FilioScotia

"You in a heap o' trouble boy." I've always loved the way bit-part and 3rd banana actors get famous and make a lot of money in TV commercials. Dick Wilson -- the guy who did the "Don't Squeeze the Charmin" commercials -- had done small roles in the movies and on TV for years, but no one remembers him for anything but those commercials. Same with Joe Higgins. He had done small TV roles for years before he landed those Dodge sheriff commercials. All of a sudden the guy's a national phenomenon, and everybody's going around imitating the way he said that catch line. Only in the USA. Dr. Joseph Higgins PhD was a talented actor, and a man of many interests and abilities. Check him out on the Internet Movie Database. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0383414/

That's more probable than you know. In the 1960s, HPD cops felt free to be openly racist because they were led by the most brazenly racist police chief I've ever encountered, Herman Short. I chased police news for KIKK radio in those days, and my boss was the aforementioned Richard Dobbyn, who injected his racist views into every newscast he did, especially if a story was about Dr. Martin Lucifer King, as he called him, or if it had anything to do with blacks, hispanics or the weekly body count from Viet Nam. The dead enemy troops weren't North Vietnamese, or Viet Cong. Dobbyn called them "chinks". You had to know Dobbyn to really appreciate him. And you want to know who his biggest fan was? Herman Short. At least once a week Short would come up to me in the HPD Press Room and tell me how much he liked listening to Dobbyn's newscasts, because "Dobbyn tells it like it is." I'm telling all this to underscore how openly racist HPD was, from top to bottom, and I'm saying it's completely believable for me that in 1967, a white HPD cop would make up the excuse of a black student throwing a watermelon. These were cops who would talk openly of the small untraceable pistol they carried around with them to "throw down" next to the body of somebody they'd shot if the guy didn't have a gun. They did it so they could claim they shot him in self defense, and it happened fairly often, and you won't be surprised to know that most of the time the victim was black. They got away with it for many years, and you won't be surprised to know that it took the police shooting of an unarmed white teenager to bring an end to that shameful practice. A cop shot the boy after a wild car chase, and used a "throw down" gun that -- it was learned later -- had been confiscated from a robbery suspect the year before, and was supposed to be locked up in the police station property room downtown. The boy's parents raised hell with police and the DA, the media got involved, and the truth finally came out several years later. Several officers were fired and one was brought up on charges. I've always believed that if that boy had been black, it would have been forgotten. Incidentally, this story was made into an excellent movie for TV in 1981, with an all-star cast. The Killing of Randy Webster. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082615 And here's the original NY Times review of that movie. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...750C0A967948260 Some local reporters didn't have completely clean hands in those days either. I knew several who were as racist as any KKK'er. During the police siege of the People's Party II HQ on Dowling Street, which ended in the death of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, one radio reporter borrowed a gun from a cop and joined in the shooting. He claimed the cop only asked him to "hold the gun" for a minute. To their credit, other reporters gave him holy hell. My friends those were not happy times in Houston.

Time Magazine's reporting of the watermelon claim doesn't mean it didn't originate as a joke. Reporters covering something like a riot always repeat things they heard, and it's common for complete untruths to be repeated so often they become part of the story. In the sixties, saying a black student threw a watermelon at a police car just had to be somebody's idea of a joke. It's just so stereotypical of racial jokes of those times. In those days even otherwise respectable people weren't above making racist and inflammatory jokes. Less respectable people even said them on the radio, as I pointed out about KIKK News Director Richard Dobbyn in my posting just before this one. His outrageous call for "blacktopping Wheeler Street" made national news, and it was even the subject of a seminar at the next convention of the National Association of Broadcasters the following year.

I agree with your assessment of the watermelon claim. It does sound like someone's idea of a joke, and I think I know who may have said it. In another forum here on the HAIF, I have written extensively about the late Houston radio news personality Richard Dobbyn, who was News Director at KIKK AM/FM in the late 60s. Dobbyn was known for saying racist and inflammatory things in his newscasts, and one of his most infamous came during the TSU riot. At one point, Dobbyn said "the City of Houston needs to send some steamrollers over there and blacktop Wheeler Street." Although I don't know for certain that he also made the watermelon remark, it sounds like something he would have said.

