This was part of the election night studio at KFYR-TV in Bismarck, North Dakota in 1966.
In the upper right you see news reporter John Warren and sports director Roger Higgins (drafted for the night) waiting to go on the air and report returns.
A runner has just hand delivered returns from one of the local precincts and a couple of gals are busily toting up the results on hand-operated adding machines.
The bald-headed man is Evan Lips, a state senator and former mayor of Bismarck.
He shouldn't have been in that position but as a highly decorated university football player and ex-Marine, nobody was going to tell him to get out of the way.
Here's a view of our interview and telecast area with Bob MacLeod and I readying for a broadcast.
The "fancy" sets were designed and executed by the station's art director, Claire Anne Holmberg, who is checking the AP and UPI wire service machines with Wes Haugen in the background.
That big scoop in the upper left was a very hot television light.
In this picture I'm interviewing a local businessman, Thomas Kleppe, who was in the process of being elected to Congress.
He later served as head of the Small Business Administration and Secretary of the Interior.
It was a simpler era back in the 60's.
(KFYR-TV had only been on the air for 13 years.)
I still have many memories of those early days and the crude but complicated way we covered political events in the state's capitol city.
Nowadays the roof of the building is covered with satellite and microwave dishes.
