Spokane, Idaho Histories

Historic Merrygoroud Now at Downtown Park

Lloyd Vogel, the inebriated owner of Natatorium Park, said he was planning on moving the merry go round  to Pasco, when I interviewed him in November 1962.  This article for UPI News Service didn’t get released until I was on Coast Guard Reserve training in Oakland, Calif.

TRAGIC '62 PLANE CRASH

SPOKANE — All 44 persons aboard a Strategic Air Command jet tanker plane apparently were killed when the C135 plowed into a fog-shrouded ravine on 5,271-foot Mt. Kit Carson about 20 miles northeast of here Monday.

Thirty-three bodies had been recovered when nightfall halted the search of the 500-yard deep ravine.

"It's the worst sight I've ever seen," said a highway patrolman.

Aboard the plane were 39 Air Force men, all members of the 28th Bomb Wing at Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D.; one civilian and four crewmen.

The tanker, based at Ellsworth, was carrying the airmen to Fairchild Air Force Base near here, where they were to stay while Ellsworth runways were repaired. The jet was only 10 minutes from its destination when it crashed.

BOY SCOUT WORLD JAMBOREE, FARRAGUT STATE PARK

Clipping from Idaho Statesman

I was a news reporter for the Idaho Statesman and assigned to report on the 12th World Scout Jamboree, which was held July 31 to August 9, 1967, and was hosted by the United States at Farragut State Park.

I slept on the ground in a tent and mailed my film and stories every day to Boise.  The following year I covered the national jamboree and stayed in a hotel.  It was fun.  Lady Baden Powell, widow of Lord Baden Powell, Scout founder, attended one of those events. 
Farrgut was a Navy base and had been closed for many years.  The press HQs were in the brig for the Jamboree.

Idaho Statesman Friends

left to right: Paul, photographer; Ralph Nichols & Jim Golden; Dave Frazier, Ken Burroughs.

IDAHO FRIENDS

I’ve known Duane Mitchell of Caldwell, Ida. since the mid-1960s when we were boarders at Mrs. Cook’s house in Boise on N. Sixth Street just a short drive from the Idaho Statesman where I was a reporter and he was an accounting clerk for Blue Cross.  He is still in Caldwell and I visited him and his wife Nancy in 2015.

Camp David is Dave Frazier’s mountain retreat in Southern Idaho.  It was 90 something that day and forest fires in Central Idaho.  Fraze was a classmate at the Idhao Statesman where we learned news reporting.  He, the police beat, me, local government.

Hello Frisco, Goodbye.  I had arrived in Idaho at the Statesman, 6th and Bannock, across from a park and City Hall, starting as a night copy editor, headline writer and reporter before graduating to local government reporter where I won a national award for environmental reporting.  I was living in a boarding house a short distance away near what now is the hospital.  I still have a couple of friends in Boise.

Candid Statesman staffers:  Paul (photographer), good friend Ralph Nichols and city editor Jim Golden and going away party at nearby state park, fishing buddy and cop shop reporter Dave Frazier who pursued a succesful freelance photog career, Ken Burroughs, TV editor who took me on my first hunting trip in his Rambler Classic when I arrived in the fall of ’65.  Ken worked in the desk across from me on he second floor.

Mitchell left and center

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS, Bundle of Joy

You could buy Tops albums for $1.49 at Newberry's downtown

It was a big deal in 1956 when Mike Todd’s spectacular movie “Around the World in 80 Days” came to Spokane at the historic Post Street Theater, which had seen a mix of vaudeville and movies becoming a full time movie theatre which lasted until it closed in May 1972. It was later demolished.

Owner Joe Rosenfield remodeled the theater for this road show event, moving the projection booth from the second balcony to the first floor and installing a wide, curved screen to accomodate Todd-AO.  (I used to deliver prescriptions to Rosenfield at the theater when I was a Miller & Felt delivery boy.  See Confessions of a Teenage Delivery Boy.)

I attended 80 Days with either family or friends and was overwhelmed.  In fact, my Aunt Dora bought me the soundtrack LP on Decca with Victor Young’s soaring music.  Being in fly over land, Spokane was bypassed by Cinerama so this movie was very special.

