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The home investigation.

I was at Costco the other day, pick­ing up a few items that, for our house­hold, it always pays to buy in bulk — but­ter, beer and cof­fee. I couldn’t fig­ure out why I kept say­ing “but­ter and beer” over and over in my head, and then I remembered:

For years, WBNS, the CBS sta­tion in Colum­bus, ran a public-affairs show in the after-dinner, before-prime time slot that existed before “Wheel of For­tune” and “Jeop­ardy.” This was back when the FCC required a cer­tain amount of public-affairs pro­gram­ming, and WBNS filled its oblig­a­tion in part with this show — “Juve­nile Court,” later renamed “The Judge.” In a half hour, two juvie cases were dra­ma­tized, with actors from local com­mu­nity the­aters. It was spec­tac­u­larly min­i­mal­ist stag­ing, sort of a “Wait­ing for Godot” of jus­tice. (I like to think they kept the scenery light to keep the actors from chew­ing it.) The scene was always the final dis­po­si­tion of a par­tic­u­lar case, which meant the facts could be rat­tled off in a sim­ple sta­tus report, and then the judge would speak to all the con­cerned par­ties before mak­ing a final rul­ing. Lessons would be learned about neglect­ful par­ents, stray­ing chil­dren and the wages of divorce and other social problems.

Every­body watched it, and it taught me a lot. What “incor­ri­gi­ble” means. How an Appalachian accent is a pre­dic­tor of bad behav­ior. How lower-class defen­dants address the court as “judge” while wealth­ier ones say, “your honor.” I still remem­ber many of the cases, which became com­edy mate­r­ial for my friends in our smar­tass teen years, in one smoky base­ment or another. One of its key phrases remained with us for years: “What’s the home investigation?”

This was the ful­crum on which the case turned, the sig­nal that we had now reached the good part. I said before that all the parts were played by actors? All but one — the social work­ers, who always played them­selves. I don’t know why: maybe it was a union thing. It gave the series some con­ti­nu­ity, with the same half-dozen social work­ers appear­ing again and again. And they brought a cer­tain verisimil­i­tude to the pro­ceed­ings. It would be hard for even Meryl Streep to dupli­cate that bureau­cratic pinch-faced deliv­ery, the monot­o­nal read­ing of facts gath­ered in the home inves­ti­ga­tion, which appar­ently required all con­cerned to open their doors and let this dowdy woman with a clip­board come in and poke around.

There was one cou­ple whose chil­dren were ruled incor­ri­gi­ble, and it came out in the hear­ing that they raised dogs, which they obvi­ously pre­ferred over their own off­spring. We learned this because the home inves­ti­ga­tion showed that there was noth­ing in the refrig­er­a­tor (they always looked in the refrig­er­a­tor, always) but but­ter and beer, although there was plenty of dog food. The judge demanded an expla­na­tion. “Judge, them dawgs gotta eat,” the father said in his south­ern Ohio twang.

(Later in life I knew a woman raised in a home very much like this one, and I regret­ted all the jokes I’d had over that case. Evi­dently it’s no fun to watch the house­hold bud­get go for puppy chow while you and your teenage brother split a sin­gle pork chop.)

Mostly the pro­ceed­ings were amaz­ingly true to life, i.e., pretty wooden and bor­ing, although some direc­tors tried to light things up a lit­tle. There was one case which required the teen girl at its cen­ter to break down halfway through and shriek, “I’m going to have a baby!” She got the line off at top vol­ume, then bent over and buried her face in her knees. She had to do this because it was clear she was hys­ter­i­cal with laugh­ter and couldn’t keep it together. She played the rest of the scene that way, clutch­ing her knees, rock­ing back and forth, answer­ing all fur­ther ques­tions with nods or shakes of the head. No time to reshoot the scene, this was local TV.

