Priceless Memories

by Bob Barker; Digby Diehl

  “Quick, get on top of my car,” Homer replied.

  I put the hand mike in my coat pocket, and as fast as I could, I clambered up on Homer’s car. Homer alerted me: “You have one minute, Bob.”

  I reached into my coat pocket for the hand mike, and to my horror, I couldn’t get it out of my pocket. The call letters KTTS had become entangled in the lining of my coat. Homer cautioned me: “Thirty seconds, Bob.” I pulled and hauled on the hand mike to no avail.

  Homer began a ten-second countdown: “Ten, nine, eight, seven…” The hand mike was still tangled up in my coat pocket. “… Six, five, four, three, two… You’re on!”

  And I did the only thing I could. I pulled my coat up to my face and spoke into my coat pocket. “Good afternoon, KTTS listeners. We are live at the cornerstone ceremony for the new field house on Drury College campus….” That’s how I described the entire affair, speaking into the pocket of my coat.

  When we got back to the station, Mr. Ward complimented Homer on the quality of the sound during the remote. Homer didn’t tell Mr. Ward that the sound was “filtered.”

  • • •

  I had taken the job at KTTS to augment my income from the GI Bill while I finished my degree at Drury, but I enjoyed working in radio so much that I thought I would like to stick with it after I finished school.

  As I mentioned earlier, I did anything and everything that I got a chance to do at KTTS. But if I wanted to make a living in radio, particularly on a network level, I knew that I should choose one thing and concentrate on becoming as good as I possibly could at it. As usual, I discussed the matter with Dorothy Jo, but we didn’t come to a decision. We agreed that I should continue getting experience in various facets of radio and that we would talk more about it.

  Eventually, I got an opportunity to host an audience participation show, talking with people out of a studio audience—the type of thing I did for fifty years on television. Dorothy Jo listened to that first show, and when I got home, she said, “That’s what you should do. You did that better than you have ever done anything else.” She didn’t say I was good. She just said I did it better than I had ever done anything else. From that day forward, Dorothy Jo and I worked together with one goal in mind: to get me a national audience participation show.

  Before I left KTTS, with Dorothy Jo working right beside me, I had done shows from a studio we had at the station, from a drugstore, a grocery store, a theater, and out on the street. All of these shows required ideas and then more ideas. They also needed writing, research, questions and answers, and staging. Dorothy Jo was right at my side all of the way, doing her share and more. Of course, she was still teaching, too. But she and I worked evenings and weekends—vacations, too.

  • • •

  In early 1947, I heard very good things about a summer radio course taught at the Pasadena Playhouse in California. Dorothy Jo and I talked it over, and decided that when I graduated from Drury in June 1947, I should go out to California and take the course.

  Then, much to our delight, we learned that our friend Jim Lowe, who was graduating from Missouri University at the same time, was going to California to take a course sponsored by NBC. Of course, Jim and I decided to drive out together, and as a result, we shared a piece of American history: we were among the first drinkers to imbibe on what was to become the legendary Las Vegas Strip.

  We drove into Las Vegas, and all the lights, all the people, and all the action was in downtown Las Vegas. But Jim and I were curious about comments we had heard concerning a new casino called the Flamingo. Some of the comments were hopeful, even optimistic. Some comments were snide. Jim and I decided to check out the Flamingo for ourselves. We drove clear out of Las Vegas and into the desert. There, surrounded by nothing but more desert, was the Flamingo, a work in progress, and apparently progressing too slowly in the opinion of some of the investors.

  We were told that the Flamingo was the idea of Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel. Mr. Siegel thought that a beautiful casino with top talent to entertain would attract big spenders from Los Angeles. When Jim and I visited the Flamingo in the summer of 1947, only the bar was open. Everywhere else there were cranes and carpenters. Jim and I had our drinks—Rob Roys, as I recall—and split. That summer, while Jim was honing his radio skills at NBC and I was doing the same at the Pasadena Playhouse, Mr. Siegel was shot to death in Beverly Hills. I read that his demise was probably arranged by some of his disgruntled business associates.

