Reaching 75
What can you say about someone who is about to reach the age of 75?
More to the point, what can I say about reaching that considerable age – which I am, according to my Arizona Highways calendar, going to do this coming Sunday, March 16?
Well, for starters, I could do the math. On my 75th birthday, I will have been alive 27,394 days.
That seems like a lot, but trust me, they’ve flown by. They almost seem like a dream.
I could, perhaps, talk about what life was like in Fresno and the San Joaquin Valley on that Thursday in 1950 when I was born at St. Agnes Hospital – and toss in a few tidbits about life in these United States when I first appeared.
Okay, let’s try that and see how it flies.
The weather page in the Fresno Bee that day – really, a weather column – showed that occasional high clouds were expected, with the high temperature predicted to hit 70 degrees with a low of 38 that night.
One of the numerous front-page stories in the Bee that afternoon (it had eight columns of print, like many papers of that era did, so there were plenty of stories) was headlined, “Precipitation is deficient with no rain in sight.”
That could have been written at any time in the past 75 years. Yes, we go through cycles of drought and rain Out West.
The Bee’s top story came from Berkeley in the Bay Area of California. That’s where Secretary of State Dean Acheson hurled a challenge to “Russ” (as the Bee headlined the Soviet Union) to accept a new seven-point program to free the world from “destructive tensions and anxieties.”
I’m pretty sure that did not work out.
Other front-page stories had headlines such as “House Approves Bill Increasing Cotton Acreage,” “Tobacco Tax Plan Kindles Solons’ Revolt” (and exactly when did newspapers stop referring to lawmakers as “solons”?), and “Posse Captures Sheriff’s Killer (which had taken place in Texas).
There were more front-pagers. One headlined: “Poll of State Legislators Shows Warren Will Defeat Roosevelt by 4-1 Margin.” Those lawmakers were, in November, proved correct about the outcome of the gubernatorial election between incumbent Republican governor Earl Warren and Democrat James Roosevelt, the son of former President Franklin Roosevelt. It was a landslide for Warren.
Another front-page story was headlined, “Just a Slip: Castle Plane Bombs Utah.” It explained that a B50 plane from Castle Air Base here in the Valley accidentally dropped 10 armed practice bombs on Hill Air Force Base in Utah. No injuries, but several buildings were damaged.
My favorite story, a short one near the bottom of the front page, came with a drawing. The headline was, “Lassen Lad Takes Dog With Broken Tooth to Dentist for Aid.” It came out of Susanville in Northeast California.
Why is this my favorite? Because 23 years later, I would get my first full-time job as a radio news director in, yes, Susanville.
You might wonder – at least, I did – what was going on in terms of popular culture when I was born.
Well, for starters, in March 1950, network radio – you know, radio produced by NBC and CBS and ABC – was still dominant on American airwaves. Television stations had only showed up in a few cities, and network TV broadcasting – besides being in all black-and-white – was quite limited and terribly primitive.
Here in Fresno, our first TV station would not take air until 1953 – three years after I was born.
On that Thursday night, March 16, 1950, NBC Radio broadcast Father Knows best, which KMJ Radio aired at 9 p.m. That evening, Father took on jury duty and had trouble explaining the principles of the legal system to a woman on the jury.
Also on NBC that night – Duffy’s Tavern, during which Archie wrote a St. Patrick’s Day pageant in honor of Duffy and got fired as a result. Then Dragnet on NBC told the true story of how a gang of young hoodlums was rounded up with the help of a stolen collie pup.
And NBC also had The Aldrich Family and Screen Guild Theater.
Over on CBS Radio that night (KFRE in Fresno), listeners could hear The FBI in Peace and War; Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons; Suspense; Crime Photographer; and Hollywood Theater.
That was all in prime time. During the daytime hours on NBC and CBS Radio, listeners could hear a full afternoon’s worth of soap operas. (Yes, network radio originated all the programming types the TV networks would air in subsequent years.)
Among the soapers: Life Can Be Beautiful, The Road of Life, Pepper Young’s Family, The Right to Happiness, Backstage Wife, Stella Dallas, Lorenzo Jones, Young Widder Brown, When a Girl Marries, Portia Faces Life, Just Plain Bill and Front Page Farrell – all on NBC.
