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the players 
the bridge
After a North Florida ride through the Apalachicola Forest, and a stop to swim in Wakulla Springs, Charles Kuralt and his CBS “On The Road” crew continued south to Cape Canaveral. The same as Alligator editor who drove down to cover Apollo 11, to him, “local” news.
On The Road Again
Canned Heat
1967 — Boogie with Canned Heat
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Motorhome Illustration b/ Bill Day
(((VIDEO))) — In the Summer of 1969, Kuralt, like everyone, was focused on the Moon. There could be no more honestly Universal event. The most imagined and dreamed about voyage. Kuralt, like the rest of the World was looking to the sky, and he was preparing to take his CBS television audience on the most adventurous ride … TO THE MOON AND BACK. For the week of the Apollo 11 mission, Kuralt sent teams of writers, photographers, and producers around the country to do day-in-the-life, everyday American stories, on the most extraordinary day ever. Kuralt decided, rather than air the “episode” immediately, to shelve it, time capsule-style, only to broadcast on the 25th Anniversary of what became Neil Armstrong’s “One Small Step.” The video here is Kuralt’s finished piece, aired July 20, 1996.
Editor’s Note: For her master’s thesis in communications, author Tolbert spent part of her Christmas holiday traveling with the “On the Road” crew.
by Jane Tolbert
Alligator Staff Writer
It’s a job that most newsmen only dream of — traveling around the United States looking for outlandish or interesting people and events.
Things like musical saw players, swimming pigs, and “worm-grunting” — not to mention tree-sitting marathons and egg-holding contests.
But for Charles Kuralt and the crew of CBS’s “On the Road”, searching for out-of-the-ordinary glimpses of America is a way of life.
Kuralt has said that “… when CBS goes out to shoot a documentary, they take along a cameraman, a sound man, an electrician, an assistant cameraman, a researcher, and a producer … When the “On the Road” crew strikes out, it’s just Charlie, Charlie, Izzy, and Larry.
Charlie number one is Kuralt, who thought up the series back in 1967. The other Charlie is Charlie Quinian the electrician. He’s covered all kinds of riots, freedom marches, demonstrations and says he has the scars to show for it. Then there’s Izzy, Isadore Bleckman, the cameraman, who’s been with the series for four years. Larry is Larry Gianneschi, the sound man who worked for Edward R. Murrow’s “See It Now.” The crew cruises the backroads of the countryside, in a white Cortez motor home, with an insignificant-looking CBS eye on the side and an inscription, in small black letters, “On the Road.”
When the small “On the Road” crew arrives to do a story, it’s more like friends dropping in and less like a production.”
Kuralt had been a regular newspaper reporter and worked for nearly ten years in television news before his “dream” assignment of “On the Road” began. His work had taken him all over Southeast Asia, South America and the United States, covering wars, riots, and other crises.
It was en route to the scene of one of these news events that Kuralt got the idea for the series.
“A cameraman named Jimmy Wilson and I were flying out to Cleveland on a very clear night, probably around January or February. We were flying out to Cleveland, looking down at the lights and drinking I suppose, and talking about how each one of those lights probably represented a story and how it would be nice to go on the road to just do little features about people who wouldn’t otherwise be on television.”
Kuralt went to New York and tried out the idea on CBS president, Fred Friendly, who said he thought it would be a “waste of time.” He did suggest, however, that if Kuralt wanted to do something similar, on Vietnam, “that wouldn’t be a bad idea.”
Kuralt said he figured that would make him the … “Ernie Pyle of Vietnam or something.”
“But, I had been to Vietnam enough. I felt it was a pretty good idea, too, but I really wanted to do something about the home country — about America.
But, Friendly turned the idea down.”
Shortly after Friendly’s rejection of the proposed series, Richard Salant became president of CBS News.
With this change of power, Kuralt said, ‘The first thing I thought of was the idea for the series. So, I tried the idea on him and his deputy, Ernest Leiser. They said, ‘Sure, we’ll try it and make a three month project out of it.
That was over seven years ago. The series has been running since October, 1967.
“On the Road” now receives the second largest amount of mail at CBS News. Mike Wallace and “60 Minutes” gets the most, and “… he asks for it,” Kuralt said. Approximately 200 to 300 letters a week come in for Kuralt’s series from viewers all over the country, suggesting people, places and events to cover. This is where some of the ideas for stories come from, along with stories the crew runs across in its travels.
With all these ideas pouring into CBS News, one wonders how the actual stories for the “On the Road” series are selected from the pile. “Part of it is ex-perience,” Kuralt said. “Somehow when I read a person’s letter or read an old yellowed newspaper clipping that has been in the file for years, I have feeling about the story. I can imagine how it might turn out to be a good one and it almost always does.
Part of it is being burned in the past. There is a certain category of stories that sound funny or poignant. But, when you arrive on the scene, they’re not.” Kuralt has logged over 300,000 miles and covered over 300 stories with the series. It has taken the crew to such places as Sopchoppy, Florida (near Apalachicola and Wakulla Springs), where Kuralt did a story on “worm grunting.”