  They jumped the gun—pun intended. I was in Las Vegas recently, and when I stood in front of the Flamingo, I saw nothing but more hotels for miles in every direction. Mr. Siegel was right on, but he should have chosen business associates who were not so impatient.

  I don’t know how much his experience at NBC that summer had to do with it, but Jim Lowe ended up as one of the most popular disc jockeys in New York City. In 1953, Jim wrote a megahit song called “Gambler’s Guitar.” It was recorded by Rusty Draper, a popular vocalist of the time, and stayed on the charts for weeks. In 1957, Rusty Draper was still hot, as Hollywood folks say, so our celebrity booker suggested that we invite Rusty to do a guest appearance on Truth or Consequences. It wasn’t my idea, but I was all for it. Rusty agreed to do Truth, and suggested that a young friend of his join him. His friend was attracting attention for his work as a cowboy on a television Western, Laramie, and we readily agreed.

  After Rusty and his friend had done their bit on Truth, I chatted with them for a few minutes, and I remember thinking, “That young cowboy may do OK in Hollywood.” His name was Clint Eastwood.

  After my summer radio course, I worked at KTTS for another year, and then, after a stop in Palm Beach, Florida, Dorothy Jo and I headed west. To be more specific, we headed for Hollywood. After all, it was in Hollywood and New York that the national radio shows originated, and it was a national radio show that we were after.

  I bought a two-wheel trailer, loaded all of our worldly goods in it, and away we went. Now, I had never driven a car pulling a trailer, and we weren’t out of the Palm Beach city limits before I realized that there is more to pulling a trailer than you might think (until you have experienced the thrill of pulling one). We were in a violent windstorm most of the way across Oklahoma, and by virtue of the fact that we survived, my confidence mounted tremendously. By the time we reached Hollywood, I could back that trailer up and even park it—if the parking area was a bit spacious.

  Incidentally, when we got to Hollywood, I sold the trailer for more than I had paid for it. It was one of my better investments.

  5

  My Years on the Reservation

  People often ask me, “When you were little did you always want to be a television host?” Some are surprised to hear that when I was a child, there was no television. It was a different world then, especially for a boy growing up in South Dakota. This was the 1930s in some of the most rural and rugged parts of the country, but it was also spectacular territory in which to spend a boyhood because I developed a love of the outdoors, physical activity, sports, and adventures of all kinds. Growing up in South Dakota nurtured in me a reverence for nature and a love of animals.

  As a child, I had no notion of historical context, but as I look back, the challenges that my mother and other South Dakotans faced in those years were extraordinary. The 1930s began with the worst drought and grasshopper plague ever experienced in the state. The drought, accompanied by dust storms, lasted for ten years (except for some relief in 1932 and 1935), and the Great Depression (1929–1939) also caused thousands of South Dakotans to lose their jobs and their land.

  • • •

  My mother and I moved to Mission, South Dakota, when I was six years old, right after my father died in 1929. I went to school from the second grade through the eighth grade in the Mission, South Dakota, public grammar school, which was only two rooms large. On the subject of my father, I can still remember near the end, when he was sick. He was so ill he was bedridden. He was at home, and he called m
e into his room. I was called Billy for much of my youth, and I remember he said, “Billy, when you become a man, promise me you will always take care of your mother.” In later years, I realized that my father’s request indicated that he knew or at least thought there was a possibility that he was terminally ill.

  I assured my father that I would always take care of my mother, and many years later, I had the opportunity of caring for her when she was elderly, and eventually ill. She lived with me in Hollywood for years when she was older. I kept my word to my father. Though he died when I was very young, I do remember him.

  My father liked to box. He had boxed as a younger man, and my mother said he would go to Omaha to watch professional fights. I remember he bought me some boxing gloves, and he would get on his knees and box with me. He was, according to my mother, an incredible cardplayer and a pretty successful gambler at cards. Mother said he was wearing custom-made suits and silk shirts and driving a big car when she married him, but she told him if they were going to be married, he had to concentrate on electricity—he worked on the power lines—from then on. Mother said that between electrical jobs, my father would tease her, saying, “Tilly, maybe I should go find a card game.”

