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

University, and with diploma in hand, I headed home. That May, only a war in Vietnam stood between me and the rest of my life. I did oppose the war, but the truth was that even if I had embraced the politics of the conflict, the idea of shooting a gun and killing anyone was unthinkable. Being shot at, I wasn’t good at thinking about either. Knock ’em dead with jokes was my way of dealing with people. “Stop, you’re killing me” was the refrain I looked forward to hearing someday in a comedy club in New York. Not in Vietnam.

What do you do with a degree in American Studies? I knew I was creative and a fairly good writer. Maybe advertising? But writing spots for Pepsodent on Madison Avenue was not going to keep me out of the draft.

Teaching had always intrigued me, although I had this unrealistic notion that to teach something, you had to know something. Despite my four years of post-high school education, I didn’t think I’d feel any more confident in a classroom than in a rice paddy. When I learned that teaching positions were open at my alma mater, New Rochelle High School, I decided it was worth a try.

When I called to make an appointment at the central office, the secretary said the superintendent of schools wanted to know if I was the same Dick Wolfsie who had gone to New Rochelle High just four years earlier. Stupidly, I told the truth, and I’ll never forget her retort: “Dr. Misner said to come in anyway.”

I did get the job, but the department chairwoman who hired me had a clear memory of my senior year, just five years earlier. She had also taught my mother, apparently another poor student, she kindly shared with me.” This is the worst hiring I have ever made,” she told me, wagging her finger. Fact is, she was desperate. School began in a few weeks.

Faculty members who had disciplined me for my antics, teachers who had rolled their eyes at my one-liners and admonished my parents about my lack of appropriate reserve, were now my colleagues. For nine years, I taught psychology. Then English, as well. Teaching psychology allowed for more innovation and demonstration in the class. When I blindfolded students and had them run through a maze of chairs, the chair of the department heard about my technique and informed me that I could have just as easily taught the concept through lecture, not a demo that caused a great deal of disruption in the room. She was wrong, of course. I knew how to work an audience.

The teachers and the students nicknamed me Kotter, a reference to the TV show Welcome Back, Kotter, where Gabe Kaplan in the title role returns to teach at his alma mater. I was also dubbed “rookie of the year” by the more experienced teachers. I instinctively knew how to inform and entertain at the same time, the one-two punch for effective teaching and hosting of a talk show. But the latter was still a decade away.

The summer of’78 looked like it would be typical, chasing girls and golf balls, but a call from a friend would soon mean the beginning of a roller-coaster series of events that took me from a high school psychology teacher to the host of the number-one local morning show in the country in only two years.

The call was from Burt Dubrow, a high school buddy, whose obsession with TV had resulted in a myriad of media jobs since college, including emceeing and producing a revival of the legendary Howdy Doody Show on college campuses. Burt was producing a series of shows for Warner Cable in Columbus, Ohio. Viewers had their homes hardwired so they could interact via a tiny box, not unlike a TV remote. Based on questions elicited from the game- and talk-show hosts, viewers could register opinions and provide feedback, which then appeared on the screen fully tabulated. It was so advanced for its time that Phil Donahue did a show from one of the studios, heralding the new technology.

I became a writer and associate producer for the evening talk show as well as a weekend kids’ program. I moved from New York to Columbus, Ohio, to start a new life. I watched the host of the evening program each night read my questions verbatim and knew that I could do it better and more spontaneously. How did I know that? Because for a decade I had managed to keep the attention of thirty hormone-charged adolescents for forty minutes five times a day with a technique that combined just the right mixture of information and entertainment. That’s exactly what a good talk-show host does. But how would I get a job like that? Not a clue.

In the early fall, Burt’s wife introduced me to one of her friends, a stunning redhead who was not looking for a husband but was seeking an MBA at the University of Michigan. Mary Ellen drove from Ann Arbor to Columbus for the blind date and we had dinner at Burt’s home.

Mary Ellen and I were total opposites by any observable criteria. She was measured and reserved. She actually let people finish sentences when they were speaking. This really threw me because in New York the only way you know you are done talking is when someone interrupts you. Initially, she was put off by the interaction between Burt and me, which often bordered on the juvenile as we relived our childhood together and fell into fits of laughter during the meal.

But in the three days that followed, Mary Ellen and I had more time to talk one-on-one. Despite the obvious differences in demeanor and style, we shared some common values. It was love at fourth sight.

The romance blossomed quickly, maybe too quickly for Mary Ellen, who was interviewing for jobs all over the country and was reluctant to commit to a relationship with a guy who wrote cue