Chapter Eight
Yeah, I was going to be a great and famous producer and I had the bleeding ulcers to prove it, too.
I'd been feeling terrible for quite awhile in 1974/75. It got to the point where I didn't have any energy at all.
I thought I was coming down with a major case of the flu or something. I'd eat steak and liver till the cows came home and it didn't seem to do me any good. I stayed listless.
I finally went to the doctor and he said I looked a little anemic. I'd never been anemic in my life and said so; but he wanted to do some tests, anyway, and drew blood.
A few days later he told me, "If you'd waited another month or two you'd have bled to death", because my red blood cell count was way down. Way way down. He wanted to do some more tests.
I checked into Amarillo's St. Anthony's Hospital for a full G-I exam: barium shakes and enemas!
Not to be confused with a kinky sugar addict’s favorite fantasy.
The shake wasn't so bad: flavored with so much vanilla I thought I was drinking a wimpy chalk-lit shake!
The doctors let me watch on the little screen as my gulps traveled their route through my stomach and out the little hole in my duodenum.
But they weren't through, yet. There was still la piece de resistance: the barium enema.
If you've never had one, it's a simple affair.
First an ugly nurse comes by early in the morning and has you lie on your stomach while she gives you a regular soapy enema.
Why is it always an ugly one that does that?
When that's flushed out of you she comes back and gives you one while you're on your right side and yet another one while you're on your left side each followed by hurried little trips to the john in between.
She tells you they'll be ready in X-ray soon and to sit tight.
Ha! Sit tight, indeed.
I was sitting thusly when they came for me. I told them I wasn't flushed out yet. They asked if I'd been given the series of enemas. I said yes but they didn't get everything. They laughed. They explained the professionalism of the nurses, ugly and otherwise, that do that sort of thing to earn their well deserved paycheck and that they had gotten everything that was in there because nothing remains after three attempts.
I told them thorough was fine and good, but I'd eaten sweet corn for lunch the day before and there weren't any little yellow kernels in the toilet when the highly professional soap artist had done finished with her ministrations.
They looked at me quizzically. They looked at each other quizzically. They shrugged their quizzical shoulders and sent me back for more soap suds up my butt.
When a cute nurse wheeled me back into X-ray I announced I was now free of any corn whatsoever and to proceed...and do their worst.
Lesson: It pays to be corny.
Mind you, my intestines had had quite a busy morning by now. I don't know if intestines have a mind of their own, but mine were a bit fussy when a young intern jammed an enema nozzle up my rear and started to pump up the little balloon collar/attachment surrounding it that forms a nice tight seal inside one’s plumbing.
Once it's inflated and secure they begin to force feed barium laced stuff (unflavored) into you and monitor its progress on the little screen.
I love to watch.
Pump pump pump, force force force, in goes the barium.
And a little track lights up on the screen showing where it's been and where it’s currently heading.
Now, the human intestinal tract is constantly moving with a force known as peristalsis. Peristaltic action is the methodical squeezing and releasing along a line of the muscles of the walls of the intestines, not unlike the squeezing of a cow's teat during milking to force the milk out of the udder into the pail.
I refuse to insert any joke about how the action of milking a cow’s teat udderly pales in the face of intestinal contractions.
Peristalsis squeezes the day's rations toward the inevitable end over a period of time and, hopefully, a toilet.
But intestines are a one-way street vis-à-vis peristalsis. Things enter from the top and expell at the bottom.
Unless you live south of the Equator and you’re upside down.
When this young "Dr. Kildare" introduced my barium delight into my fussy butt he was toying with a force of nature that was not yet ready to reverse itself that day at the whim of a team of physicians bent on finding internal leakage.
I began to cramp. "Cramp-up" is what the attending physician in charge called it: "Don't push!” he shouted. "It'll pass!" he assured me. "You're just cramped up. It'll pass! Don't push!" he was pleading. I made note of the fact that he was also standing a good distance away from me at the time.
There on the screen I saw the barium in my intestine, then in my rectum, and then out my rectum, all over our young "Dr. Kildare" -who had failed to follow his mentor’s lead.
Oh, it was a joyous day in Amarillo that day! At least for me and my intestines.
And another intern successfully survived his “rite of passage”.
Lesson: Sometimes you have to distance yourself from your work to admire it.
They held me in a state of awe after that. They said they'd never seen anyone blow that little balloon out their butt that forcefully after it had been securely pumped up.
It had taken them a full 45 minutes to clean the intern and the equipment.
I knew they were impressed. And I heard them exclaim, ere they walked out of sight, “What an Asshole!”
I'd ended up in Amarillo on a whim. My 3rd wife, Jeanette, our daughter Stephanie, and our 8 dogs Pooh and Spot and their 6 puppies were making our way from Carlsbad, CA to Pittsburgh, PA where I'd been hired as a fill-in disc jockey for weekends and vacations, on WEEP-AM, a 50,000 watt clear-channel country-western radio station that covered the Midwest.
