Hope I haven't mentioned these before. The better break up efforts I recall occurred during my first job, at KTUL Radio. To refresh my memory, I had written down some episodes for a never-to-be published book. In 1959, when the station was temporarily located in Turley, bloopers were aided and abetted by a building not particularly suited for radio. It was too small and no rooms were soundproofed. Open a mic and Bob Gregory's booming voice, recording commercials in the adjacent studio, was often heard in your headset going out over-the-air.

A couple of years later, when the station was sold, pending FCC approval that took several months, the staff developed a collective "we don't give a sh*t" attitude. Laughter helped break the tension, much like the warden cracking a joke while escorting an inmate to the electric chair. It would be my first exposure to some rather creative efforts to make newscasters "break up" on-the-air.

An effective method was the use of the intercom. The two-way system was normally reserved for off-air talk between newscaster and control room jock, usually during commercials. The main culprits included Gregory, Gary Chew and Les Parsons. Suddenly, in the middle of a newscast, a control room voice would observe: "You're doing a great job, man." Sometimes it was: "wrap it up, you're running long." The intercom chatter worked like a charm, especially on Gregory who would cut his microphone for ten or fifteen seconds while unsuccessfully attempting, to stifle his booming laughter.

Once, while I was reading a newscast, someone opened the back door leading to the cow pasture and carried in a lawn sprinkler placing it on the desk beside my news copy. After the troublemaker departed, the sprinkler started up, drenching me for two or three minutes while I tried to read the news with Cronkite-like authority. Unfortunately, that's the way it was...in Turley.

Truly devilish pranks never failed to accomplish their goal. The control room contained several large, heavy turntables. Sitting on top, only a culprit’s head was visible through the glass window into the newsroom. While reading the news, the sight of someone’s head revolving slowing (Exorcist-style,) is unnerving, to say the least.

There were a couple more memorable breakups I may submit later.

Ken Reed and a couple of other guys decided that extreme measures had to be taken, so, with the curtains to the studio closed, they proceeded to undress Creager while he talked. They got him down to the buff, but he didn't miss a line of his copy. He got redder than usual in the face, but that was the only change. Finally, and I think Ken was the perpetrator, the CO2 fire extinguisher that hung in the hall was brought into play. The horn was placed against Creager's bare backside and the trigger was pulled.

Creager didn't laugh, at least I don't think he did, because he leaped forward, knocking over the microphone, and the board quickly went to a commercial.

One I didn't see, but which Noel Confer can tell you about, involved a coke bottle half-filled with water, an Alka-Seltzer tablet, and a condom. It's a classic.

Outside of going to Eureka Springs, I only pass through Arkansas on the way to New Orleans, Memphis or Nashville. I try not to stop and eat, or be eaten.

I know it's not Ft. Smith, but for a short trip, you can't beat the AQ Chicken House in Springdale! My wife and I take a trip there at least once a month to get some of the best cast iron pan fried chicken this side of Heaven! And the beer battered fries! O lordy...!!

Uh oh...

Duke Baul - no idea.

John Heatley - at last word was a gunsmith in Tulsey.

Try Jimmy Reid's or Sonny Hollingshead's remembrances in the previous guestbooks.

Can anyone tell me - if is it true that Wayne "Tuffy" Johnson has retired from 8 to tend his goats? Has anyone crossed tracks with former KTUL/CBS Hollywood cameraman Toby Brown in retirement at Lake Tenkiller?

Mike Miller alert - if he doesn't kill me for noting this on-line - Mike Miller and wife may soon be residents of Ft.Smith, AR - if all goes well...anyone with Western Arkansas cuisine experiences have any Ft.Smith dining suggestions for the Millers? I'll miss the BBQ or chili lunches with Mike up in DC. Hey - that might make Mike available for any TTM Casa Bonita bashes in the future!

BTW - as he moves South, I am moving back to DC at the end of September...my summer vacation relief job - which started with MERN TV to Iraq in May and expanded - has brought the folks in DC to put me on staff as a tech. I am kinda doing this TV career thang sideways - tech to director to manager back to tech, but it beats workin' at WalMart! I am bucking the trend for UNemployment, for now.

I remember Gary Lewis hanging around Tulsa back when Mazeppa was on the air. Gary and his band, Medicine, appeared on the UFFCM. When I heard Gary sing a few years ago at the State Fair, he did a very good job. He looked and sounded very young. Several times, he mentioned how much he enjoyed living in Tulsa back in the seventies.

My clan thought that Beef Baloney rang the bell with the "Hungry Hippo" bit. I think their effort in putting on the show earns an "A Plus".

Leon Russell was his producer and played several of the instruments on his hit songs. Tulsan Tommy Tripplehorn (Jeanne's dad) was his guitarist.

It's always struck me as kinda peculiar that radio and TV people are the only folks I know who mess with each other's jobs like that.

Here's a page with info about Leon Russell's participation on "This Diamond Ring".

