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

I unbuckled the leash. Barney disappeared on what turned out to be a T-bone tirade. Ten minutes later, as we completed one of the segments, Barney emerged from the kitchen with a $40 chunk of filet in his mouth. Even he seemed surprised at his good fortune.

Ruth’s mouth opened wider than Barney’s. “How did he do that?”

“I don’t know, Ruth. I really don’t. But I knew he would.”

There must have been a human accomplice, but it remains a mystery.

Ruth took it all very well. But she didn’t take my credit card, claiming that Barney was a pretty good testimony to how great her steaks were. “He didn’t do this at St. Elmo, did he?” she asked on the air, a little jab at the famous steak restaurant just blocks away.

A year later, a second Indy restaurant in the Ruth’s Chris chain had opened. Barney was still in Ruth’s good graces despite his previous beef burglary. She was fan of anyone who knew a good cut of meat and that’s why she asked her marketing firm in Indy to call me.

“Dick, it’s Dan Forst from Caldwell Van Riper. We represent Ruth’s Chris Steak House. As you know, we periodically name drinks after celebrities, like Mayor Goldsmith, and radio personality Big John Gillis. Anyway, we have a great idea.”

“Dan, why do I think this great idea has nothing to do with naming a drink after Dick Wolfsie?”

“You’re right on the money there, Dick. We want to name it after Barney. Isn’t that a good idea?”

I couldn’t see someone coming into the bar and saying, “Give me a Barney.” As with most ideas, it had potential. But Dan and I agreed that it needed a twist. The result was the Barney “Name the Drink” Contest, an opportunity for Channel 8 viewers to create a catchy name that reflected their favorite news hound.

The first problem was getting permission to do this. Paul Karpowicz had recently left the station. The new GM was not opposed to Barney, but being from out of town, he never fully believed in him and his connection to the community.

Promos featuring Barney had dwindled and the new management questioned many of my segments. My new boss felt I was a loose cannon with no one to answer to. He was right about that. I never asked permission for my subject matter. By the time my request would have worked its way up the bureaucratic chain, nothing would have gotten on the air. It is quicker and easier to say you are sorry than to ask permission—that was my time-tested technique and part of my reputation. If I had asked first, I would have never been allowed to have part of my hair transplant live on television, a segment that created quite a buzz (but not a buzz cut) but made the hair on the GM’s back stand up. He thought I had traded TV time for the procedure, which was not the case, but I must admit it didn’t look good. Although my hair looked great when it was all over.

No, the new guy didn’t like the drink contest idea. He thought it would be a mistake to associate Channel 8 news with drinking. The news—everybody’s news—was already associated with murder, drug raids, and plane crashes. But “beagles and booze are a bad combo,” he said.

I explained to the GM that there were drinks named after Big John Gillis, who did traffic reports, and Mayor Steve Goldsmith, who ran the city. No one had a problem with association. Why did he think this was a mistake? I found out the hard way that the GM felt no overwhelming obligation to explain his reasoning to me.

“We’re just not doing it,” he said. “Maybe the dog understands English if you don’t.” Ooo-kay, message received. This was a version of the old “shut up,” explained.

I tried one more time, suggesting that we name a nonalcoholic drink after Barney. The answer was still no. See why I hated asking permission?

Then the GM left Channel 8. And just when I was starting to warm up to the guy. Scott Blumenthal, the former sales manager at WISH who had left for a few years to run a sister station, returned to run the station. He, of course, was familiar with Barney’s popularity.

I asked for a meeting to discuss this idea with him. It took him only four seconds to say, “Why not?” Barney was going to have a drink named after him. Scott later became one of the station’s corporate vice presidents. This may have been his first great decision.

I stuck with the idea of a liquorless drink, surmising that it would lend itself to some funny names, which it did. The contest lasted two weeks. The winner received two free steak dinners and assorted prizes. Here were some of the entries. Take a look. Bottoms up!

K-9 Kooler

Barney’s Bone Dry

Paws That Refreshes

Barney’s 8-Ball

Bone Appetite

Shot in the Bark

Pootch Hootch

Bare Bones Brew

Hair of the Dog

Virgin Hair

All Bark, No Bite

Tail Chaser

Dog Gone It

Beagle Juice

Designated Woofer

Rabbit Chaser

Hare Raiser

Barney Temple

Biteless Barney

Doggy De Lite

Bone Dry Twist

Barney’s Strawberry

Dogaree

Designated Dog

Ears to Ya

So which name do you think won? First, here are the ingredients:

Cranberry juice

Vanilla flavoring

Club soda

Lemon twist

The winner: Barney’s All Bark, No Bite

Here’s to Barney!

Do You Look Like Barney? How About Your Dog?

Anything that featured Barney started with a leg up, so to speak. Once we organized a morning train ride for the first three hundred viewers who called in to our switchboard. We took the AM die-hards on a short scenic ride through parts of picturesque Indiana, served them breakfast, and returned to the railroad station as the show ended three hours later.

The biggest difficulty on the train was controlling Barney, who now had at his beck and howl three hundred loyal fans who wanted to