Those who tuned into CBS Radio that Thursday afternoon could hear Wendy Warren, Aunt Jenny, Helen Trent, Our Gal Sunday, Big Sister, Ma Perkins, The Guiding Light, The Second Mrs. Burton, Perry Mason, This is Nora Drake, Light of the World, Nona from Nowhere and Hilltop House.
You get the idea. In 1950, network radio was still “the deal,” as it had been since NBC Radio was founded in 1926.
But it would not be dominant much longer.
As for the movies, Cinderella, King Solomon’s Mines, Father of the Bride, All About Eve and Annie Get Your Gun were the top box-office hits. The biggest box-office stars in 1950 included John Wayne, Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin, Jimmy Stewart, Gary Cooper, Bing Crosby, William Holden and Bob Hope.
You know – really jumbo stars. Legends.
As for the Broadway stage in 1950 – sure, a long way from Fresno, but still – the biggest hits included Guys and Dolls, A Streetcar Named Desire, Affairs of State, An Enemy of the People and As You Like It.
Okay, enough about what else was going on when I was born. Just thought you might like to know.
When I came into the world, the average life expectancy for men was about 66 years. So – thanks to marvelous advances in medicine – I’ve outlived that.
But it has not been easy these past few years. Since I retired from full-time work about a dozen years ago, I’ve kept some of the Valley’s best medical people busy. In exchange, they’ve kept me alive. Thank you, medicos.
When I was born, Fresno had a population of about 90,000. Today, it weighs in with more than a half-million people within the city limits. We are the fifth-biggest city in California – behind only Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose and San Francisco.
Dad and Mom (right) were hard workers. Dad was a mechanic at the Crocket Brothers auto dealership at Stanislaus and Broadway in downtown Fresno. Mom had the more difficult job. She had to raise two kids – my older brother Ken and me. She also had to shop for food, iron the clothes, make the meals – you get the idea. She was a typical mom of the 1950’s.
Because Ken was 10 years older, we never really got to know each other. In fact, I’m not sure we liked each other that much. That’s just the way it was.
I was a true nerd – yes, even at age 7, below left – when I was attending my neighborhood schools – Fremont Elementary, Hamilton Jr. High and Fresno High. Studied hard. Great grades. A few friends.
It was always said back then (as I learned only a few years ago) that I was thought to be the smartest kid in the Hart or Schmall (my mom’s family) families. I never knew that, and I’m glad I didn’t.
But I knew what Dad thought. He wanted me to channel my great grades into a spot at the University of California at Berkeley so I could study law.
As I’ve written before, the only law I was ever interested in was what Perry Mason practiced once at week on CBS-TV.
So instead of Berkeley, I trekked across town to Fresno State, where I was thinking about becoming a geography teacher like Mr. Bicknell at Hamilton. That’s when I discovered the campus radio station, KFSR, and when I took an audio production class from Bill Monson.
Bill “saw” something in me and said I could “make it” in broadcasting. And then he helped me do it.
We became friends – the best of friends – this Fresno State professor and this kid-student. Bill was only 10 years or so older than I was, so he became a “big brother” of sorts, as well as my mentor.
We remained friends for nearly four decades until, unfortunately, he passed away at a ridiculously young age in 2005.
I cried when I spoke at his funeral.
He had lived long enough to see me “make it” broadcasting. First, as the youngest TV reporter in Fresno history at KFSN-TV (Channel 30) in Fresno.
That’s where I met Sharon – who was a news story I covered on Valentine’s Day in 1974. We married a year later, and this coming July 5, we will have been together 50 years.
After Fresno, we started climbing the broadcasting ladder. We moved to jobs in Phoenix, Buffalo, Detroit, Atlanta, San Francisco and Los Angeles. It was a wild ride and the best of times to be in broadcasting because stations made so much money and jobs were so plentiful.
I was one of the luckiest people alive. I met TV people when I was working in Fresno, and those folks all moved into bigger and bigger markets and took me along.
We had oh-so-many incredible experiences, and covered oh-so-many major stories along our long and winding journey. Presidential nominating conventions and elections. Fires. Floods. Major earthquakes, including the one in the Bay Area in 1989 that killed dozens of people, destroyed San Francisco’s Marina District and Santa Cruz and brought down part of the Bay Bridge.