Speaking of the telethon, seeing Steve Lawrence on it reminded me again of the fantastic Steve and Eydie version of grunge band Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun". The MP3 can be downloaded on this page under "Bizarre Covers". Here's how S & E came to record the song.

In 1953-54 Nancy Greaves and I lived catty-corner across the street from the Quaker Drug store. I worked downtown at an oil company and Nancy worked at the radio station on the park. Due to lack of bus fare, I often walked home in 3" heels, but she could walk home for lunch. She had a degree from TU in radio/TV and I had dropped out of school for a year.

Wayne Maxwell, also an alum of TU's theater dept, lived right next door with his parents. My mother would not set foot over our threshold since living in an apartment was not ladylike in her view. (She did bring us squash and tomatoes from my parents' garden in Brookside and leave them in a basket by our door). Wayne, a friend, could and did stand on his toilet and look into our bedroom and living room windows - then would call and tell us what we were wearing. (Fortunately, mother did not know about this).

Neither Nancy nor I had a clue about housekeeping and had a tiny apartment refrigerator with two small spaces for ice cube trays. One of our several suitors brought us a whole fish, which we froze without benefit of tray in one of the compartments. We then could not dislodge it; it stayed there for the entire year we were in residence.

We found that we could hear what the older, single man, who lived immediately above us in an identical apartment, was saying in his kitchen if we stood on a plastic table mat on top of the two-burner stove top in our kitchen. Amidst muffled giggling in that tiny, tiny space, we regularly eavesdropped.

Once, I remember, he said heatedly to a visiting friend, ice cubes tinkling in his glass, "You just can't categorize women! They won't stay in their categories".

Not too long after that, he had a large party on New Year's Eve with a conga line which at about 2 a.m. wound down the stairs and out the front door onto the street. For that, we stood on chairs and peered out our opened front door transom.

Fascinating times in Tulsa! One of my favorite things was that as I walked home down Boston, I think, there was a small decorator's shop. In the window for several months was a hand-painted toilet seat with a poodle and rhinestones on the top of it. In rosy red cursive writing on the underside of the bottom part of the seat, it read, "Goodie, Goodie, Daddy's Home". I coveted it. Just think what it would bring on eBay now!

Frank Morrow has mentioned Quaker Drug on 18th Street and KTUL at "Boulder on the Park" (where he worked for three years) on several occasions. Take a look at this page from Frank, Lost Cultural Aspects of the '50's Generation in Tulsa. Thanks for the great slice of Tulsa in the early 50s, Mary Lou.

Y'all don't do no laborin' this holiday weekend!

Sam and Devon Lucie (now in Little Rock, I believe) used to do the weather on Fox23 before the station even had a newscast. Does anyone else remember "First Weather"? I think it was from 10-10:05PM, and it was quite an informative 5 minutes. I think a female weather anchor started that program. (Faith Feagans...webmaster)

Also, I was on the BA yesterday when a memory neuron fired. Does anyone else remember KRMG having a billboard on the BA near Memorial that had lights to indicate what you could hear on KRMG at that moment (News, Weather, or Traffic)? I remember turning the radio to KRMG when I passed it to see if the billboard was accurate.

In Guestbook 19 (also the Other kiddie shows page...webmaster), I read that you were part of the floor crew when Mary Susan Gifford ("Miss Nancy") was the first "Romper Room" teacher at KTUL in Tulsa. I assume you were there when Life Magazine photographers were there doing an article for a September 1956 issue with film star Janet Blair on the cover. Do you know if Sue is still living? I remember that her husband's name was Joe.

Here is the email address for a man in Denver who is currently writing a book about "Romper Room": lwhicks[at]aol[dot]com

He has already interviewed more than one hundred Romper Room teachers from the '50s.

I met Sue when we were in Baltimore for our one week of training before becoming "television teachers". I had forgotten about her poor eyesight but I did remember that she ate dessert before her meals. The floor crew always held a special place in my heart because I depended them every day. My kids cannot believe that we had no color, no videotape, and no teleprompter and we had to use the darkest pancake makeup on our faces.

Sincerely,
Marlyn Johnson
(Miss Lynn, WSJS-TV, Winston-Salem, NC 1956-1957)

If anyone knows Nate's whereabouts or his email address, let him know about Marlyn's note.

9/3/2003: Take a look at the new Romper Room in Tulsa page.

Wish somebody would start an OKC website, but it ain't me, babe. :)

Tall Paul Insurance. I remember it well. The commercials were of some very early bad claymation character who was a sheriff or something. The theme song is burned into my memory, as is the phone number: 524-1541.

The guy on channel 25's news breaks (NewsTouch 25) is Ronnie Kaye, longtime OKC radio personality who is back at it doing afternoons on KOMA.

Count Gregor was not to be missed. The movies were horrifyingly horrible, but it was fun. Interestingly, the guy who played Count Gregor did (still does?) some local Hair Club For Men commercials. He did Count Gregor as recently as '96.

And I as well would like to congratulate the Talons on winning the ArenaCup. I missed the game, but I understand the Convention Center was rockin' Saturday night.