Jeanette had grown up in Amarillo and her parents still lived there. We stopped at their house for the night to get cleaned up and rested before continuing on the next morning. It was Friday and we were supposed to be there by Monday.
After bathing and eating we went to watch Jeanette's sister, Dorothy and her country band, play at some little dive on Amarillo Boulevard (the old Route 66).
It was exactly the kind of honky tonk you'd expect: just a hole in the wall with beat up pickup trucks in the parking lot and a smattering of cowboys and cowgirls nursing Lone Star Longnecks and twirling around counter clockwise on the sawdust covered dance floor.
I'd always detested country western music; but, since I was about to be playing a lot of it for a major station, I figured I'd better check some of it out.
I had such a good ol’ time that I asked Jeanette if she minded if we stayed here. The thought of coming back home appealed to her so she agreed and I called WEEP's program director the next day to appologize for not being able to come on up. He wasn't too happy about it at all.
The money he’d offered wasn’t much more than minimum wage and he didn’t offer more of an incentive so I didn’t lose any sleep over my decision.
We rented an apartment in the same building her sister, Judy Clark, was living in. On Monday I began job hunting and got hired a few days later as the booth announcer/sound technician for KGNC-TV, the NBC affiliate.
That job lasted 14 months and ranked at the time as the world record holder for longest running unbroken employment period of my life
Jeanette had been making cool hippy-style shirts for me for a couple of years. They were pullover shirts with big collars and flared cuffs, full of colorful designs and prints. Flamboyant would be a good term to describe them...especially by Amarillo standards.
Dale Scarberry, the production director of KCNC-TV, told me a story about when he hired me. I'd been called in to audition and was given several spots to record as a demonstration of my announcing skills: a few 60 second spots, and 30's and 10 seconders. One of them was for Pappagallo Shoes and was written in an alliterative style accentuating the P's. I breezed through it and the others and was told they'd call me.
The next day they offered me the job at another ridiculously low salary. I took it.
Lesson: Work gooooood.
Before I arrived my first day Scarberty told me, the word spread through the station they'd hired a new announcer but that he carried a purse! They weren’t too sure what to expect.
Luckily they liked me when I showed up my first day so there was never any problem.
I pointed out the old pair of blue jeans Jeanette had cut the legs from and sewn up could carry more stuff than most brief cases. And, they were important jeans: I had run for Mayor of Dallas in them.
After I'd been there a few months Dale began dropping hints I should wear a tie. My shirts were loud enough, he told me, but this was a professional TV station that had an image to project and a tie would lend itself to a more dedicated team player attitude.
I protested vigorously that I was always in the "announce booth" and nobody ever saw me, so what difference did it make. The technical crew didn’t wear ties.
They persisted in insisting.
I ultimately acquiesced.
I showed up with one of the loudest shirts Jeanette had made for me, complete with a matching-fabric tie neatly tied at the buttonless neck. I wore it all day. No one said a word.
Ever again.
Lesson: If the announcer is unseen, is he wearing a tie?
And it was the last time I wore a tie as long as I was wearing Jeanette's handiwork.
Months later, when it became possible that a noon talk show and the coveted "Dialing For Dollars Movie" host jobs were coming up I began wearing the appropriate suits and sport coats.
And ties.
I had visions of finally being able to call Janis Joplin, but she was long in the great House of Blues club the sky.
Frank Mitchell, the other announcer, got the positions. Although I didn't recognize his appointment as an affirmation of his seniority at the station, I let him have his chance before I began a concerted effort to wrest the shows away from him.
I was going to be a great and famous talk show and movie host.
His interviewing techniques lacked flair. He didn't know what questions to ask and had no concept of getting to the meat of an interview in the short time available. He stammered and hemmed and hawed his way through the 30 minute program grabbing at anything he could think of, whether it had anything to do with the subject at hand or not.
Over a period of time most inexperienced interviewers can get better by watching tapes of their work and being critical of their mistakes and strong points.
Frank's hosting of the Dialing For Dollars Movie was perfunctory to say the least. He never paid attention to the movie of the day and was completely unaware that television was a perfect medium for a live host to entertain an audience during the short commercial breaks.
He hosted the shows for a few months before he was offered, and accepted, a job in another market.
I was given my shot and immediately turned the noon-time talk show into "J.David Moeller's Let's Talk About It". I didn't mind the little old lady craft fair and jellyfests as guests but I no longer wanted their ilk to be the main staple of the program. I wanted soft news and interesting interviews presenting ideas and food for thought, not biscuits. I wanted entertainment, too.
I brought on speakers like one from the Department of Energy to tell, in lay terms, just what this oil embargo we were experiencing for the first time was all about, in terms we could all relate to.
I brought artists on to talk about the surprisingly large community of painters and sculptors who lived in the Texas Panhandle.
I brought on entertainers appearing in the nightclubs around town.