Any­way, if any of this is start­ing to sound famil­iar, here’s why: Years after the series went off the air, it was revived to catch the wave of syn­di­cated court shows. The sin­gle court­room set was gone, and the show opened up to shoot scenes in the judge’s cham­bers and in var­i­ous cour­t­house ante­rooms. The social work­ers were his­tory, and while I’m sure the new actors were pro­fes­sion­als, they didn’t do a much bet­ter job than the orig­i­nal ama­teurs. (Although, given the mate­r­ial? It’s a wash.) But “Judge Robert Franklin,” surely named for the county of his incar­na­tion, was the same. I think he was on the take, because this hum­ble pub­lic ser­vant lived in a ver­i­ta­ble plan­ta­tion (note the uni­formed ser­vant in the door­way as he leaves for work):

Any­way. Aren’t you glad you fol­lowed this thread with me? Isn’t it just like being in a nurs­ing home?

So, a lit­tle bloggage?

I sus­pect the home inves­ti­ga­tion in this case would turn up some real gems. How often do 6-year-olds miss the bus and decide to drive to school?

Read­ing the busi­ness pages these days is like read­ing the obit­u­ar­ies. Is life with­out lux­ury goods that unbearable?

Every­body has some­thing to say about the dan­gling skier, but my con­tri­bu­tion is this: dig­i­tal cam­eras pro­duce amaz­ingly clear images these days.

Off to work. A good day to all.

Posted on Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 at 9:54 am
in Current events, Same ol' same ol'.

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53 responses to
“The home investigation.”

  1. coozledad said on January 7th, 2009 at 10:30 am

    That’s it. I’m going to prac­tice bet­ter per­sonal hygeine. You never know when your ass is going to get its fif­teen minutes.

    Although I sus­pect this guy’s going to become a fix­ture in pop­u­lar cul­ture. This image has stay­ing power.

  2. nancy said on January 7th, 2009 at 10:36 am

    That guy’s lawyer just bought a big box of Cuban cig­ars. Because life? Is sweet.

  3. Connie said on January 7th, 2009 at 10:38 am

    Thank you so much for the skier pics. My entire office is enjoy­ing them.

  4. Kirk said on January 7th, 2009 at 10:38 am

    Speak­ing of Colum­bus TV, I expect you heard that Jimmy Crum died. After a respect­ful period of time has passed, we’ll ask his daugh­ter what hap­pens to all of those go-to-hell sport jackets.

  5. nancy said on January 7th, 2009 at 10:43 am

    I didn’t know he’d died, and I didn’t know this, either:

    Among his career high­lights were five weeks spent on Kodiak Island, AK in 1956 film­ing “The Big Bear Hunt.” The 13-week tele­vi­sion series received a Bill­board Award. The 1,300 lb. bear he shot is the offi­cial mas­cot of the Upper Arling­ton High School Golden Bears.

    I walked past that bear a mil­lion times. Why didn’t I know it had been shot by my classmate’s father?

  6. brian stouder said on January 7th, 2009 at 10:51 am

    Those busi­ness page/obits are worth a glance.

    It appears that the Ger­man who got smashed like a bug (so to speak) by the ‘dra­matic VW short squeeze’ has a Fort Wayne hook, as one of his com­pa­nies is asso­ci­ated with Han­son PLC, the owner of our big big big hole in the ground (used to be May Stone and Sand)…

    and had to chuckle (darkly) over the state­ment from the firm of the Chicago real estate auc­tion­eer (who is now going, going, gone! Brought down the gavel on his own existence) — which touted how well posi­tioned for the future that he left the firm(!!)

  7. Jolene said on January 7th, 2009 at 10:55 am

    Indeed, the home inves­ti­ga­tion for the six-year-old dri­ver had already been done, result­ing in a require­ment that the father never leave the father alone w/ the mother. Pretty amaz­ing require­ment, but, given that the boy left the house while his mother slept, it seems to have been justified.

  8. Gasman said on January 7th, 2009 at 11:10 am

    When I see exam­ples of riv­et­ing pro­gram­ming like “The Judge” I won­der: why have I even con­sid­ered buy­ing a new TV? It looks like it was done by a high school TV Pro­duc­tion class. No, the high school­ers would have done a bet­ter job.