In San Marcos, Texas, Kuralt covered a story on a swimming pig which he said was probably the “low point” of the series. And, in Mohr’s Market, Degraff, Ohio, Kuralt reported on an egg-holding contest. The champ held thirty eggs.
Kuralt says “On the Road” isn’t out “to prove anything.”
“I don’t have any philosophy about it. All it is, is just n effort to put little feature stories on the air. I think it’s nice to acknowledge, once in a while, that the hole country isn’t in flames. I think there’s a value in it, once in a while, reminding people that the big block headlines — all the violence that accompanied the civil rights revolution, the Vietnam War after that, and Watergate after that, and inflation after that — these things which consume our attention, are, after all, just part of what’s going on, even though they are an awfully important part. And, meantime, many people’s lives just go on.”
A couple of days before I joined the “On the Road” crew in Reno, they had a story in Cedarsville, California. It was about an old-time, former sheep rancher who now spends all his time repairing broken toys for Santa Claus to give children at Christmas.
Although the filming was completed, Kuralt did not write the script until I arrived.
We were at dinner, and Kuralt was telling us about how the story was coming along and said, “I think I’ll end it with, ‘Afterwards we remembered that’s how those others felt, those earlier shepherds bearing gifts.'”
We all agreed that it sounded like a great Christmas story — the old sheep rancher fixing the toys for children compared with the shepherds bearing gifts when they went to Bethlehem to see Jesus.
But, Kuralt suddenly said, ‘Wait, I don’t think the shepherds brought gifts — it was the three wise men.” We couldn’t remember if the shepherds had brought anything. So, that night we all retired to our hotel rooms to look up the Christmas story in those bibles the Gideons leave in every room.
Kuralt was right. And the ending was changed to, … “we remembered that’s how those others felt,
those earlier shepherds who came with the wise men bearing gifts.”
“If we hadn’t checked that,” Kuralt said, “We’d have had religious groups from all over the country writing in.”
After we hit the major casinos, but before we left Reno, we drove around for several hours looking for license plates. The crew had been working on a story about the funny names people pay to have on their plates instead of numbers.
We did find a 10JQKA (10, Jack, Queen, King, Ace.) And, I chased (on foot) down the main street of Reno, a Mazda with a plate that said “HMMMMM,” which Kuralt used in the script to say, “And everybody knows the piston engine goes boing, boing, boing, but the Mazda goes, ‘HMMMMM.'”
We found a “MAXINE” in a parking lot, who Kuralt figured “must be a hairdresser,”a tomato-red VW with a tag that read “TWO-MATO,” and we followed “B HAPPY” for about 15 minutes, only to lose it when it went up a steep hill.
After Reno, the next stop was Santa Cruz, where Kuralt was planning to do a story on a musical saw player. The saw player, Tom Scribner, had written about his “Lost Sound Band,” composed of Tom on the first saw, Herman Olson or Ollie on the second saw and Arlene Sutton on the piano.
The production took nearly five hours, and 2700 feet of film was shot. Later, the film would be edited down to four minutes, or approximately 150 feet. Editing music is a problem, that’s why we used so much film.” said Kuralt. >>>
(See page 12)
That’s One Small Step For Man … One Giant Leap for Mankind.
— NEIL ARMSTRONG
“Bad Moon Rising”
Charles Kuralt, in his “On The Road” documentation of Apollo 11, sent teams of reporters around the country, producing a “Day In The Life of America” …
THE DAY Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon.
Creedence Clearwater Revival
1969 — Green River
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CBS
The Road Trip For The Ages — Charles Kuralt’s “On The Road” series premiered on CBS in 1967, and by the Summer of 1969, Kuralt had become on of the most popular weekly programs on network television. On July 15, “On The Road” arrived in Cape Canaveral, Florida, and like the rest of the World, was anxious to isee Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins (Apollo 11) embark on the greatest road trip ever (always) imagined.
In addition to Kuralt having his immediate crew on the Cape, he had teams all around the country, assigned to do “day in the life of America” stories, from the launch on what Kuralt was calling “THE GREAT DAY,” to the day Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon.
After editing and production, rather than airing the stories immediately, Kuralt thought to hold them, as if in a “time capsule,” with the idea to show them in 1994, on the 25th Anniversary of Armstrong’s “One Small Step, and One Giant Leap” into the future.
(From page 7)
>>> Kuralt also pointed out that the editors in New York will only be able to use one or two tunes.
As I write it, it calls for two, or parts of two tunes.
So, it really was kind of pointless to let them go on playing. But it’s a way to get a running start on a story.”
“In a way we kind of wasted that first roll of film in order to break the ice and to let the people play a little bit – let them feel good about having performed for us and to give me a chance to really get into the story — to think about it while they were playing and to imagine how it might go together.” The Musical Saw was an atypical “On the Road” story because it was filmed in one location. “With most stories,” Kuralt pointed out, “there are several locations.”
Although music halls were available for the filming of this piece, Kuralt preferred to use Arlene Sutton’s living room. This is the place where the Lost Sound Band practices every afternoon. And, a music hall would have made the story look “too much like a production,” said Kuralt.