There was a pair Australian twins performing music and comedy at one of the hotels in town and I asked them on after catching their act.
They had one routine that involved a bullwhip. They were highly skilled with it and, when the right moment came along during the show, I asked if they could whip a cigarette out of my lips as I’d seen them do in their act.
The request was unplanned and it was a live show.
They looked at each other and agreed.
I wasn’t the least bit nervous. This was entertainment! If it went well I’d be the talk of both the viewers. Even if it went bad ratings would soar through the roof and I’d become the town’s first noseless talk show host.
I could just imagine the crew in the control room placing their bets.
We stood up and I put a cigarette in my mouth. The usual “Target” eased me into a slight lean and reminded me to stay quite still.
The “Whipper” laid out his whip and took his measurement.
We were fortunate to be running a two camera show so I felt assured all the action would be captured. Scarberry was an accomplished director.
When the young whipper snapper was ready his brother gave me a quick pat on the back and stepped away.
The whip’s tip had been on the studio floor in front of me. Now it was slowly sliding back and I caught a glimpse of it being raised through the air and, suddenly, it was coming at my face faster than the speed of sound.
“Pop!”
It literally broke the sound barrier right at my lips and half of the cigarette fell to the floor; shredded tobacco leaves flew everywhere.
Dale had done an excellent job of catching the whip hitting the cigarette. I could hear the ratings jump up a few notches.
Lesson: If you want to be talked about, you have to take chances.
I'd met another guest I had on 12 years before, when I ran away from home back in Dallas.
It had been New Year's Day of 1961 and I was running away to Des Moines, Iowa to find a girl I'd fallen passionately in love with at a Christmas party over the holidays. For some reason I thought everything in my life would be perfect if I found her.
Her name was Sally Guibberson and she lived on the street behind the famous Salisbury Castle. She told me it had been meticulously taken apart and then imported stone by stone from England and reassembled in Des Moines.
Turns out it wasn’t. It was merely modeled after the King’s castle in Salisbury, England, but I didn’t care. I was in love with Sally.
On the way to Des Moines this fine chilly New Year’s Day, while driving through the southern part of Oklahoma, I picked up a hitchhiker.
She wasn’t actually hitchhiking; it was more that she was walking along subtly looking like she needed a ride.
She wore a dark blue sweat suit with the name “Peace Pilgrim” emblazoned in large white letters on its front and back.
On the drive she told me she was on a mission to walk across the country until mankind learned the way of Peace. She said she never asked for anything: housing, food, clothing, but did accept the kindness of strangers.
She was on her way to Norman, Oklahoma to appear on a radio show. I didn’t have much cash but gave her a few dollars for a meal. She thanked me and I drove off rather amazed by her dedication.
Now, twelve years later, I'd received a post card addressed to the Public Service Director of my station saying she would be in the area and would be available to appear on my show. What a windfall of coincidence and fate.
It was fun for me to see her again. The first time I'd met her she was just some nice old lady -in her early 50's at least- traipsing around the countryside saying we should seek peace at all times.
Now, she looked exactly the same and still wore the track suit with “Peace Pilgrim” on it.
Her name was Mildred Norman and she’d begun her walk when she was 44. Over the years she met with the Dalai Lama and Maya Angelou and Katherine Kubler-Ross and other luminaries. She had a country wide -if not international- network of supporters who put her up and fed and clothed her along her way. And all of it was unsolicited by her.
She died in 1981, but she was one who made an impression on the world, albeit her mission’s goal was unrealized.
As for Miss Guibberson of Des Moines, she and her family were out of town. Seems I'd forgotten she'd said they were going to Florida for the New Year's holiday and wouldn't be back in Iowa for a few weeks after that.
So here I was in snow blanketed Des Moines, Iowa with less than twenty dollars and nowhere to stay.
I hadn’t thought about the logistics of what to do after I got there –did I just expect her parents to take me in as a member of her family?
But I had plenty of gumption, if that’s what you want to call it.
Her next door neighbor, when I rang his bell, stammered with a stunned look on his face that they all had the flu in his house and he couldn't let me stay with them till the Guibbersons returned.
I’d actually knocked on their door and asked!
Lesson: You don’t always get what you want.
To the “Dialing For Dollars Movie” I brought innovation -by Amarillo standards- and comedy. During the breaks I always related visually somehow to the scene we'd just come from in the film.
The Dialing For Dollars contest is known as the count and the amount: when called, players would have to know the number of phone numbers we’d counted and the amount of the current jackpot.
From a hopper I’d draw a small slip cut from the phonebook, count up or down (it rotated daily) the assigned limit of numbers to chose a player.
A postcard was drawn from the thousands sent in, I call them and ask for the “count and amount”. If they knew it, they won it!
I also brought special effects to the breaks so that when I was on the air the audience would see television being used for its visual capabilities.
Ernie Kovacs I wasn’t, but it brought both my shows to #1 in their time slots.
Lesson: Give ‘em something worth watching.
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