    As for the skier dan­gling his wares unVailed, as it were, for all to see (I can just hear him now — “It’s shrink­age, shrink­age, SHRINKAGE I tell you, DAMN IT! It’s COLD OUT HERE!”), after my ini­tial chuckle, I looked at the child hang­ing on what was sup­posed to be a seat. If they hadn’t stopped the lift when they did it could have been a very tragic end instead of just a very fright­en­ing and embar­rass­ing one.

  9. Dorothy said on January 7th, 2009 at 11:15 am

    Not being a Colum­bus native I did not know who Jimmy Crum was. One of the female news anchors started cry­ing dur­ing the play­ing of old video of him last night. He must have been quite a guy. His sports jack­ets imme­di­ately put me in mind of Bill Cardille, aka Chilly Billy of WIIC Pitts­burgh (now WPXI).

  10. Jen said on January 7th, 2009 at 11:22 am

    Busi­ness sto­ries these days are mak­ing me happy that I never had much money to begin with. So far (knock on wood), we haven’t been affected TOO bad. My hus­band was unem­ployed for a month but found a new, bet­ter job that he’s enjoy­ing, and I still have a job. Can’t ask for much more than that.

  11. Marci said on January 7th, 2009 at 11:29 am

    Haha! I sort of for­got about The Judge! God, that brings back mem­o­ries. I used to love to watch that show when I was a kid. That, and The People’s Court. This prob­a­bly explains why, as an adult, I can’t bring myself to flip past an episode of Judge Judy, even if I’ve already watched it once before.

  12. Catherine said on January 7th, 2009 at 12:01 pm

    I don’t think that judge is a real judge at all. He’s going to work at Pasadena City Hall — no courts there. He has the feel of a Tour­na­ment of Roses muck­ety, but I’d have to check whether there are golf tees embroi­dered on his socks.

  13. coozledad said on January 7th, 2009 at 12:08 pm

    You have to won­der why these guys are off­ing them­selves. Is it some mis­read­ing of the Samu­rai code, or Sun Tzu? Have they real­ized that they are fail­ures even as jerks? Did they antic­i­pate being strung up by the Jaque­rie?
    It can’t be because of shame. They have none.

  14. nancy said on January 7th, 2009 at 12:25 pm

    Cooz, as this lady’s case sug­gests, per­haps sui­cide on your own timetable is prefer­able to watch­ing your dick be fed to a Russ­ian gangster’s pit bull. Sorry to be crude, but until I read that story last night, it hadn’t occurred to me.

  15. LA Mary said on January 7th, 2009 at 12:29 pm

    Catherine’s right. He’s going into Pasadena City Hall and yes, he’s white and old and proper­ous look­ing (and square) enough to be a Tour­na­ment of Roses muck­ety. I alien­ated two thirds of my cowork­ers yes­ter­day by not lov­ing the whole Tour­na­ment of Roses thing. This year’s prez or chair­man or grand hoopdy or what­ever they call them actu­ally had a name that could flag him as a non-Protestant.

  16. coozledad said on January 7th, 2009 at 12:31 pm

    For some rea­son I’m visu­al­iz­ing Bob Hoskins in the clos­ing min­utes of “The Long Good Friday”.

  17. beb said on January 7th, 2009 at 12:35 pm

    The amaz­ing thing about that 6 year old kid wasn’t that he went six miles before hit­ting a bridge abutt­ment, or that he suc­cess­fully made two right angle turns or that he missed all on-coming traf­fic. No, what was amaz­ing twas that appar­ently he knew the way to his school.

    The other odd story in the freep today involved a 4 year old who got so made when his babysit­ter stepped on his foot that he hauled a shot­gun out of a closet and shot at the babysit­ter, caus­ing minor injuries. Doesn’t any­one teach them chil­dren anger man­age­ment? And who leaves a loaded shot­gun in a closet where a four year can get it? I mean, geez, what a recipe for wak­ing up dead someday!