And, of course, the infamous Chowchilla school bus kidnapping in 1976 where 26 kids and their bus driver were kidnapped and imprisoned in a truck trailer buried in a quarry in Livermore. They escaped a day later – and that night, on our 11 p.m. news at Channel 30, I wrote the greatest lead line of my life to top that newscast: “They’re alive and well.”
And in a career where I produced thousands of newscasts and wrote thousands of stories, I was fortunate to win Emmy Awards and other honors – and more importantly, have the chance to work with some of the finest – and most legendary – TV anchors ever to appear in their markets. John Wallace and Nancy Osborne in Fresno. Linda Alvarez and Kent Dana in Phoenix. Monica Kaufman in Atlanta. Dave McElhatton, Wendy Tokuda and Kate Kelly in San Francisco. Jess Marlow and Kelly Lange in Los Angeles.
Giants, all.
And somehow, during all that, we were lucky enough to get a job at Iowa State University in Ames, teaching broadcast journalism at one of the Top-10 university journalism programs in the nation. I loved teaching at ISU, but I missed broadcasting. So I went back.
We had – and have – two wonderful children. Bradley was born at Seton Medical Center in Daly City, and Amy was born four years later at Kaiser Medical Center in Oakland.
We also traveled widely during those and subsequent years, heading to Europe numerous times and taking Brad and Amy to world-class museums and cities.
We like to think all that travel paid off. Bradley became a noted writer and historian and is now at the World War II Museum in New Orleans. Amy became an outstanding scholar and historian, working at Hearst Castle and UC Davis in California.
We came back to the Valley after 20 or so years “on the road” to give our kids a more stable environment. No more moving and pulling up roots and leaving their friends.
I became a reporter at KMJ Radio in Fresno and covered everything that moved in the city for years.
Yes, it was the same KMJ Radio that had aired Father Knows Best from NBC the night I was born. In my last few weeks at KMJ, I was honored with commendations from the U.S. House of Representatives, the California State Assembly, and both the city and county of Fresno.
Now, as I creep ever-closer to the big 75, I’ve been retired from full-time broadcasting a dozen years. But I’m keeping busy. I’m a board member at the Madera County Historical Society and write several research reports a year for them. I’m also a member of the North Fork History Group and the Clovis Historical Museum.
Yep, history – the love of it – runs deep in the Hart family.
Sharon has written three books and is working on a fourth. They’re cozy mysteries, and she’s good at writing them.
Like everyone else who has ever approached or reached 75, I’m wondering – seriously wondering – how many more years I have left.
It would, of course, be helpful if I could discover the secret of living longer.
William Saroyan – the great Fresno author – was once asked about the secret of his longevity.
“Not dying,” he replied. Yes, that seems to be about the size of it. (Mr. Saroyan passed away at 72.)
The comedian Joe E. Lewis once said, “If I’d known I was going to live this long, I’d have taken better care of myself.” I understand, Joe. Truly I do. (Mr. Lewis only made it to 69.)
I’m comforted by the fact that I’ve reached this ripe old age. Dad never did. He passed away at 68. My longtime buddy Albert’s dad also passed away at 68.
So for years, Albert and I kept that number in mind. Our goal was to reach 68 and beyond.
Well, we did. And then our goal was to reach 75 in decent health. But Albert never made it. He died of a heart attack at 72. I miss him to this day.
Over the three-quarters of a century of my life, I’ve lost Mom and Dad, of course, as well as my brother Ken and numerous friends.
Folks always told me, when I was growing up, that it would be like this. That the older I got, the more losses I’d have.
I never listened.
I don’t know how much longer I have, but I like what Western author Wallace Stegner once said: “If you’re going to get old, you might as well get as old as you can get.”
Mr. Stegner lived to be 84.
So here we are. Here I am. Nearly 75. My birthday is just days away – this coming Sunday.
I am now beyond the point where – if something “happened” – people would say, “Oh, he was so young.”
That phrase left the building awhile back.
I hope I’m not at the stage where folks would say, “Oh, I didn’t know he was still alive.”
How would I like to be remembered? Well, as always, history is written by the victors – in this case, those who outlive me.
What I do know is that I’ve had what I consider a wonderful life – far better and more interesting than I ever could have imagined as I was growing up in a lower-middle class family in Fresno.
And now, dear readers, the good news for you is – this is the last piece I will ever write about my age.
However, if I somehow make it to 100, all bets are off.