I still thrill to 80 Days on DVD with surround sound and the quirky way the vertical images curve in at the borders reminding us that this was a movie made for a curved screen.

  In 1956 while the nation was fixated on Elvis’ hips and James Dean’s t-shirt, RKO premiered a new original musical, A Bundle of Joy, with America’s cutest couple Debbie and Eddie.  It was the wrong movie at the wrong time.

But there’s lots to love in this holiday favorite with Nick Castle’s choreography wherein our Eddie jumps up on a ping pong table and then jumps to the floor without wobbling or twisting an ankle.  They don’t make them like that anymore.

A dreamy department store is the backdrop for this love affair where Debbie has an entertaining duet with Nita Talbot and a great jitterbug dance contest production number with Tommy Noonan, a TV comedian of that era who later enterprised softcore porn films.  Falling in love with the department store heir gives our gal free reign on all ready to wear and furs in stock (or in the RKO costume department.)

Moreover there’s a too-fat Santa and Eddie’s office is littered with the latest hi-fi equipment for sale in the store.  Also the Eddie drives a British import Nash Metropolitan.  Very cool.   

Bill Goodwin, who pitched Carnation canned milk on Burns and Allen, is a very officious manager at the make belive department store.

The opening song, It’s All About Love, with Eddie is a knock out.  Bundle is very sentimental holiday stuff with the romance is fueled by a cute kid with curly blond hair.  Buy the Warner Archives DVD or catch it on TCM this month.

Irishman disappoints; American Factory excellent

In the three plus hour movie, “The Irishman,” the 50s classic cars are a good reason to watch this American history study from the gangster narrative.  The Hudson Hornet, Chrysler Imperial and Lincoln Town Car are among those featured.  What more is there to say about American gangsters, except the one in the Oval Office?

  

“American Factory” documentary on Netflix is an insightful investigative journalism expose of the corrosive management by the Chinese of an automobile glass factory in Dayton, Ohio.  Aside from the physical and mental toll the workers endure, many of them will be unemployed soon because of automation robots. See the Obamas endorsement of this film, also on Netflix.

HIGH SCHOOL, KOMO WORLD'S FAIR

“A word to the wise is sufficient” my freshman English teacher Mrs. Watrous at Lewis and Clark High School used to say.  Apparently this is a bible quote.  

I showed up late for the first class because I was lost in the hallway.  The first question she asked:  “What was your grammar school?” and of course I didn’t know what she was talking about.  One of the other students said “grade school” and I answered.  It was quite intimidating.  I shared a locker with Herbie Zimmerman and that was daunting trying to remember the combination to the lock and the location of the locker.  We used to talk on the phone.

I was happy to be done with grade school which was eight wasted years.  

QUEEN FOR A DAY

A job I really enjoyed was public relations assistant for KOMO TV-AM in the spring of 1961 when the World’s Fair opened in Seattle across the street at 4th and Denny Way.  It was part time and I was responsible for conducting tours of the studios for grade school kids who I escorted to the viewing balcony where they watched the Captain Puget kidee show weekdays.

I was a senior at the University of Washington majoring in Radio-TV and was buddies with the student who had the KOMO job but was quitting to work at something more promising than dealing with grade school brats.  (I handed out stale very stale candy to the kids.)  The captain was not all that kid-friendly.)

This Fisher Blend Station was going through big changes in 1961 having been a legacy NBC affiliate and losing that coveted connection to upstart KING-TV-AM-FM that year.  So KOMO became the ABC station in Puget Sound and inaugurated that move by hosting the Queen for a Day game show at the State Fair.

I was assigned to open up the radio studio in the basement on a Satuday morning for young women hauling makeup cases who had been hired to model clothing on the program.  

I was quite wound up that morning and wasted a lot of time flipping switches on the control board to get music from the radio station into the studio which the ladies were using as a kind of “green room” before the show would be taped.  (Never did figure out the control board.)

Jack Bailey was the MC on Queen and had been since in debuted on Mutual in 1945.  Not unlike Lets Make A Deal, contestants from the audience would be recruited from the audience to get their wishes granted for specific merchandise.  It bore a strong resemblance to Strike it Rich with Warren Hull on CBS, another game show for women.