  18. nancy said on January 7th, 2009 at 12:40 pm

    An excel­lent shout-out that demon­strates the depth of your cul­tural refine­ment. Or at least the mar­ket pen­e­tra­tion of Net­flix in North Carolina.

    Of course the judge is an actor. I found a ref­er­ence online where some­one said that open was shot in Colum­bus. Um, noooo.

  19. John said on January 7th, 2009 at 12:45 pm

    “Wak­ing up dead”, one of my favorite expres­sion. I always imag­ined those early morn­ing sirens I could hear were ambu­lances rush­ing to a house to pick up some­one who just awoke dead. My EMT friend ruined that fan­tasy for me by say­ing most morn­ing calls are for slips and falls in the bath­room. That’s just not the same.

  20. MarkH said on January 7th, 2009 at 12:57 pm

    RIP Jimmy Crum. The only sports reporter in cen­tral Ohio who would stand up (such as it was) to Woody Hayes. I remem­ber a cou­ple of time when Woody went way to the edge behavior-wise, Jimmy was the only one to call him on it, in what WCMH would make sure to dis­play at the time “commentary”.

    Also, Kirk, cor­rect me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t he the only one in Colum­bus to actu­ally use the word “fired” as fact in a story about Hayes’ depar­ture in 1978? I only met him twice in my almost-professional sports­writ­ing career in Colum­bus, but he was very nice and always approachable.

    HA HA, Dorothy — Chilly Billy Cardilly, host of Chiller The­atre Sat­ur­day nights on Chan­nel 11. When the orig­i­nal “Night of the Liv­ing Dead” was filmed in the Pitts­burgh area, he landed a role as a result of his host­ing WIIC’s hor­ror scream-fest. That’s him in the very begin­ning of the film, in the grave­yard, I think. Also Dorothy, remem­ber Cap­tain Jim’s Pop­eye Club on Chan­nel 11? Cap­tain Jim was Bill’s dad; guess that’s how he got his job…

    Colum­bus court shows: I remem­ber “Traf­fic Court’ best of all. The “judge” was actu­ally a com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­fes­sor at OSU, can’t remem­ber his name, and a lot of the perps were his stu­dents, I think. One per­son, who it was obvi­ous was a friend of the judge’s, made the mis­take of call­ing him by his real first name. The judge imme­di­ately went into char­ac­ter, shout­ing and bang­ing his gavel, remind­ing him of proper court­room deco­rum and how a judge is addressed. The “defen­dant” was really shook up by the whole thing.

  21. Jolene said on January 7th, 2009 at 1:12 pm

    Not so sur­pris­ing that the five-year-old knew the way to school, beb. When he was about that age, my brother drew a map from our farm to my grand­par­ents’ farm and another one to the lit­tle town near us. Sim­i­larly, dur­ing a visit to my sis­ter and her fam­ily in Seat­tle, my young niece was able to guide me to the shop­ping area in her urban neigh­bor­hood. I sus­pect kids become famil­iar w/ their sur­round­ings pretty early, but, because of con­cerns about their safety, they aren’t asked to dis­play that com­pe­tence until much later.

  22. Kirk said on January 7th, 2009 at 1:21 pm

    Couldn’t say that Crum was the only one who said Woody Hayes was fired, only that not enough media out­lets did like­wise, my present employer The Dis­patch paint­ing itself with shame by being the hugest exam­ple. (I still have a copy of the “WOODY HAYES RESIGNS” paper.)

    I wasn’t around Jimmy a lot, but he was a really nice guy, as was his wife. (Did you go to school with Kelly, Nance?)

    My Jimmy Crum story involves the Lit­tle Brown Jug in Delaware. For those who don’t know, it’s a com­bi­na­tion picnic/all-day drunk/program of some of the world’s best har­ness rac­ing dropped into the mid­dle of a county fair in mid-September. It’s a blast.

