Ann's Roundup

The summer of 1972 plays back in my memory now like an old movie.  The colors have lost some saturation, the time seems simpler, the places less congested, and everyone looks so young.

 

Of course, 40 years ago, we didn’t know how things would turn out.  Maybe it is because we never know day-to-day what the future will really bring that events appear more complex looking forward than they prove to be in hindsight.  But there is no doubt that we were young, very young.  Oh Lord, we were so very, very young – and not just in years.

 

The Sixties were still with us.  The Summer of Love was only five years past.  It was two years after the Women’s Strike for Equality (“Don’t Iron While the Strike Is Hot”).  The Equal Rights Amendment had passed both houses of Congress and was on its way to a slow death in the state legislatures.  Some of us still weren’t sure we could trust anyone over thirty.

 

The natural look prevailed, with Afros, long hair and tie-dyed fabrics.  Skirts were longer and pants were flared.  On television we were watching Archie Bunker, Mary Tyler Moore, and Flip Wilson.  The Godfather was a big hit at the movies, and even though the Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel had broken up, the music was still good – we had The Eagles, Rod Stewart, Elton John, The Moody Blues, and Don Mclean driving his Chevy to the levy in “American Pie.”  The Disco craze was still a few years away.

 

Nixon was campaigning for a second term in office, and the war in Vietnam was winding down.  Two reporters at the Washington Post were writing articles about a break-in at the Watergate apartment complex that might somehow be linked to the Committee to Re-elect the President.  Commercial airplane crashes and hijackings were still fairly common. The federal minimum wage was $1.60 an hour, and gas was 55 cents a gallon.

 

And in the heart of the Redwood Empire, three guys from KNBC in Los Angeles were starting up a local television station.

 

My original connection to Channel 50 was Stu Clark, my then-husband who had been hired away from a local Eureka, California, television station to sell advertising for KFTY.  I was unpacking boxes and setting up housekeeping out on Susan Drive when someone suggested I audition as one of the hosts of the on-location show, Redwood Roundup.

 

So off I went on a summer Sunday to the Boonville Sheep Dog Trials.  I remember being nervous – I had almost no television experience – and I think I was wearing a bright orange pantsuit.  My audition was interviewing some local women who were working at their spinning wheels.  Not very lively but it seemed to go well enough.  And then someone – Kit?  Rene?  Stan? – came running up and said that because they couldn’t find George Klineman, the main producer and host of Redwood Roundup, I was going to interview the winner of the sheep dog trials and his owner.  I guess that sealed the deal, because I thereafter was designated “talent” and paid something like $15 for each segment I did.

 

Oh Redwood Roundup.  What a lot of fun we had doing that show.  George, who had written for a local newspaper before coming to television, never really took to the medium, at least on camera.  But he had the local knowledge almost all of us Sonoma County blow-ins lacked, so he was a good producer.  He got the show started and then moved on, leaving Stan, me, and occasionally other news and sports talent as contributors to the show.

 

Like most bold, forward-thinking ideas, doing an on-location show like Redwood Roundup was also a little crazy.  In the news studio the cameras were huge beasts on dollies that took real muscle to move around the floor.  In the remote truck – lovingly converted from its former life as a fish truck, something readily called to mind on hot summer days – we had what must have been some of the first almost-portable color cameras.  They were certainly portable enough that we did one segment with a chimney sweep on someone’s roof.  (In fact, I think there was something wrong with the tape, and we did that segment twice.)

 

Tape of the shows we did is mostly gone now, probably recorded over in the constant struggle to keep costs down.  Unfortunately, the segment of me doing a live commercial in a parking lot in Rohnert Park with the owner of a butcher shop still exists.  Others I play back in my mind – the Marin French Cheese factory where we told the story of how cheese is made and left with a fogged up camera lens for our trouble.  And who could forget having a stupendous hangover while interviewing the owner of a waterbed store, both of us lying on a waterbed on the back of a flatbed truck.  Or the wine tasting Stan and I did with Rodney Strong on the plaza in Healdsburg.  There was no time for lunch, so all that great wine was followed by a ride around the plaza with the owner of a huge three-wheeled trike, and, because we needed a bit more footage, a slightly tipsy interview with the plaza’s less-than-fluent-in-English gardener.

 

What no one ever tells you about this type of television is how boring it can be.  At least if you are “talent,” there are long stretches of time where you have nothing to do but wait – for the technology, the lighting, the people to get in their places, the alignment of the stars and planets.  For me, the fun was in the preparation and in hanging out with the crew.  I took to baking for the crew and making sure they were taken care of when I knew I was going out on location with them, and in return they started calling me Truck Mother.