  My mother and father had a lot of fun. Apparently, he was an adventurous guy. Mother told me that before she married my father, he and a friend rode motorcycles down to Mexico. They met Pancho Villa in a bar. Pancho Villa took them with him and his friends to a bullfight. Mother said that my father was aghast at the blood spectacle. He could not stand to see the cruelty to the animal, and he left the bullfight. Maybe some of my animal protectionist streak is genetic.

  My mother also told me that after I was born, she had gone to an astrologer, who told her that this baby was going to make his living talking. My mother immediately thought I might follow in my grandfather’s footsteps and become a minister, or she thought I might become an attorney, speaking in court. Television did not exist, and radio was in its infancy. But sure enough, I went on to make my living all my life by talking.

  • • •

  When Lewis and Clark first explored the area, South Dakota was Indian territory, and as I was growing up, there were still many Native Americans living there. According to the census of 1930, out of a population of 692,849 people, approximately 3 percent of those residents were Native American. In Mission, a farming town on the Rosebud Reservation with a population of only 200, probably one-third of the residents were Native Americans. My father was one-quarter Indian. His mother was one-half Indian. I am one-eighth Sioux. It was not uncommon to have Indian heritage in those days in that region of the country. My stepfather was one-half Indian.

  As I mentioned, I was called Billy for much of my childhood. My father’s name was Byron John Barker. He did not like Byron or John, so everyone started calling him Bill. When I was born and named Robert William Barker, they called him big Bill and me little Bill. Then I was Billy. I was Billy Barker all through childhood. My mother called me Billy, and all my friends called me Billy. Eventually, I had to change it while I was at school in Mission, South Dakota, probably in the third grade. The school was approximately 75 percent white and 25 percent Native American. The government was always interested and always checking to see whether the Indians were in school or not, and I was part Sioux, so they were interested in my attendance.

  Since I always signed everything Billy Barker, there was some confusion at the Office of Indian Affairs, and my mother often received letters asking whether Robert William Barker was going to school. One day my mother said, “You are going to make this easier on me. You are not Billy anymore. You are Bob.” I went to school and I told my teacher that from now on I was Bob. And I have been Bob ever since. Curiously, many of my professional colleagues, on both shows, called me Barker. Many of my close friends called me Barker for years. Even my wife and my brother called me Barker.

  The funny thing about that incident back in the third grade was that as soon as my classmates heard of my new name, they all wanted to change their names, too.

  “I want to be Helen.”

  “I want to be Ralph.”

  “I do not like Irene. I want to be Ruth.”

  “From now on I am Donald.”

  Everybody wanted to change his or her name. My name change made life easier for my mother, but it was tough on my teacher.

  • • •

  As I observed earlier, only two hundred people lived in Mission. There was no municipal government, no water system, no sewage disposal, no electricity, and most of the time, no doctor. We called the town the Paris of the Prairie.

  There was an Indian boarding school about two miles east of Mission. Our high school basketball team played its games in the boarding-school gymnasium, and it was in that gym where I first saw the Harlem Globetrotters play. Cowboys, Indians, and town folks filled the gym to overflowing that night. They absolutely adored the Globetrotters! Who doesn’t?

  I played my first organized basketball in the boarding-school gym. I played on the Mission Midgets. We didn’t have uniforms, so we wore undershirts—the kind Clark Gable made popular in It Happened One Night—and any kind of shorts we could dig up. The other mothers cut out numbers and sewed them on their sons’ undershirts. My mother sewed a question mark on mine. She thought that was pretty funny. So did everyone else.

  Just down a hill south of Mission was Antelope Crick. That’s the way everyone in town pronounced it: “crick,” not “creek.” And about three miles west of Mission there was a large dam. We used to go down to Antelope Crick and swim as soon as the water was warm enough to get in. South Dakota summers are hot, and we would run down the hill and dive in the crick several times a day—six times in one day was the record.