    We always used to hang on the back­stretch in an area where we could set up our lawn chairs, beer and food. Mrs. Crum was among the peo­ple who were around our group. After the races, Jimmy came back over from the press box. We were stand­ing there yakking, hav­ing a beer, when a young woman came up, hollered “Jimmy!” and pulled up her T-shirt. We all howled; Jimmy just said, “Hap­pens all the time.”

  23. Kirk said on January 7th, 2009 at 1:23 pm

    One time on “Traf­fic Court,” one of the defen­dants, get­ting into his role, called the judge a son of a bitch.

  24. brian stouder said on January 7th, 2009 at 1:55 pm

    Local Fort Wayne live broad­cast news high­lights that I myself saw include:

    The time Ken Kurtz (chan­nel 15) threw up on the air; the time John Moss (chan­nel 33) stopped dead dur­ing his weather deal and, look­ing at the floor, said “that’s the biggest cock­roach I think I’ve ever seen!” — and the cam­era panned down to the skit­ter­ing feller! And another time on chan­nel 33, they were doing a live-remote inter­view, and the guy they were talk­ing to dropped the f-bomb about 5 times before they got the plug pulled, and switched back to the stu­dio, where there was much throat clear­ing and extem­po­ra­ne­ous apologies!

    (and of course — on sev­eral occa­sions we got to see The Pro­pre­itress herown­self on chan­nel 15, but we digress)

  25. Kirk said on January 7th, 2009 at 2:00 pm

    On the then-just on the air ABC chan­nel in Colum­bia, Mo., about 35 years ago, they had an ama­teur­ish call-in show hosted by an unin­ten­tion­ally comic doo­fus. They also didn’t have tape delay, which is why view­ers heard one night: “You know what I’d like to see on TV? I’d like to see a mouse fuck an elephant.”

  26. Dorothy said on January 7th, 2009 at 2:18 pm

    Mark I don’t recall Cap­tain Jim’s Pop­eye Club. Must have been before my time. My hus­band was, how­ever, on the Ricky & Cop­per show once upon a time. And to my aston­ish­ment, I found out about 2 months ago that some­one in my office is related to Ricky Wertz through marriage!

  27. jcburns said on January 7th, 2009 at 2:27 pm

    I believe the ‘Traf­fic Court’ judge was played by (and how could you make this up) Del­bert Ober­teuf­fer. I just pray that I have the wis­dom to always tem­per justice…with mercy. Wait, that’s ‘The Judge.’ For ‘Traf­fic Court’: I just pray that I have the wis­dom to always tem­per alcohol…with seat belts.

  28. Jolene said on January 7th, 2009 at 2:39 pm

    jc, did you see 60 Min­utes this past week? Bet­ter to tem­per alco­hol w/ a des­ig­nated dri­ver. Not that I am per­fectly vir­tu­ous in this regard, but, jeez, that was a sober­ing presentation.

  29. brian stouder said on January 7th, 2009 at 2:52 pm

    Pop quizz:

    If you had to choose, would you rather speed down the 2-lane high­way with motorists com­ing the other way who have:

    a) had one or two 12 ounce beers in the past hour

    b) had one or two glasses of wine in the past hour

    c) are in the mid­dle of com­pos­ing a text mes­sage on their Blackberry/I’m-Bad/T-mobile poddy whatchamacal­lit doohicky

    d) are try­ing to sell a cus­tomer a super-deluxe wid­get (plus instal­la­tion and spare parts) on his cell phone

  30. Dave said on January 7th, 2009 at 3:05 pm

    I had a teacher in high school who used to be on Traf­fic Court at least once a year, she was an elderly lady (well, I thought so at the time) and I don’t know if she belonged to any local com­mu­nity act­ing groups or not and now I wonder.

    Who could for­get Jimmy Crum and his col­or­ful jack­ets. In read­ing about him, I see that Jerry Rasor is no longer with us. Any­one else remem­ber the sixty-ish Sat­ur­day morn­ing Dance Party?