 

Engineers were a new breed to me then, and they fascinate me to this day.  They seem to have a unique intelligence, but one tuned to a frequency that is slightly strange to the rest of us.  They loved more than anything what they called “making pretty pictures.”  And when things went wrong, their explanations about equipment problems were often along the lines of “It’s tired.” Or, “It’s not happy.”  (I hear computer geeks say the same thing today.)

 

We also did some Redwood Roundup segments in the studio – another cost-saving move as I recall.  My only memories of those are the set, which was a wood bench in front of wood background with a door that looked like it should have a quarter-moon shape cut out of it.   And the night I was sitting on the bench concluding a live piece when something went wrong in the control booth and I was left on-air with no sound.  So the cameraman leaned around the camera and said, “Smile.”  Foolishly, I did.  And I sat there smiling for something like 15 seconds.  That’s a long, long time on live TV.

 

I never really took to being on camera.  Maybe it would have come with time.  I was comfortable enough reading a segment on the news or filling in for weatherman Denny Ryan when he broke his pelvis hang gliding.  (Remember the weather map – large regional puzzle pieces that most-of-the-time fit into a map of the Redwood Empire.  Clouds were sometimes indicated with Styrofoam shapes and on at least one occasion with shaving cream!)

 

Anyway, introverts don’t really enjoy being the focus of attention.  So the easy way of being on camera that seemed to come so naturally to others like Stan and Jon Miller, eluded me entirely.  I vividly remember doing a segment at an art fair in the park.  A local artist is doing my portrait in pastels.  When she is almost done, we are going to begin the interview.  The artist and I are chatting away while she draws when Rene leans in and whispers in my ear, “We’ve already begun taping; when you are ready, go ahead and introduce the segment.”  As if someone had dropped a quarter in the slot, I sit bolt upright and in my most officious voice say, “Hi!  Welcome to Redwood Roundup.”

 

For years after all of us had moved on from Channel 50 and I had moved on from television altogether, I felt queasy watching the few taped segments that survived.  I did okay for someone who fainted giving an oral report in high school, and I’ve since gotten pretty good at public speaking.  For the last 30 years, I’ve led programs for clergy and community leaders. Sometimes now when I’m teaching others what I’ve learned about leading programs, I show them the tape from the parking lot in Rohnert Park (“This is a piece of ling cod……”  Good grief!) as a way of letting them know that the embarrassment of standing up and speaking in public won’t kill you.

 

Too much time has gone by for me to remember everyone.  And it would be more fun to do this reminiscing in person where we could provoke each other with our stories and recollections.  Of course, Kit Spier was and is unforgettable.  Gruff, opinionated, mercurial – qualities I understand better now that I’ve had some experience being responsible for other people’s money and time.  I still think the most shocking thing I ever heard him say was that the news department was in the entertainment business.  That was not what I had been taught in journalism school, but he turned out to have the inside line.

 

There weren’t many women at Channel 50 so I really appreciated Evie and Persis.  Evie was bold and brash (I still remember some not-suitable-for-public consumption things she said), and Persis was warm and calm and steady.  There were a few old-hands around – Jud in the art department, Art Wakelee in news, Hank who as chief engineer seemed to spend more time with the equipment than with people.  The crews I worked with – Dave Henry, Cork Kennedy, and Larry Trotter whose dream of doing a segment with me in a boat in the middle of Lake Ralphine with a wireless microphone was really about getting his hands on a wireless microphone.  Stan Atkinson, the handsome star of the show, and a natural mentor to so many of us.  Rene White, my director and, even though he consistently upcut my audio, to this day a great friend.  His roommate Jon Miller, probably the funniest natural comedian I’ve ever met, a great guy, and a stellar talent from the day he started.  Stu Clark who I met and married in journalism school and who took me to Santa Rosa in the first place.  Greg Overton, the cutest and quietest guy at the station, who I later lived with and married for a while, and who remains one of the best and kindest human beings on the planet, and who will be embarrassed that I said all that.

 

It was quite a year we had together.  (Remember the newscast theme song: “The world had quite a day today, just living together.  Some people say it’s getting worse, but I say it’s getting better…”)   A twenty-five-year-old kid from Nebraska was introduced to the world of grown-up work by some wonderful and wacky characters.  I remember it now as a year of loving-kindness.  A year when I learned more about myself than I had learned in college.  A year when I got to be part of a small group passionate about making a long-shot possibility a reality and doing it with integrity and a great sense of fun.  A year I have carried with me ever since.

CREDITS

Producer/Interview Camera/Editor: Rene White

MotionGraphics/Graphics/Web Design: Nancy White

Still Photos: Rene White, Greg Overton, Stan Atkinson, Peter Spier

Biography In Rhythm: The Wakelee Family

COMMENTS OR QUESTIONS

Email: Rene White