  Of course, we didn’t bother with swimsuits. We just tore off the few clothes we had on and dived in. We never wore shirts in the summer. We took our shirts off the minute school was out and didn’t put them on again until school started in September. That’s why I have paid for so many vacations for Beverly Hills dermatologist Steven Weiss. (I promised Dr. Weiss’s mother I would mention his name in my book.)

  The only road into Mission from the south crossed the mighty Antelope, so, of course, there was a bridge over the crick and we thought it was great sport to dive from the bridge. Now, there never was a problem with gridlock, or anything resembling gridlock, on this one road into Mission from the south. But there was an occasional automobile, and occasionally it was driven by one of the ladies of the town.

  It seems that these ladies resented seeing naked boys flying through the air as they drove over the bridge, and in desperation, they took their problem to the city fathers, one of whom came down to the crick one day and in no uncertain terms told us to cease and desist with the skinny-dipping or they—the city fathers—would see that we had to pick up every tin can in Mission. And there were a lot of tin cans in Mission.

  We took the matter very seriously, and in the future we were careful to dive into the crick before a car got to the bridge. When the ladies of the town drove over the bridge, all they saw were happy little faces smiling up at them.

  Which brings me to the dam. The dam west of Mission was great for ice-skating. It was a really large dam for such a small town, and in winter we took full advantage of it. We skated and played our version of hockey. One day I was trying to do something a little fancier than any of my friends had ever done on skates. My feet went flying up over my head and the first part of me to hit the ice was my right eye. I was cut; I was bruised; I was swollen—I was a mess. My friends were actually concerned about me, and generally they scoffed at everything. When I went home, I opened the door and my mother screamed. Then she asked, “Have you been in a fight?” I said, “Yes, and I lost to the ice.” But I lived to skate another day.

  • • •

  Those years in the tiny school in Mission, South Dakota, were some of the most educational of my life. It all came together then. Those seven years were the foundation of my educat
ion. My mother was an educator. I was in a small schoolhouse with several grades grouped together, whites and Indians. There was no discrimination then as I remember, and I had white friends and Indian friends. We all played sports together and played on teams together. It was a simple life, but it was an environment that fostered and satisfied my love of both sports and reading. There was something about that South Dakota geography—that territory of blue skies, mountains, and rivers, and the rugged terrain—that produced excellent athletes. There were some Indians in that school and in that area who were splendid athletes. We ran. We swam. We played basketball, baseball, and football.

  My uncle owned a pool hall in Mission, and that was the center of social activity in the town. I remember that my uncle taught me to play pool, and for a while I was the best seven-year-old pool player in that part of South Dakota. I was pretty small, so I had to get up on a stool or something, I remember. But I was good.

  • • •

  The harsh winters also offered me plenty of opportunity to read, and I developed a voracious appetite for young adventure books. I read all the Rover Boys books. I read all the Tom Swift books. I read Tom Sawyer, and I started to check out The Hunchback of Notre Dame, thinking that it was a football story. The kindly librarian straightened me out. I liked books on sports. I enjoyed adventure stories, and I liked to read about military heroes. I never cared for comic books, but I liked sports magazines and Western magazines. There were some great sports pulp magazines.

  Another of my favorite series was the Boy Allies books. They were written about two American boys who volunteered for the French army during World War I. My favorite pulp magazine was G-8 and His Battle Aces. They were pilots during World War I. G-8—that was his designation because in addition to being a splendid pilot who shot down countless Germans, he was also a spy. Nippy Weston was G-8’s wingman, and Bull Martin, an all-American football player, was the other. G-8 was always doing marvelous things with makeup and disguises. He carried makeup with him, and he would get behind enemy lines and transform himself. He would knock some guy out, and then reappear looking identical to him. It was a pulp magazine that came out once a month, and I could not wait to get up to the print shop and see what adventures G-8 and his battle aces had pulled off. Those were such exciting stories.