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As part of my mis-spent youth I did radio and a little bit
of television before I got an honest (?) job.
At age 16 I had my own radio show – naturally it was ‘The Ross Hart
Show’ on WPXI radio 910 AM dial in Roanoke. I also worked other stations.
But this story isn’t about radio. It’s about the 3 months in the Summer of ’72
when I worked at a Roanoke TV station. The TV was WRFT channel 27, in
Roanoke. It was put together on a
shoestring, which kept fraying as it struggled to survive. All the equipment was
‘used’ when we got it. Well used. And
our studio cameras were black and white, not color – that’s a shoestring.
My job was primarily as ‘switcher’ meaning I was responsible
for pushing the buttons to get what you were supposed to see on the air at the
right second. Secondary was to point a camera at the ‘talent’ when we actually
taped or broadcast something from our studio.
And the studio was on the top of “Little Brushy Mountain” west of
Salem. The good news is there were a lot
of berry bushes to snack on; the bad news is that snakes liked the berries
also.
One FCC requirement to keep a broadcast license in those days
was to broadcast ‘public affairs’ stuff ‘to inform the public’. So our version
of public affairs was an incarnation of an old Roanoke Area show called the “Eb
and Andy” show. The original show was
bluegrass; ours wasn’t.
What we did was have a host and his sidekick discuss stuff,
have guests to discuss stuff, and when all else failed they’d introduce some
public service film and then discuss it. The host/straight man was a great guy
named Jeff Hunt (I also worked with Jeff at a radio station). The sidekick was Tom Hughes who dressed up as
a hillbilly named ‘Uncle Looney” – red beard, confederate cap, overalls, sat in
a rocking chair and affected a hillbilly drawl.
Our air conditioning system in the studio was broken and the
station couldn’t afford to repair it. But we still had to produce the Eb and
Andy show every day. In July. A hot
July.
One day it was real nice outside – a little cooler, blue
skies, gentle breeze. So the show
producer decided to set up the show in the parking lot next to the studio
doors. Everything was set up. Microphones were connected and tested; the
cameras were ready and adjusted to the lighting. The show just before our live
broadcast was ending so it was maybe 2 minutes before air time. Davis and I are chatting with the ‘talent’ and
Davis mentioned that he killed a copperhead that Looney had seen a week
earlier. Looney was already in character
and expressed his appreciation about killing that ‘nasty ole' snake’ when another
snake came out from under the studio building, slithered between Jeff and Looney and
on down the side of the mountain.
There wasn’t time to move the set. So we had to open the
show as is. Except Jeff and Looney had
their feet on the table – soles of their shoes facing the cameras. Their
introduction included comments about their mothers teaching them to keep their
feet off the table, but they had a good excuse:
the snake.
Then into the show.
After 10 minutes a loud round of laughter came over the
headsets from the control room. Apparently, that very day a member of the
crew had gone to Woolworth’s department store and bought their novelty of the
summer: the rubber snake. The kind of rubber that jiggles when you
touch it. Woolworths sold two sizes: the $1.95 (18 inch) size and the $3.95 (3
foot) size. Yep, he went whole hawg and
got the big one. The director told him
to ‘do it’ so I saw him sneak into the studio and toss the rubber snake smack
dab in the middle of the table where it jiggled as if alive.
The Talent moved quickly. Very quickly. Would you believe instantaneously? Jeff was at the end of his microphone cord
off one side of the set. And Uncle Looney? That’s the only time in my life I’ve seen
anyone do a back flip out of a rocking chair. And he ended up at the end of his
microphone cord off the other side of the set.
The amazing thing is that they – especially Looney - kept in
character and nothing had to be bleeped (not that we could given the
shoestring). Imagine an excited hillbilly drawl “Goodness gracious, what in Tarnation were Dat Thang?"
We went to commercial, came back live and the rest of the
show was pretty much watching two guys laugh.
