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