    Chet Long on Chan­nel 10? And Spook Beck­man, always on one radio sta­tion or another?

  31. Kirk said on January 7th, 2009 at 3:31 pm

    Remem­ber them all, Dave. Chet Long, who was an alco­holic, ended every news­cast with a “thought for the day.” On Fri­day, it was always, “And remem­ber this Sun­day to attend the church of your choice.”

  32. Dave said on January 7th, 2009 at 3:38 pm

    Chet Long was an alco­holic? Had no idea, I remem­ber him say­ing that, though. I’m sure I mostly saw him on Fri­day nights and sum­mer nights, I can’t even remem­ber if there was an early evening news then. That’s when the news went 15 min­utes and then I believe the national news was on for another 15 with Dou­glas Edwards on CBS. Yes, pre­dat­ing Wal­ter Cronkite.

  33. Kirk said on January 7th, 2009 at 3:50 pm

    Sounds like we’re in the same age bracket. I watched Chet and Dou­glas Edwards. No Hunt­ley and Brink­ley in our house.

  34. Sue said on January 7th, 2009 at 4:16 pm

    Off topic: Why isn’t this blog a Weblog Awards Final­ist? Who nom­i­nates? Vast something-wing conspiracy?

  35. Gasman said on January 7th, 2009 at 4:18 pm

    As my dad was Art Direc­tor at the old WKJG 33 in Fort Wayne, I spent much time there as a kid. It was when it was not only the NBC affil­i­ate, but also an AM radio sta­tion when that was THE format.

    WKJG was def­i­nitely a small time sta­tion at that time and every­body ended up doing mul­ti­ple gigs occa­sion­ally. The staff also tried to break the con­cen­tra­tion of the on air folks by engag­ing in off cam­era shenanigans.

    One par­tic­u­lar news­cast, my dad was work­ing as floor man­ager and was get­ting ready to cue the new­bie weather guy. Dad counts down “3, 2, 1, …” and points to the weather guy while simul­ta­ne­ously drop­ping his pants. New guy laughs so hard he doesn’t even get out the weather cast, mak­ing it his first and last time on WKJG. Ah, for the care­free life in old time bush league TV.

  36. jcburns said on January 7th, 2009 at 4:47 pm

    You gotta love a news­cast called “Look­ing with Long.” Brought to you by Colum­bia Gas of Ohio.

  37. LA Mary said on January 7th, 2009 at 5:13 pm

    In the eight­ies my friends in NYC called the local chan­nel four news­cast “Dykes at Five.” Here in LA we had mostly fluffy haired women in Dynasty shoul­dered power suits at that time, so it was a refresh­ing change when I vis­ited the big apple.

  38. Julie Robinson said on January 7th, 2009 at 5:30 pm

    My dad was in radio at a small town sta­tion and I loved to hang out with him. I remem­ber him set­ting fire to the news copy as it was being read by the other news guy.

  39. Gasman said on January 7th, 2009 at 5:58 pm

    My other WKJG story involves the radio side. I was about 3 and was hang­ing out with my dad while he was chat­ting with one of the news guys prior to the noon news break. We were in the lit­tle booth where the on air guy would read the news at the top of the hour. It was a few min­utes before noon and while the adults were talk­ing about incom­pre­hen­si­bly bor­ing adult stuff, I was busy­ing myself crawl­ing under­neath the con­sole. I was hid­ing behind the jun­gle of cables qui­etly pre­tend­ing to be a lion.

    Well, it came time to do the news and my dad exited the booth, either for­get­ting I was in there with the hap­less news­guy or assum­ing that since I was quiet, I would be no trou­ble. Lit­tle did he know. It was about that time when I real­ized just how sim­i­lar newsguy’s legs looked to those of a gazelle. Just as news­guy was start­ing, I pounced.

    “I’m News Guy and it’s time for the twelve o’clock ARRGGHHH!!!” Of course, being a lion, I did what lions do and I bit him on the leg. Given that I was a lion, it seemed the only log­i­cal course of action.