Does anybody else remember the student "riots" in Galveston and at Sylvan Beach in La Porte in 1961? They were the local ripples of the spring break rioting that started in California and Florida around 1960 and spread to other beach areas around the country. People all over the country were stunned by the pictures and news film showing students on a rampage in the streets and fighting with police. I've never been able to figure out why all that happened, because there was nothing political or social going on at the time, the last year or so of the Eisenhower administration. I was a senior at Pasadena High School in 1961, and I remember the Galveston riot that happened on May 1st during the annual Splash Day Festivities. Contrary to its present day association with the gay community, the original Splash Days were a big promotion the Galveston Chamber of Commerce sponsored every year to kick off the beach-going season. They had a "Miss Splash Day" beauty contest, live entertainment and a lot of other stuff, and it was all great fun that pulled a lot of people and families to Galveston. In 1961, hundreds of students there for Splash Days got into a fight with police when the cops tried to arrest some of them for being drunk and obnoxious. They ran up and down Seawall Blvd for hours and cops arrested as many as they could catch. Some reports said as many as 800 were arrested, and it made the national news. When the same thing happened again the following year, Splash Days were cancelled for good, and the entire event just died. In approximately the same time-frame -- also 1961 I think -- a similar, but smaller riot happened at Sylvan Beach in La Porte. Hundreds of students there for some kind of event ran wild and trashed the Sylvan Beach Pavilion. La Porte police, Harris County Sheriff's Deputies and DPS troopers were called in to break it up. They even had to use tear gas. It was the beginning of the end for the Sylvan Beach Pavilion, which was a very popular place for banquets and school proms. It closed within a few years because it lost so much business.

Oh my lord. I had completely forgotten about Richies. (I can't remember the spelling either) Wasn't it a Lucky Seven store? Or am I thinking about another place? That was quite a place. A small one stop shopping center. A grocery store, drug store and a dime store, and a news stand too, I think. It was just a short walk from my house on Sherman. I spent a lot of time there reading magazines. It's where I discovered Playboy. They didn't keep them back behind the counter or sealed in cellophane bags the way they do today, and they never seemed to care that I spent so much time reading without buying. Very educational, that Playboy. And you're right. The east end was a nice place to live back then. It had its share of what we called "hoods" in those days. The tough guys with the long side burns and motorcycle jackets, but I still have a lot of fond memories of living there. We had some very nice neighbors and kids my age all around us. You could actually walk around the neighborhood at night, and even go walking over to the Kopper Kettle on Harrisburg. I rode the bus to downtown and back all the time, even late at night and I don't remember ever feeling afraid. Very nice to meet you too.

You lived just a few blocks from me. I lived at 6717 Sherman, but I see in your profile that you born in March of 1957. That was the year I went to Edison. So while I was trying to keep my head down and avoid the hoods and bangers at Edison, your mom was off somewhere having you and changing your diapers. Now I really do feel old. I also had to take a math course over again in summer school that year, and it was at Jackson. Small world, isn't it?

You have to like a guy with a sense of humor like that. Someone willing to literally be the south end of a northbound horse. Just curious. Where on the east end did you live and go to school? I lived there briefly way back before the civil war. I went to Edison JH one year in the late 50s. We lived on Sherman just off Wayside.

I can't help myself. I have to ask. Which end was more interesting?

And very outdated. How long has it been since you've seen anybody of any gender you could trust your car to at a gas station? That TV commercial used to make me laugh out loud. There they were: that singing and marching group of guys all dressed up in their spotless spiffy looking Texaco uniforms, complete with bow ties and hats, singing that dumb song. I laughed because I had never seen anyone dressed remotely like that pumping gas, changing oil or lubing a car at any gas station I'd ever been to.

Very interesting. I had never heard that story. That just shows I need to keep up with what's going on. I checked, and found that KEDT TV Corpus Christi signed on in 1972, and it was with used equipment they got in Houston. The KEDT website says "Realizing the great expense of new equipment, this original Board of Directors located a package of used equipment in Houston and raised the needed funds for the purchase...On October 16, 1972, KEDT went on the air for the first time from the vacated Cheston Heath School building on Carrizo Street...To this day, KEDT is still utilizing some of the original equipment and transmitter. "

You are absolutely right and I am embarrassed. It's humbling and a little scary when you learn that you can't trust your own memory anymore. I lived in Dickinson when I worked at KVVV in 1968, and I always drove over to Alvin on FM 517, but for reasons I attribute to the onset of Mad Cow Disease, I just don't remember making that right turn on FM 528 and driving north a couple of miles to Lundy Lane. That part of my daily drive is a complete blank. I only remember how long it took to get there from Dickinson on 517. I searched for Lundy Lane in Alvin on Google Earth and there it is -- big as life. The old KVVV building, still sitting out there in the middle of that field, just off FM 528. The pics taken last September by Invisible Texan are startling, to say the least. Very sad.