(Later in my PR life I was a tour guide at the Minneapolis Grain Exchange, wheezing on about grain trading in my monotone.)

After KOMO, I was a summer reporter for UPI in Spokane working in the KXLY (CBS) Building and reporting on forest fires in Idaho, a murder suicide and Air Force plane crash at Mt. Spokane where KXLY-TV transmits.  My photographer buddy at KXLY introduced me to 150 proof rum one evening.  Never again.  Ted Otto anchored the news and Bob Baker did sports on TV and news on the AM station which was Top 40.  

I also convered the Max Markham sensational murder trial in Spokane as a free lancer for KREM Radio, which was a middle of the road music station.  Eventually I wound up as an assistnat at NBC News in Burbank, not a happy time.  Dave Zarkin

Rank Choice Vote, City Elections

 BLOOMINGTON — joined Gretchen and Margaret Tuesday night at the League of Women Voters city election forum where we lobbied for Rank Choice Vote support.  Mayor candidate Tim Busse supports RCV while his Republican opponent Ryan Kulka opposes it.

BLOOMINGTON — During the League of Women Voters forum Tuesday night in City Hall Republican Ryan Kulka did not endorse displacing the current community center with a new structure.  

The center is an inadequate old grade school with a leaky roof.  His opponent, with eight years on the council, said he supports “forward thinking” on the center where he voted with the council to hire an architect for this development.

Kulka said he wants to open the city to business “again,” employing “the butterfly effect” and “blocking and tackling” which is language most aren’t familiar with in reference to commercial development.

In an obvious reference to Kulka, Busse said he is concerned about “a candidate” who gets mailings and phone banks provided by a political party. Kulka had no response to that remark.

Busse said the $15 minimum wage is inevitable and Gov. Walz would sign related legislation if it comes while Kulka endorsed the “free market economy” wherein businesses would decide on pay.

Regarding “racial problems” in the city Busse said there are “tensions” and “racists” while Kulka made references to “equity” and the “golden rule.”  (It wasn’t clear what Kulka means.) 

At leasat 130 people attended the LWV forum in City Hall with some people watching on TV monitors in overflow seating in the lobby.  — daz

Jet Pilot 1957

I saw this movie at the Deer Park Drive In about 1957.
Jet engines roar every time Janet Leigh removes clothing in Howard Hughes’ post war romcom, “Jet Pilot,” with John Wayne as the unlikely male lead.  I can think of a half dozen actors from 1949 who might have been a good match for Ms. Leigh but Wayne isn’t one of ‘em.

Charlie Chan (Roland Winters) is the top Russian officer who hopes to learn US secrets through Leigh’s sleuthing.  The “secret” is that John Wayne should remain on horseback in any movie with the exception of “Sands of Iwo Jima.  Bronislav Kaper, who was a Bob Crane favorite on the KNXR morning drive, did the music. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1038611_jet_pilot 

REMEMBERING EVELYN

Evelyn Lessen “learned to work the saxophone” in high school which brought her to a meeting at the Los Angeles home of noteworthy movie actress and director Ida Lupino who organized an all girls’ band in the 1940s.  Evelyn played the sax in that band.  Most dance bands were all male at that time.

This was Evelyn’s proud achievement that she shared with me at meetings of Or Emet Congregation.  

Lupino would have been keen on starting a girls’ dance band given her commitment to womens’ issues and her contempt for the patriarchal Hollywood structure.  Lupino also was a musician having composed a suite performed by the LA Philharmoic in the late 30s.

Several of us in Or Emet remembered Evelyn and watched a recorded interview she did at a potluck Satuday night in Golden Valley.  When you see “Some Like it Hot,” think of Ms. Lessen.

Ralph Nichols Dies in Seattle

Although we only worked together for about a year at The Idaho Statesman, Ralph Nichols was a role model and a man I turned to for advice.  We kept in touch after I moved to Minneapolis and I last saw him in Burien in November 2017.

He suggested in 1969 that I go to graduate school, and maybe that was his way of telling me to get out of town. So with a clear goal in mind I was able to endure the craziness of my supervisor. It wasn’t long before I would take the graduate entrance exam at the College of Idaho in Caldwell with an upset stomach.