    My mom heard newsguy’s piteous on air bleat­ing live and later heard that it was her son that was respon­si­ble. What the hell did they expect? I was a lion.

  40. whitebeard said on January 7th, 2009 at 8:06 pm

    Radio daze in a small sta­tion, CJIC in The Soo, with an even smaller bud­get so the good micro­phone was usu­ally bor­rowed from the announce booth. Early morn­ing news­cast read into the desk lamp while the fran­tic con­trol room guy tried to grasp words from the ether.
    On another new­cast, this time at night, fran­tic con­trol room guy watches in hor­ror as two news­cast­ers bat­tle over who is going to read the news. Scripts are torn in half, set on fire, blows are exchanged. Good act­ing too, because the new­cast had been pre-taped and was on the air while the con­trol room guy only heard and saw the mock struggle.

  41. whitebeard said on January 7th, 2009 at 8:15 pm

    The joys of a big­ger tele­vi­sion bud­get, same sta­tion, with two (yes, two) on-air cam­eras. Pro­ducer calls for switch to Cam­era Two while said cam­era­man is try­ing to peer down the blouse of the well-endowed guest.
    Same cam­era­man, dif­fer­ent guest, almost faints with hor­ror when sports announcer asks the pos­si­bly well-steroided female weightlifter “Now, let’s see your snatch.“
    And you thought the announce-booth win­dow was shat­ter­proof. Sta­tion man­ager slams phone down so hard it bounces through said win­dow and announcer is show­ered in glass while read­ing com­mer­cial and very calmly announces that there seems to be a prob­lem, shuts off mike and screams “What the (exple­tive) was that?”

  42. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on January 7th, 2009 at 9:18 pm

    Jimmy Crum was just a charm­ing, inquis­i­tive, forth­right guy who hap­pened to have a taste for plaid jack­ets. He said once in my hear­ing “it takes people’s atten­tion off my lack of hair.” I believe he had about thirty dif­fer­ent answers for “why those jackets.”

    He would show up for almost any pub­lic ser­vice event that needed his pres­ence in the eight county cen­tral Ohio area, with­out regard for com­pen­sa­tion or whether he was going to be the big cheese at the event or not, and that was true after his “retire­ment” until he just couldn’t phys­i­cally do it any­more. When Jimmy Crum stood up (all of 5’4″ i think) and talked about “pay it for­ward,” you didn’t detect a whiff of trite­ness or irony. Jimmy always gave Woody credit for “pay it for­ward” (and Coach Hayes would have been fired sooner, for some­thing worse, were it not for Jimmy Crum’s influ­ence, i strongly sus­pect), but i think the real motive force behind mak­ing “pay it for­ward” such a well known trope was the sports­caster from Chan­nel 4 in the loud blazers.

  43. Cara said on January 7th, 2009 at 10:16 pm

    Nancy,
    The sto­ries, the mem­o­ries, and oh, the great laughs. Thanks so much for one fab­u­lous Blog!

  44. MarkH said on January 7th, 2009 at 10:52 pm

    Nice words about Jimmy, Jeff. But I’m not so sure Hayes would have gone before he did with or with­out Crum’s presence/ sup­port. As Kirk said, too many gave him too many passes on his behav­ior until that Clem­son inci­dent put every­thing over the edge. But you’re absolutely right, Jimmy was the gen­uine arti­cle when it came to car­ing about his public.

    Remem­ber Woody’s WBNS TV show where he used poor Ted Mullins as a weekly punch­ing bag dur­ing foot­ball season?

    Speak­ing of TV peo­ple pass­ing: Dorothy, did you remem­ber this guy:

    http://​www​.pbrtv​.com/​b​l​o​g​/​e​n​t​r​y​_​8​20.php

    Right up there with Ricki & Cop­per and Paul Shan­non. When I was a kid, I once wrote Hank and Knish a let­ter and was thrilled when they wrote back.