It's on FM 517 less than a mile east of the N. Alvin Bypass. As you drive east away from Alvin it's on the right. Look for a TV tower with a delapidated two-story brick building next to it out in the middle of a field. I'm amazed the FCC or the FAA hasn't ordered somebody to take the tower down. It's been standing there unused since the late sixties. Here's a link to some photos taken just last year by HAIF member Invisible Texan. To whom we owe our everlasting thanks for taking the time to go out there and crawl around in that old place. These photos are great. http://new.photos.yahoo.com/invisible_texan/albums They're labeled -- what else? -- Ruins of KVVV TV.

No-No the Clown -- Ralph Ehntholt -- was the kindest and sweetest man I ever knew. He really did love kids. Sadly he passed away about six years ago. His son Ralph Jr is a local actor who also appears as No-No at various events around town.

Today's meteorologists have far fewer excuses for getting it wrong than their forebears. They have access to weather satellite photography, computerized displays of ground-based radar covering any point in the continental United States, so it should be easy to track weather developments from one area to another. Right? Well, yes and no. After all, they can see a cold front coming our way when it's still in CANADA for gods sakes. A frontal line looks very dramatic from outer space. They can track a line of thunderstorms and predict where it will go with some accuracy. Here's where it gets dicey. They can see the conditions that cause rain and thunderstorms, but they still can't predict when or precisely where rain will fall. That's why they hedge their forecasts with that old "20 or 30 or 40 percent chance of rain" dodge. That only means conditions are right for scattered rain, but there's only a one in five chance that it will rain "where you are". When the probability is over 50 percent, you should take your umbrella.

Ed got the zero tolerance treatment at KTRK. The TV station learned of his private problems and how out of control they were at the same time the public did, and he was asked to resign. To their everlasting credit though, KTRK managers left the door open for a return, but only if he could get his act together and get off drugs. Ed tells the story of how that came to pass in the interview on Mike McGuff's blog.

You may be interested to know that Robert Hill is now 46 years old, and he lives on the east coast where he's a prosecuting attorney. He won't talk about the murder case, nor will he reveal where he lives because he wants privacy. Here's that link to a 1999 story about the Hill saga in the Laredo Times. http://lmtonline.com/news/archive/0319/pagea6.pdf

Ed came up in TV in the 60s when ALL TV weathermen were just TV personalities who stood in front of a map and talked about the weather. There were NO degreed meteorologists to speak of. That change has been something of a recent development. Like, in the past 15 or 20 years. These days no major market TV station will hire a weathercaster who doesn't have a degree in broadcast meteorology from an accredited university. And in case you're curious, that means a full four-year BS in the science of meteorology, with training in how it should be presented on TV. There are no diploma mills for TV weathermen.

You may be interested to know that's precisely what Ed has done a helluva lot of for more than 15 years, since he recovered from his own addictions. He spends as much of his free time as his health will allow speaking at schools and other places. And yes he does use his own experiences as an example of what can happen when you allow drugs into your life. Why are so many people on this site so unforgiving? Ed got a chance to redeem his life and he grabbed it. He's still doing penance for his failures and transgressions, and facing life-threatening health problems because of them. What more do you want from him? He's trying to steer others away from the mistakes that brought him down, and I'm one who admires him a lot for that. I say the person among us who is without sin, and who hasn't made life-changing mistakes, should step up and cast the first stone.

I think Ed will agree that he is living proof of of what several decades of drugs, booze and heavy smoking can do to you. It's a miracle he's alive to retire. Let us pray he will live long enough to enjoy a good retirement. I've known Ed for a long time and I can tell you he really is one of the nice guys in this town. Yes he has his faults -- don't we all? -- but how many of us has to live through having all your foibles and failings reported in the local media? Ed kept his head high and his eyes focused on his goal through all that, and I for one admire him for it. Have a great retirement Ed. See you at Kay's. Over a sasperilly of course.

Wasn't that music 'room' actually supposed to have been an addition to the house? I believe -- but I'm not a hundred percent certain -- that the famous "music room" was built as a second floor to Hill's detached multi-car garage. As for the precise sequence of events on the night Hill was shot and killed at his home, my thanks to nm5k for setting me straight on all those details. The result was the same though. Hill was dead dead dead.

