Gene Birke

Comments about the Feezor show reminded me of some even earlier days at WBTV, when we were all in the Wilder Building.  We drug flats up two flights of stairs, with a full turn at the middle landing.  Try that with twelve foot flats.  In those days, we had the Susie McIntyre Show, which was another cooking show.  Doug McDaniel ruled the dispensing of all leftover food.  He would stop interlopers in their tracks with:  "You dont' get none..you didn't work the show"!  Many people went hungry after that confrontation.  I remember, too, my old friend Glen Johnson, who directed that show.  He would bring a book to read while he switched the show!  Talk about show biz!

And who can forget the party where Bob Raiford got so sloshed he forgot where he had left his car.  He did find it the next day.

Most of you were mere children in those days.

One Friday night, we had a break between shows. One of the floor crew guys, Bob Suttle, came up with a great idea. He talked Don McDaniel and me into going with him to a clandestine meeting with some romantic married women who wanted some fun. Suttle made all the arrangements, and we three took off.

We went to some dirt road, and there was the car parked down the road. The plan was to flash our lights, and get out and walk to the other car. We got about twenty feet, when some guy jumped out of the other car, hollered "you sonsabitches, you're the guys *&%@#$ my wife." Then MANY gunshots were fired. Don and I both made a run for the woods on the side of the road in the dark. You can imagine how treacherous that was..especially with bullets flying. Needless to say, it was all a trick set up by Suttle.

Not long after, we were hurriedly setting up a Cecil Campbell set, and Suttle was slightly injured and couldn't walk. It was air time, and we pulled the drape on the wall over him until the show was over. It was a large bulge, since Suttle was a large boy. Luckily, the show was only fifteen minutes long. On the other hand, after what he did to us, I would have been content to leave the SOB lying there permanently.

I wonder what the young kids in the TV business do for fun now?

(My apologies to Don and Donna for revealing rampant stupidity in the "good old days.")