FRIDAY FUNNIES

Gentle Readers, (and I hope you are both gentle and readers) it is time once again for something important.

To celebrate AUTUMN!

Yes the cooler temperatures have arrived and yard work has returned.

But I'll try to keep you amused, at least for today.

There.  I think that's enough for today.

Once again I must express my sincere gratitude to all of my contributors whose sense of humor is as off-kilter as my own.

Tomorrow is October 1st so I want you to get out there and buy lots and lots and lots of candy for those upcoming Halloween trick-or-treaters who won't show up at your door so you'll have weeks and weeks and weeks of time to enjoy it yourselves!

(I love this time of year and its attendant fetes!)

But above all, Gentle Readers, have an exhorbitant weekend, such that you'll be the envy of your neighbors and always remember to keep laughing!

(And use lots of exclamation points.)

Here, kitty-kitty.

(Oh, for crying out loud, are you still fawning over her?)

THROWBACK THURSDAY

Let me show you how we covered elections 50 years ago.

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.

ANYBODY UP FOR A COWBOY MOVIE?

I've been scouting locations.

AND THE EARTH SHOOK

FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 126 YEARS

TUESDAY TRAVELS

May 4, 2009.

Watson Lake boulder area outside of Prescott, Arizona.

The day I discovered my legs were no longer fit for clambering around on uneven surfaces and making quick, short hops to get down off of them.

I was 69 years old and trying to get down off these rocks without killing myself made me feel like I was 100!

I no longer had spring in my step.

It was a sobering discovery.

Now I'm 76, my goatee is even whiter and my legs are even weaker.

Damn! I hate these travels.

ARE WOMEN EQUAL TO MEN?

Just one man's opinion, of course.

PAUL BUNYAN LIVES!

Back in April of this year I wrote a post about my meeting with the legendary lumberjack, Paul Bunyan.

You can read that post and see picture of our meeting here.

Today I can report, for any of you Gentle Readers who may have doubted my story, that the newspaper of record, the New York Times, has authenticated the "history" of Paul Bunyan in Minnesota.

You can read it here.

And that may be all you will ever hear about Paul Bunyan on this blog.

Maybe.