Quoting a line from the movie The Graduate, I told Ralph I was drifting. I had no social life although I beat that dead horse to death, dating women who really didn’t interest me. I was inching loser to 30.   My social life picked up when Ralph, a coworker, moved nearby and we would go to Lucky Peak Reservoir. I look back wistfully at my Idaho years but I was isolated, lonely and I had virtually lost my close friend Ralph when he married and moved to nearby Nampa. 

He and Charice invited me to their home in Nampa to see the first NFL Super Bowl on their small B&W TV.  I was an attendant in their wedding in Boise in 1968.

The book, I and Thou by Martin Buber was a gift from Ralph.  I took a class in philosophy at Boise State to try to understand this text.  He must have thought that I would enjoy the thinking of a Jewish philosopher.

An excellent story teller with a great, Ralph would regail me with incidents from his Statesman reporting days.  He recalls that I advised him not to take the transfer to the Nampa bureau because it was a dead end.  He settled in Seattle where I would see him until 2017.

Mountain Man, Jack Malone

When I last saw Jack Malone, Longview, Wash., in about 2000 in Seattle he gave me this LP record that he produced in 1980 commemorating the individuality of Harry Truman and the Mt. St Helens volcano eruption.  Jack, a lifelong Republican, could have been amused that a “whiskey drinking mountain man” of courage had the same name as a Democrat president.  This collection of blue grass country includes “Don’t Send Your Ash to Town” by Willy and the Woodchucks.  Truman refused to leave his home near the volcano.

  I knew Jack at Roosevelt Grade School and Lewis and Clark High School in Spokane and the University of Washington.  In the 70s he managed an FM rock radio station which would have been a great opportunity for a book with photos.

Happy Easter

I suspect that little me in an Easter Bunny outfit relates to a grade school play in Spokane.  I got an ecumenical education via Spokane’s Roosevelt School.  Sadly, the costume no longer fits.

Roger Ebert Film Festival with Road Scholars

 CHAMPAIGN — I attended the Roger Ebert Film Festival with Road Scholars, a convivial group  of seniors serious about film, equality, inclusion and diversity.  Several of the films dealt with these topics while the Orange Ogre orchestrated chaos over immigration in the background. No one mentioned the “T word” during the entire week.

Film is the way forward and kudos to festival organizer Chaz Ebert (Roger’s widow) for selecting provacative films and timely panel discussions.

Much credit goes to the University of Illinois College of Media for a wonderful experience.

Appropriate tribute to a Mexican-American immigant is paid by Sam Fragoso in his short film “Sebastian.”  A voice-over reads letters written by Fragaso’s immigrant grandfather while we see an actor in a fruit orchard.  This timely look at immigration was shown at Ebertfest in Champaign.  Fragaso, a journalist, has been attending Ebertfest since he was a teen. http://www.goodshortfilms.it/en/genre/drama/sebastian-sam-fragoso

The Italian revival interior of the Virginia Theater’s balcolny was extremely serene during a bathroom break.  Seating in the theater is mostly uncomfortable, except in the elevated part of the balcony where you can stretch your legs over the railing.  I am not planning a return trip here, but many in the Road Scholar group have been attending Ebertfest for as many as 15 years.  People I met in Champaign-Urbana go out of their way to make you feel welcome to the American heartland, a university community in the farm fields.

Michael Barker, co-president of Sony Classic films, droned on about famous actors he has known.  Less of Barker would have been more.

Unlike Rita Coburn, a director who was stimulating and spoke about her film “Maya Angelou, And Still I Rise.”  The actress and poet rose above adversity.  The film was riveting and was a good introduction for me to Dr. Angelou’s incredible work. http://mayaangeloufilm.com

“Almost Famous,” a 2000 cult favorite, was the one I most wanted to see on the big screen with an appreciative audience.  I missed Mr. Rogers so I could get a nap and see AF, a look at love, heartbreak and tenuous relations with a second rate rock band on the road.  I found a comfortable spot in the balcony for this SRO showing. 

CHAMPAIGN —Random acts of kindness.  Much thanks to the staff person at the Krannert Art Museum, who is a member of the MLK Choir, and her husband, Porter, who drove me back to the Holiday Inn after visitng the campus.  