On one show - former KTUL reporter/American Airlines p.r. flack, Bob Leder, was credited at show's end. He is now (or was in 2001 when the show was produced..) Bell Helicopter Textron div. Communications Manager.

Incidently - the "FLY PAST" series on A&E/History Channel is produced, directed and narrated by former TV actor - Monte Markham. Several of his family members also worked on the series for Perpetual Motion Productions. BTW besides being on BayWatch for years - he had the forgettable role of the only OTHER actor to play Perry Mason on TV in '73 for a year - before Raymond Burr resumed the role in made for TV movies.

I never even thought about a trailer existing for WEEKEND! It makes the film look so much more exciting than it really is! They left out the part where a worker is eating a sandwich for 5 minutes as Marxist dialogues make up the soundtrack. It has some breathtaking sections that fans of abstract cinema would like, but other parts are so dull that they feel like an eternity. It's ultimately long and boring.

I would highly recommend it to Maoist post-structuralists. I saw it in a class (that I wasn't taking) at TU in 1983.

Ho Ho (of course)
The Tall Paul Show (does anyone even remember that one? Giving an insurance company mascot his own show is a no-brainer)
The B.C. Clark's Anniversary Sale jingle that gets stuck in your head for the next year (or, in my case, over the past 10 years since I moved away)
The guy who used to do the newsbreaks in the 80's on channel 25 in OKC with the awful parted hair (could have been a rug. What's his name?)
"Those Terrible Twisters"
Count Gregor (although I never saw him on TV, he was stuff of legend)
Butch & Ben McCain (before they went to Hollywood to be in movies like Bio Dome)

Those are just a few of the things I remember from Oklahoma television. Hopefully a few people remember these along with me.

I sorta remember Mr. Brewster as a moderately heavyset fellow with black horn-rimmed glasses. His place was directly across from the cemetery.

It's really weird how the memory works, I recall a prominent tombstone directly across Peoria from Brewster's with the name "Hodge" on it. Is it still there?

I even think the show was broadcast from his store.

Know anything about Edie Washburn or Artie Washburn? I see they have been mentioned by Mr Morrow. My brother knew them way back when, and was interested in their whereabouts.

I wish we had more about Brewster's. What we do have is a virtual Brewster's Toys with webmaster-created, TV-related Java toys for your amusement.

There is a bit of info about Brewster's on the Oom-A-Gog page.

http://www.theoutsidersbookandmovie.com/InterestingInfoandFactsPg2.html

I logged onto this site to see if anyone knew anything about the whereabouts of Lee Roberts? He was the original over-night jock when KVOO-FM went on the air back in '87. He left about a year later for a position at a rock station in OKC, I believe. Haven't heard a thing about him since.

Also, just this past weekend, KVOO's former morning man, Andy "O", had a get-together at his house of former KVOO-ites. Saw several former office staff, Shirley Speechley, Amber & Kathleen, former PD-Rick Alan West, Heather Miles and Robin Carpenter(both are still with KVOO,) Brett Thompson-or "Danger Boy," a couple former AE's-Karen & Linda, and former news reporters Amy Marks and Glenn Schroeder. With all of the bad news from around the world recently, it was heartwarming to see many good friends and talk about the good ol' days. I think it speaks volumes about Andy & Michelle's character that they've been able to keep in touch with so many former co-workers. It was truly an honor to have had the opportunity to work with such wonderful people.

I spotted Charlene introducing Jerry Lee Lewis a couple of weekends ago at the Greenwood Jazz(?) Festival.

That's odd, because my Yahoo mailbox was about 58% full, and I have been maxed out to 117% both days due to the virus. Is that as much as Yahoo will allow once you are past 100%?

For me, that amounts to 1 extra meg beyond my alloted amount. This can happen to you if you are in the address books of lots of folks who have the virus in their computers.

(The above entry is authentic.) Lowell and his wife Susan wrote, produced and performed this CD of original songs about local TV heroes. Check their web site for more info. It has been featured on the TTM Bulletin Board since late July.

The Tastee-Freeze was on North Cincinnati around 33rd St. North...this is where 'Dallas' took them to get something to eat after they had been in the church. The building was still there a few years ago with junk cars and a fence surrounding it...I do not know if it still stands or not.

The Dairy Queen was on 86th Street North in Owasso....this where they had the discussion about the rumble (it is demolished.)

There was residual discussion of the local "Queer Eye" preemption. We saw Mary Kay Place at T.U. in 1966. We may have seen Gary Busey in a 1970 Gremlin commercial (but I don't think so). We ended with questions from the webmaster of a site about "The Outsiders" (film and book) re shooting locations in Tulsa. Several answers were found in previous Guestbooks.

It's all yours for the reading in Guestbook 144.

On an unrelated note, between the MSBlaster and Nachi worms and today's prolific SoBig virus variant, it hasn't been a good week for the internet. I've gotten much more spam today (most of it with the virus attached) than any day in the past (8/20: Was that ever an understatement; I had an empty Yahoo mailbox around 3 am. At 11 am, it was 117% full!)