Press: Kuralt: On the Road Again

The laureate of the common man has a new CBS showcase

Izzy Bleckman was driving the van and Larry Gianneschi was fussing with the coffeepot when they saw a man standing on a highway overpass with a homemade banner draped over the side. They called back to their boss, CBS News Correspondent Charles Kuralt, that they had spotted a potential story for his On the Road series. With the briefest glance at his watch and a map showing their route that day—a 200-mile round trip from Portland, Ore., up to the woods outside Onalaska, Wash.—Kuralt agreed to turn around and find out what the man was doing.

The three men were not indulging a frivolous curiosity: for 15 years, on and off, Kuralt and his crew (usually Cameraman Bleckman and Soundman Gianneschi) have taken a casual, eyes-open-to-life ramble, through every part of every state, in search of stories. On the Road reports have graced several CBS news programs, and they will be a centerpiece of a prime-time series, The American Parade, anchored by Kuralt, that premieres on Tuesday, March 27 (8 p.m., E.S.T.).

The new show, a magazine series, “will be resolutely American, with no foreign reporting,” says Kuralt, “and celebratory in tone. We do not expect to find any scandals or scoundrels.” Segments this week include whimsical essays by Kuralt, political humor by Art Buchwald, a report by Correspondent Bill Kurtis asking whether Muhammad Ali is punch-drunk, and a story by Correspondent Andrew Lack about a boy with a malady that his parents diagnosed when doctors could not. Plus, of course, an On the Road about a Missouri man who writes down the names of everyone he has ever met. The show is somewhat controversial within CBS, precisely because it is not prone to controversy. Admits Kuralt: “Bill Moyers, who was to coanchor, thought it would be too much show business. He wanted to be more pure.”

By traditional standards, Kuralt’s stories often are not news at all. They are authentic, uplifting Americana—folksy, but never cute or dismissive. He looks for people, sometimes whole communities, who have offbeat pursuits or experiences, and he takes them seriously. He seeks “stories that confirm that this is a remarkable country.” Over the years, Kuralt has profiled an Iowa farmer who built a yacht in his barnyard, a retired West Virginia coal miner who sculpts statuary in coal, and the arcane Florida ritual of “worm grunting,” catching bait with the use of wooden stakes and truck springs. Some day, Kuralt vows, he will get around to a piece that Bleckman wants to do, about dogs that ride in the backs of pickup trucks. As it turned out, the man with the banner just missed being a story. He had painted the 10-ft. cloth to honor his wife’s birthday, and waited to wave as she drove past in her pickup truck. She got there while Bleckman was positioning his camera. “One more minute,” Bleckman moaned, “and we would have had it.”

Kuralt’s official destination that day was a one-man steam sawmill outside Onalaska, owned and operated by Gene Frase, 70, a laconic, down-to-earth man who turns downright poetic when he talks about his conflicting passions: the sweetly efficient steam engine and the lost stands of tall trees that the mill engines turned into lumber. The next day, Kuralt interviewed senior Elephant Keeper Roger Henneous at the Washington Park Zoo. In both cases, much of the filming had already been done by another crew before Kuralt arrived on the scene. His schedule these days, which also includes anchoring the live 90-min. CBS News Sunday Morning show, precludes the Huckleberry Finn existence he once enjoyed. “This is not On the Road any more,” Kuralt grumbled. “It used to be that we never knew where we were going, except in the most general way, and no one back at the office knew how to find me.” In those days, he found many of his stories by looking out the window, responding not to deadlines but to the gentler rhythms of the terrain outside Wall Street and Foggy Bottom.

On the Road has logged more than a million miles, according to the network, and has worn out seven mobile homes. “Once, in Wyoming,” Kuralt recalls, “everything broke down at once, and Izzy was reduced to tears.” Although! Kuralt and his crew are married, there is still a sort of bachelor’s liberty to it all, and the current vehicle, an FMC, looks like the habitat of tomcats. The seat cushions are misshapen and filthy, the refrigerator contains nothing but beer and soda, the larder has only peanut butter and crackers, but coffee is perpetually on the boil. Kuralt favors the lived-in look: a blue blazer with a burn mark, a rumpled yellow sweater that strains over his stomach, gray flannels worn to slickness. He chain-smokes Pall Malls and eats lunch at hamburger joints or not at all. If TV news is glamorous, apparently no one has told Kuralt.

The success of On the Road very nearly spoiled it. Kuralt became a star CBS property, and he was pulled off the road time and again: at various times, he has anchored the network’s morning, evening and Sunday shows. He will anchor as well as report on The American Parade, and some stories —for example, an interview with New York Governor Mario Cuomo — will even edge him back into hard news.

Still, Kuralt remains committed to “news that no one else is reporting.” His favorite story, he says unhesitatingly, was the 50th wedding anniversary reunion of a rural Mississippi family. “They had seven children, and when the first one was old enough to go to college, they hitched up the wagon to a mule and rode to town to borrow $5 for bus fare, because that was all they could give. Every one of them went on to some kind of profession. As we stood in that room and watched them, we were crying and they were crying, and we all realized that something wonderful was being said about that family and about this nation.”

—By William A. Henry III