Before the actual filming of the story, Kuralt refused to talk about the interview or anything relating to Tom’s playing the musical saw. Instead, Kuralt said, “I try to talk about the weather, or anything…” This way, the answers Tom would give in the interview would not be rehearsed — they would be natural and not thought out. Also, by not talking about the interview in advance, the subject does not become “talked out” on a topic.
After the filming and sound for the story was completed, Kuralt still had to write the script and record it. The voice-over narration was recorded inside the “On the Road” bus. Then, we all went to the San Jose Airport to ship the film, audio tape and the script to New York where the film was edited.
When writing the script for the “On the Road” stories, Kuralt does not have the film to refer to as it is processed and edited in New York. But, he knows basically what is on the film and the length of the shots.
Kuralt summarized his technique for “On the Road” saying, ‘The big thing is working together. The thing to remember is that it really is useful to know everything about the camera-work, everything about the sound, know all the technical things you can and know the film editor’s problems — that’s the biggest thing of all.”
In addition to understanding the technical problems of a piece, the writer must have a feeling for the subject … You have have to be genuine — you have to really care. If you pretend to care, that shows through.”
“Now,” Kuralt says, “we are getting away more and more from events and doing more stories on people. The stories about people are really the successful ones.”
Kuralt said that sometimes for the Cronkite News they like the “silly” stories — such as the story on the tree-sitting contest “or those things because they’re silly. But, nobody remembers those for a day.” Kuralt’s favorites are those on people, not only because they are more successful, but because they are more meaningful.
“The story we did about Tom Scribner is one I’l never forget. I mean, I’ll never forget that man. If we can successfully press a man’s life and career, or a woman’s, into four minutes with a few snatches of dialogue and a few well-shot pictures, well enough to make people understand what sort of person this is, then it’s a successful story.”
I left the crew just before Christmas to come back to Gainesville. Kuralt was returning to New York and Charlie, Izzy, and Larry were going back to Chicago, where their families live.
The “On the Road” crew was going to meet around the beginning of January at Pier 24 in San Francisco, where we had left the bus during the vacation. They don’t have any agenda of stories to cover. They’ll just wander around the country until they find another home-spun Kuraltian character who will give some more insight into the “individualism” and “yankee ingenuity” that still exists in America.
From its location in north central Florida, Gainesville is within a day’s ride of any number of historic, pre-historic, and environmentally beautiful, people, places, and things. It is a place any DAY TRIPPER would be happy to call home.
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alligator
•TO BE A PERFECT CHRISTIAN WOMAN
February 22, 1975
Space & Time
HOME IS WHERE THE ROCKETS FLY
A BEACH FOR ALL SEASONS
DAY TRIPPING (#1.)
Cassadaga and other mysteries in the Florida jungle.
DAY TRIPPING (#2.)
Weeki Wachee (SR50) Florida’s road through Space & Time
EARTHRISE
Where I Come From
SPACE COAST
Home Is Where The Rockets Fly
NAKED LAUNCH
Pretty As A Florida Picture
ORANGES
Indian River Fruit
ORANGES (CONT’D)
COCOA BEACH
A BEACH FOR ALL SEASONS
SPACE COAST (NASA) TIMELINE
SUMMER (MORE THAN A BREAK)
A1A (FLORIDA’s EAST COAST)
LAKE OKEECHOBEE
FLORIDA SUGAR: HOW SWEET IS IT?
EXTRA! (PG3)
ON THE ROAD WITH CHARLES KURALT
Wakulla to the Moon
A1A (FLORIDA’s EAST COAST)
Sugar (Raw Alternative)
SUWANNEE RIVER (GHOST STORIES)
SUWANNEE RIVER (BLUEGRASS)
MAYPORT (JAZZ)
THE POLICE (TOMORROWLAND)
VINNY’S NIGHT IN JAIL
ROLLING STONES (TANGERINE BOWL)
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN (TICKET QUEST)
close to home
SANTA FE RIVER
LAKE ALICE
DEVIL’S MILLHOPPER
PAYNE’S PRARIE
CEDAR KEY (BACK IN FLORIDA TIME)
CRESCENT BEACH (MAP)
CROSS CREEK (CUMQUAT MARMALADE)
ORANGE LAKE (STEVE Z) EDUCATED GROWER
MICANOPY (MADNESS)
MICANOPY (WIKI)
LOCHLOOSA
ICHETUCKNEE
CASSADAGA (PSYCIC-DELIC)
BLUE SPRING
ORANGE
FROSTPROOF
ZEPHYRHILLS
WEEKI WACHEE (SR50)
SILVER SPRINGS (SR40)
OCKLAWAHA RIVER
OCALA NATIONAL FOREST
YANKEETOWN
ORLANDO
DELAND
DAYTONA BEACH
Sail Away
After hitchhiking his way, on A1A, from St. Augustine to Daytona Beach, Jeff Cardenas takes you the rest of the way south (Fort Lauderdale to Key West) on a 37-foot sailing yacht, in a race with one hundred others. [STORY]
((( Deep Purple )))
“Highway Song”
Blackfoot
1977 —
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