what happened with that marriage was was we were both partying.

We get married, she gets pregnant, she quits partying.

I continue partying.

I don't have a fetus, a embryo to protect from alcohol.

And so I continue to party.

And then at that point, she's able to look at me with clear eyes and get a sense of, gosh, this guy.

sure parties a lot.

Right.

And so that was the beginning of the end of that marriage because I was not in a position to be able to be truthful or honest about my addiction.

I was completely in denial at that point.

And so when she, to her credit, in hindsight, recognized what she was up against, I was pushing back saying, Nope, you got the wrong man.

I don't have a problem.

Leave me alone.

Right.

And that's what led to the dissolution of that marriage.

Where, again, you're so brutally honest in talking about that and you mention that your marriage lasted three years, three months, three weeks and three days.

And Sharon, your wife at the time, had started attending Al-Anon meetings and communicating to you this concern.

And, o course, as a part, you mentioned that your wife was pregnant, your son Scott was born, and you spent a lot of detail, a lot of time talking about your relationship with Scott and as a father how that was important to you.

Tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah, the marriage had broken up.

My son was 14 months old at the time.

Right.

We had we went through a very brutal custody battle.

I ambushed her with some legal maneuvers that that in hindsight, were were clearly driven by the addiction.

Which you talk about.

So honestly in the book.

And one of the thing, while we're on that point, that one of the things that one of my goals in this book was to lift up these negative traits an behaviors that I lived through.

Right.

Because these are not unique to me.

Individuals who suffer from addiction, who have family members or loved ones who suffer from addiction see these same sorts of things.

And so when you think about point A to point B or connecting the dots, right, if you see that your brother is exhibiting these these traits, and then then my hope and goal is that if they read the book and they recognize that in themselves or a loved one, they'll be that much closer to trying to seek help.

And the other one, which I think is huge because we don't have enoug of this, there is so much stigma associated with talkin about addiction and alcoholism in our society.

Still, my hope and goal is with this book, right, with whatever narrow or or broad reach that it has, that it goes a long way to help knocking down some of that stigma, which is what helped me to determine that, okay, I'm going to be brutally honest in this thing because if I'm not, then I'm not doing what I nee to do to knock down the stigma.

Exactly.

Well, and you are to be.

congratulated about you efforts, Mike, in that regard.

And I do believ that it's a book that will help many peopl whether those who are suffering or those who hav a loved one that is suffering.

As we're coming towards the end.

And again, I could quote or go back and recite so many of your words, Mike, but this this one caught me quite strongly.

The personality, character characteristics that I considered strengths were connected to what many would view as character deficiencies, distrust, an inclination towards confrontation, obsessiveness, and a level of manipulativeness.

These too were symptoms, but more insidious, hidden behind descriptors without stigma that led to professional success.

Assertive leader of people.

Elaborate a little bit for us what you're telling us.

Yeah, that's that's the dichotomy that I talked about earlier.

Right.

I had I had a career that was more bigger, better, more money, more responsibility every step of the way.

Right.

Which was what societ and my parents expected of me.

Right.

Of my generation.

But personally, my life was going down in the tank.

And so when I finally when I when I reached recovery and I had some years on me, right when I when I had some years of recovery, I was able to look back and recognize that dichotomy and recognize that these two things happened at the same time.

Right.

And that's, again, not unique to me.

But that was, that typifies or exemplifies my recovery.

And so that's what I hope to lift up in the book.

Well, and you really did.

And I want to just give her a little bit of mention, your wife, Jackie McClaskey, who I knew back when she was a student at Kansas State.

And you give her a lot of credit for I'm going to say my words waking you up.

Yeah.

And if you think about it, I mean, my wife, second wif clearly has never seen me drink.

I was three years sober when I met her.

She knows about alcoholism and addiction from watching me.

I don't drink.

I don't use drugs.

But that doesn't mean that I have shed the behaviors that led to that.

Right.

If I allow myself to.

Interesting.

I can still be very manipulative, but I can still try to control things.

Right.

If I allow myself.

She sees that in me.

And and so that's that's that's one of the things I love about my wife.

But I should also point out that when I was writin this book and the first one, you you get down and you get back into those states of mind that I was in.

And you don't necessarily just come out of the writing back into real life and everything is unicorns and roses.

And so she has asked me if I write another book that I promise her that it won't be about addiction.

And so I have given her that promise.

Well, and I do hope that you will continue your writing career, Mike.

Thank you again for being with u and sharing more of your story.

Your book is important enlightening and inspirational, and I'm certainly that you've been it and you have been helpful to many.

So thank you for that.

Thanks for coming back.

Thank you.

To Inside the Cover.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is been part two of an interview with Mike Matson, Kansas native and author of Courtesy Boy.

It is a book that I can recommend to you without hesitation or reservation.

I hope you enjoyed our sho and we look forward to bringing you another edition of Expanded Inside The Cover real soon.

Good night.

See you next time.