    All school­boys had a crush on Ricki Wertz back then; here’s a reminder:

    http://​www​.geoc​i​ties​.com/​p​i​t​t​l​o​c​a​l​s​t​a​r​s​/​w​e​r​t​z​r​i​c​k​i.html

  45. joodyb said on January 7th, 2009 at 11:38 pm

    I could have the dis­tinc­tion of being the only com­menter here who grew up/came of age with both Chilly Billy and Jimmy Crum.

  46. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on January 8th, 2009 at 7:32 am

    Mark Bittman is doing a fas­ci­nat­ing “body of work” across his columns and arti­cles on food in the NYTimes: this is a great start o’ the year piece for cooks at home — http://​www​.nytimes​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​0​1​/​0​7​/​d​i​n​i​n​g​/​0​7​m​i​n​i.html — but i hated dis­agree­ing with him right at the start. Let me have my crou­tons in a bag, please, i just don’t get results that make the time worth spend­ing. Plus dried basil isn’t worth­less, just not as won­der­ful as fresh (dried pars­ley i finally gave myself per­mis­sion to stop buy­ing, but my mom always had a big jar of it in the pantry, so it took a while…it really is worth­less, tho’).

  47. Dorothy said on January 8th, 2009 at 7:40 am

    Mark thanks for those links. Yes, Ricki was quite the looker — she filled out her sweaters just fine, didn’t she!? I am a lit­tle foggy on Hank Stohl. I rec­og­nize his name but I’m guess­ing I was too young when he was in his hey­day. But my five older sib­lings would prob­a­bly have stronger memories.

    That pic­ture of a lit­tle boy and Ricki made me think of my brother Jimmy. He’s three years younger than me. I’m pos­i­tive his first grade pic­ture had him in a white shirt and red bow tie, just like that kid! But Jim didn’t start wear­ing glasses until 3rd grade I think.

    EDIT: Good morn­ing Jeff!! I see we’re both check­ing the Nancy updates before head­ing to work today. Any­thing to avoid get­ting out there in the snow.

  48. Dorothy said on January 8th, 2009 at 9:03 am

    Cor­rec­tion to my com­ments about Bill Cardille and the loud jack­ets  —  that was actu­ally Bill Curry! I get my Bills mixed up all the time.

  49. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on January 8th, 2009 at 9:44 am

    Dorothy — I’m a lit­tle baf­fled, but mildly relieved: every school dis­trict in this county is closed, except Newark & Heath are 2 hr. delay, and ours is … no change.

    Good for my morn­ing pro­duc­tiv­ity, though! Knox County looks shut down, school-wise, but i’m sure Kenyon is like Deni­son. If all the stu­dents live on cam­pus, who cares? Staff, good luck!

  50. Dorothy said on January 8th, 2009 at 11:07 am

    Our stu­dents don’t come back to cam­pus until the week­end, Jeff. Classes start on Mon­day. So every­thing is still a lit­tle laid back with­out the stu­dent pop­u­la­tion here to make the place hum!

  51. At least he understands that school comes first « Blog on the Run: Reloaded said on January 8th, 2009 at 6:45 pm

    […] Nance, who finds all the good […]

  52. Ricardo said on January 11th, 2009 at 11:26 pm

    Detroit had local shows “Juve­nile Court”, “Divorce Court”, and “Traf­fic Court” years before Wap­ner. One of my high school chums was on “Traf­fic Court”, ran a red light or something.

    There is a book out called “Hi There Boys and Girls” that doc­u­ments local children’s TV shows from the days of live tele­vi­sion and from all over the US. As was Count Floyd on SCTV, most of the hosts were local news/weathermen and some of the local TV women. The book is highly rec­om­mended by me. When I was very, very young, Sonny Elliot came to my school for an assem­bly. Sonny was a long time Detroit weatherman.

  53. Becky said on April 3rd, 2009 at 2:45 pm

    Does any­one remem­ber “Spook Beckman’s Cof­fee Club” WLW-C TV 4? I have a set of cof­fee mugs and don’t remem­ber the show.

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