November 14, 2006
Another cold one. Feels good though. A nice nip in the air. I read a piece in the Republic about Arizona coach Lute Olson, who walks for 70 minutes every day and lifts weights three days a week. He's 72 and just signed another five year extension on his basketball contract. This led to Kathy inviting me to a step class (you know, where women dance to disco songs and step up and down on portable plastic stairs) and then a half-hour yoga class. Fortunately, something blew up at work, and Carole called me and I missed my chance for health (this morning). However, I know I've got to get with it.

Yesterday John Haynes, from Prescott, via Kingman, came by and we caught up on all the dead people we both knew in Kingman. Kind of daunting and a wake-up call to say the least. He graduated in 1952 and at his last reunion only 17 were left. Ouch! Terry Haynes was his neice. She was a year ahead of me in school, and she died several years ago. She was a Kingman beauty. I think she was homecoming queen, among other things.

And with the news of Dwight Tindle's death yesterday, I really feel rather vulnerable. I last saw Dwight at Marty Manning's 60th birthday party earlier this year. We laughed and laughed about the early days of KDKB radio (1971-1980). My first memory of Dwight is when I first went to KDKB to meet with Bill Compton (Carole's brother and the genius and voice of the station), and this long-haired, hippie wearing a fringe jacket, was lying across from me on the lobby couch reading a book on Mickey Mouse. I thought he was a street person, and it turned out he was the co-owner of the station! He had met Eric Hauenstein at Woodstock and they hit it off and decided to start a new style radio station, came west, found one in Mesa, Arizona and launched one of the first free-style-format FM stations in the country. They later sold out for $4 million, but business reversals had wiped that out by the 1990s. Memorial services are this Sunday at Dwight's church in Scottsdale.

Here's a couple of photos from last weekend. First up is Richard "Tequila" Young, the host of Cowboys and a five time Cowboy Action Shooting World Champion. They are filming in my front yard. Cowboys airs on the Outdoor Channel. The second photo is of Jeb (at right) and Stuart Rosebrook and I getting set to do our voice commentary on the True Grit Special Edition DVD for Paramount Home Entertainment. That's the producer Linda Frank over my shoulder. We taped it at PHX Soundlabs:



Yesterday I bailed into a big set piece for the Top Secret Project. When I was coming back from Orme Ranch last summer I encountered a large brush fire east of Sunset Point. I was inspired to put that in our story, because you rarely see desert fires in Westerns. How would a horse and rider deal with this (especially if it was in the way of a destination). I found a cool photo of a prairie fire in a book on Kansas that we were selling on Saturday, and I took it home and used it as a starting point.



Ironically, Stuart Rosebrook teaches at Orme Ranch. Small, petty world, no?

"Memory is life exposed to the bright light of time. It fades."
—Ed Montini