The Martin Luther King Jr. Community Choir performed after the showing of the Aretha Franklin gospel concert (Amazing Grace 1972) film at Ebertfest that was never completed until recently.  Who was that famous British rock star in the audience and were you uneasy with the scene of Aretha and her father?

Advocacy for Justice Committee 

Salem Baptist Church

500 E Park St, 

Champaign, IL 61820

Send donation to the MLK Choir scholarship fund.

EQUALITY FOR WOMEN

CHAMPAIGN — Sexism and ageism discrimination undermine careers of talented women artists in the entertainment and film industries.

Film director Rita Coburn at EbertFest panel said “women can’t get in the door.”  Same could be said for women critics.  Writer Carla Renata said “middle age men are afraid that women are trying to take their place.”

Actor Gina Gershon recounted rejections for parts because she wasn’t enough Asian or Black.  “Women don’t want a piece of the pie, they want a different pie,” said actresss and writer Jennifer Merin.

Producers favor ideal types so there are not many parts for her type of actress, said Jennifer Tilly who with Gershon appears in the film “Bound” that was shown at the festival.

COMMENTS HEARD AT FESTIVAL

CHAMPAIGN — After seeing the film “Rachel Getting Married” one of the women in my group who is a marriage counselor said, “I thought I was back at work watching this movie.”  Another quipped:  “They took the fun out of dysfunctional.”

Dale DeVries, professional driver of the University of Illinois bus wrote a heartfelt text message to the U of I coordinator for our Road Scholar group.  Interaction with us seniors enriched this young man’s life.

People I encountered at the Holiday Inn were open and eager to chat.  A young hotel staffer said he couldn’t watch “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” because Mr. Rogers  brought back memories of a difficult time in his life.

Another hotel staffer was in Champaign for a year helping her father who is recovering from heart surgery.

My Un-career IN RADIO AT KLYK

I applied for a DJ job at KLYK in about 1961 when I was a student in Radio-TV at the University of Washington.  I got an interview with Mr. Williams where I learned to my chagrin that this 500-watt Mutual/ABC affiliate MOR music format was automated which meant they had no announcers.  They carried Dick Van Dyke’s ABC radio program at noon.

Mr. Williams was most polite, giving me a tour of the studios which consisted of large tape machines buzzing away.  I was most disappointed but then I got my quart of Darigold ice cream in the contest I didn’t win either.

KLYK was originally KSPO, a legacy station and the first Top 10 music station in the 1950s in Spokane.  As a child I listened to the Story Lady on KSPO and Mom even took us to her live story reading from the Realty Building studio.  (The building and transmitter still stand.)

It’s most noteworthy air personality was LIttle Bob LIddle who fell asleep during his late night shift.  KLYK may have been a pioneer in late night call in talk.

It reverted to being KSPO-AM and those call letters are now assigned to an FM religious station in Spokane suburb Dishman.  

ANTISEMITISM FORUM

Antisemitism, racism, George Soros and Facebook were provacative topics Sunday at the Jewish Community Action forum on antisemitism at the Jewish Community Center, St. Louis Park.

.Eric K. Ward, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, spoke at the morning session to a Jewish audience and then again in the afternoon elsewhere in Minneapolis to non Jews.  “Antisemitism forms the theoretical core of white natonalism,” Ward wrote in a Political Research Associates article in 2017.

Facebook's attempt at a smear of George Soros, who is a Jew, as related to criticism of Facebook and its ties to Russian election propoganda were covered in the media and obstensibly puts Facebook on the same page as the white supremecists.

TAKING THE HIGH ROAD

“Live the Jewish life and don’t let antisemiticsm overtake our gift to the world,” said Dania Rajendra, center, from Newsweek and Cornell University and a participant in the JCA forum on antisemitism Saturday in St. Louis Park.

More than recognizing racism in the Jewish community, Jews need to support organizations that take on antisemitism, vote for candidates who promote diversity and reach out to others in the community, said Jewish Community Action Executive Director CARIN MROTZ.

Followup sessions on antisemitism will be held later this month by JCA.  The forum was co-sponsored by the Teamsters Union.