Mornings With Barney by Dick Wolfsie (e book reader .TXT) 📕

This felt like a kind of closure to the radio experience, bittersweet though, it was. I don’t have many fond memories of my time on the radio, except I was happy that Barney had touched Sally’s life. That seemed to make it all worthwhile. But what would you expect a bleeding-heart liberal like me to say?

The Reality of Television

Many people who might have been reluctant to appear on TV were more open to the idea knowing that Barney was part of the mix. My favorite story is about Jerry Hostetler, then about sixty, and owner of the most garish house in town. His 55,000-square-foot home could have been charitably described as Vegas Gauche.

The modular structure had about fifty rooms, but that was just a guess because you really didn’t know when one room ended and the next began. The house was filled—but not decorated—with priceless antiques and works of art from around the world. Despite the value of his collection, the inside looked like a garage sale.

There were a dozen workmen on the premises 24/7, bowing to every whim Jerry had on any given day about the house. “Let’s move the bathroom over there,” he’d tell a plumber, who never flinched. Why would he? He was being paid by the hour. The entire facility was a work in progress. If you could call it progress.

People in cars were always lined up on the street to see the house, which featured huge stone dolphin statues spouting water into a fountain on the front circle drive. Part of the allure was Jerry’s past, which was probably a bit shady, but it always got shadier in the retelling. He was in the restoration business, so after a flood or fire, Jerry would haggle with the insurance companies over how much they would pay their clients. Jerry did very well at this. Too well, some thought, considering his house and furnishings.

But no one had ever done a story about the house because there were rumors he did not talk to reporters. He even shot at one, I had heard.

I was sure that wasn’t true, but for years I had driven past the house, lacking the nerve to knock on the door. One day, Barney by my side, I took the plunge and pulled into his driveway. “Is Mr. Hostetler here?” I asked a gardener working on the front lawn. “Can I see him?”

“He’s in the garage getting a manicure.”

Sure enough, there he was, decked out in a, well, deck chair—a beautiful Hispanic woman attending to his hair and nails next to one of his three Jaguar XKEs. I felt like I was meeting Howard Hughes.

Jerry was more than cordial, even self-effacing, admitting that he had heard the rumors about himself and assured me that most were not true. He even admitted to watching Barney and me on TV in the mornings, before he went to bed. As George Carlin once said, “The sixties were good to this guy.”

His good mood turned a bit sour when I requested permission to do a TV show about his unique dwelling. That temporarily ended the conversation, but he did assure me he would think about it and said I should call his secretary the next week.

When I called Carol, his assistant, she told me that Jerry wanted to make me an offer, which scared the hell out of me, but I listened. “You can do a show at Jerry’s home, if he can hire someone to snap pictures of him and Barney together throughout the house.”

And so it was. Barney and I arrived two weeks later, greeted by Jerry’s personal public relations man and a professional photographer. That’s when we did the first live remote from the legendary residence. Barney had free run of the house and in one memorable shot, Barney was seen waddling down the wrought iron spiral staircase that led from one of the second-story party rooms to the living room on the main floor. Scarlett O’Hara, eat your heart out.

Jerry got his photos and I got my TV interview and tour.

Jerry died a few years after that. His house—considered by neighbors an eyesore—went unsold for quite a while, but it is now the property of a young dot-com millionaire, new to town. When I had the occasion to meet the thirty-year-old owner, I told him the story I have recounted above.

“Who’s Barney, again?” he asked.

Who, indeed!

Some people, like Jerry, may fear being on television. I have always said that there are two types of people: those who would do anything to get on TV, and those who would do anything to avoid it.

Here’s some good advice for both groups:

Being on TV frightens people to death. In some ways it is scarier than public speaking. Of course, in a way, it is public speaking, but a camera seems even more threatening than a roomful of people.

When I arrived at a remote spot for Channel 8, I would request that everyone who didn’t want to be on TV gather in a specific corner. Once the masses grouped to avoid media exposure, I began the segment by having my cameraman zoom in on all the huddlers who “didn’t want to be seen on TV.” This caused a kind of mass hysteria, especially women who had arisen at 4:30 in the morning to bring their kids to the show and had skipped the makeup portion of their morning ritual. There was a lot of high-pitched screaming, back-turning, and huddling. Most were good-natured about it. Not all, but most.

It is really the talking on TV, not the being on TV, that petrifies everyone—a fear of making a fool of yourself, saying something really dumb.

Case in point: In 1997, a nurse at the medical clinic at Indianapolis Motor Speedway was panicked about being live on the air to discuss how the ER treated race drivers who were hurt in collisions. I assured