Ed chose to reveal his pending retirement in an exclusive interview on the Mike McGuff blog. Personally, I'm really going to miss having Ed on the TV. He's like a member of the family. Here's a link. http://mikemcguff.blogspot.com/2007/03/ed-...irement-on.html

Plastic surgeon Dr. John Hill's wife Joan was big in the local "horsey set". She died suddenly in 1969, and her father, oilman Ash Robinson, was convinced that Hill killed her by poisoning her. Robinson pressured prosecutors to indict him, but there was no evidence of murder. They finally indicted Hill on the rarely used charge of "murder by omission"; which meant he was accused of killing her by not getting treatment in time to save her. By the time the trial began two years later, Hill had remarried and divorced Ann Kurth, the exwife of a well known lawyer whose name still adorns a well known local law firm. She also thought Hill killed Joan, so she agreed to testify against him. She was also a drama queen who went out of control on the witness stand. Prosecutors wanted to establish that Hill was prone to violence, and Kurth was testifying about their frequent fights. When she suddenly blurted out that Hill tried to choke her one night, and told her that he killed Joan, the defense called for a mistrial and got it. It seems that she'd never thought to mention that incident in any of her pretrial testimony to the grand jury or in her meetings with prosecutors. The retrial was set for the next year, during which time Hill married again. One night in 1972 he answered the door at his house in River Oaks and was shot dead. Police suspected Ash Robinson was behind it but they could never find enough evidence to take to a grand jury. They tracked down two women, Marcia McKittrick, a prostitute who drove the getaway car, and Lilla Paulus, an acquaintance of Ash Robinson, and even proved that Paulus hired the gunman. But they could never connect the dots and connect Robinson to the shooting. Old Ash covered his tracks very very well. Just about everybody connected with this case is dead now, including the shooter, Bobby Vandiver. He was caught in east Texas, but shot and killed by police before he could be brought to trial. Ash Robinson died in Florida in 1987. Here's a link to a longer and well written backgrounder on this story from the Laredo Times in 1999. http://lmtonline.com/news/archive/0319/pagea6.pdf

Murder in Texas was written by Ann Kurth Hill, who was Dr. John Hill's second wife. It's a completely self-serving version of the events and it over-inflates Ann Kurth's position in the saga. She came along and married Hill after his first wife Joan Hill died, or was murdered. It was never decided. Hill was brought to trial on charges of causing his wife Joan's death by neglecting her health problems. Ann Kurth caused a mistrial when she tried to testify for the state that Hill also tried to kill her. Prosecutors were surprised by that because it was the first time they'd ever heard it. She'd never told it to prosecutors or to the the grand jury. Then Hill himself was murdered before he could be retried, and that's the second half of the Hill saga. Prosecutors always suspected that Joan Hill's father Ash Robinson paid to have him killed but they couldn't prove it. Kurth's book is just awful, which makes it perfect fodder for the TV movie it became. If you want the full true and unvarnished story of Dr John Hill and his wife's death, find a copy of Blood and Money by Tommy Thompson. Beyond the story it tells, Thompson's clipped style of writing, and his book's huge success, are credited with launching the modern genre of realistic crime reporting. All of a sudden every crime reporter in the country started emulating that style. We take it for granted now.

My favorite Ray Conaway story. This is the story of the day KTRK News Director and Anchor Ray Conaway colored Houston's air blue with profanities and obscenities on TV. Sometime in 1964 Conaway was going to NYC to film some stories on the New York World's Fair for local consumption. He had to catch a plane around midnight, so after the 10pm news that night, he was in a hurry to record his "Conaway Comments" piece for use on the news the next day. There were carpenters working in the studio building sets for a live production of Romeo and Juliet KTRK was producing, so Conaway asked them to take a break while he video-taped his commentary. So there he is, rocking right along doing his thing, when a carpenter in the rafters accidentally started up his power saw. Conaway's famous angry reaction was unprintable -- but it went something like "g-dm that m----------ing saw", or something very close to that. Exasperated, he told the director he didn't have time to start over so he picked up where he left off and finished the commentary. When he was done, he personally took the big videotape reel off the recorder, wrote "Edit Before Airing" in big red letters on a big piece of paper he wrapped and taped around the reel, put it into a videotape box, gave it to the director and left for the airport to catch his plane. For reasons never explained, the note was ignored and the tape was not edited before it went on the air the next day. It was the talk of the town for weeks. I believe KTRK ended up getting a stiff fine from the FCC, and Conaway retired not too long after that. I missed him because he always had strong and intelligent opinions, and a firm way of expressing them. He really was one of the good guys.