The following is a description of the Walt Bodine Show circa 1990, in the first year after its move to the morning.

From The View — March 14-20, 1990

Walt Bodine is working, and eating breakfast, at Jimmy's Family Restaurant on Troost Avenue. It's just after 6:30 A.M. and there are no families present. Bodine and Kristin Van Voorst, the producer of his talk show on KCUR, are preparing for the day's show.

The pre-dawn crowd on Troost is considerably more subdued than the afternoon crowd in Brookside. There are glances toward Bodine's booth, but most patrons this morning seem more interested in their coffee.

While Bodine munches a cinnamon roll and sips on a cup of hot chocolate, Van Voorst reads the headlines from the morning paper. Occasionally, he asks her to read part of a story. His role of raconteur fits him like a glove, making even skimming through the headlines a slow job. Every headline has the potential of reminding Bodine of a story and there's an anecdote for every figure in the news.

If his natural inquisitiveness has made him a successful interviewer over: the years, it also makes him a slippery interviewee. He never seems consciously evasive, but interviewing him is like asking Socrates a few questions. In the course of his reply, the questions tend to come flying back at the questioner.

After working through the front page and the editorials, Bodine decides the roll wasn't enough and orders a sausage patty. They scour the metropolitan section, but the sports page gets scant attention, perhaps a grudge against his two bad weeks in Sedalia 50 years ago. After stating that the hot chocolate isn't very good today, Bodine calls the waitress over and asks for a cup of decaf.

In the KCUR newsroom, Bodine scribbles in a notebook, while Van Voorst reads over bulletins from the Associated Press wire to get the day's birthdays and anniversaries of historic events. After some prodding by Van Voorst, Bodine decides the birthday of Elvis Presley might be worth mentioning.

At the same time, they monitor the last hour and a half of "Morning Edition," the National Public Radio news program that "The Walt Bodine Show" follows.

"Morning Edition's a hell of a show," he says, "a hell of a show. And a lot of the time, people are going to want to talk about something they did (on Morning Edition)."

Just before 9 a.m., they move into Studio A. Bodine sits in the hollow of a vaguely horseshoe shaped table with five microphones on it. There is a video screen in front of him that tells him the names of the callers, the lines they're waiting on, and what they want to talk about. Once the on-air light comes on, Bodine's feet begin to wiggle and crisscross beneath his chair. The wiggling will stop just after 11 a.m., when the on-air light goes out.

Van Voorst sits in the producer's booth, a tiny room to Bodine's left with a window looking into the studio. On one wall is the "Van Voorst Gallery," a collection of doodles by people who've been on the show. The prize of the collection is a page of squiggles, dogs and microphones by illustrator Charles Barsotti. To the left of the Symetrix 104 Multi-line Telephone Interface is a list of a dozen or so regular callers with identifying characteristics, e.g., “Millard Fillmore” or "The John - conservative" or "Slow Erma - talks very slow."

According to Van Voorst, some of the shows regular listeners have come to the station, either to drop off reading material pertaining to a show or just to say hello.

"One woman was so excited, just to meet me," she said. "She hugged me twice."

The Walt Bodine Show is divided into two segments. In the first hour, Bodine is joined by a co-host, usually local people from many walks of life: educators, civic officials, broadcasters, journalists, or anyone else who seems interesting. Although the two of them might come in with something they want to discuss, they usually follow whatever the callers come up with.

"No matter how long you do this," Bodine said, "you never know what's going to happen. You get so you think, 'I ought to know,' but you never do. You'll come in lighthearted and they'll want to talk about something serious. You'll be ready to discuss something serious and they'll be playful. You have to just follow it."

During the first hour of the first show of 1990, for instance, Bodine and co-host Marcie Cecil, president of Hammeck-Cecil Inc., a local event-planning company, were prepared to talk about predictions for the New Year. In the opening chitchat, Cecil mentioned traveling in Canada on a library card, rather than a passport. The first caller, Robert, had a comment about allowing gambling in Union Station. Then, out of the blue, Robert asked Cecil if she'd ever driven on the left side of the road in a foreign country.

The next few callers picked up he idea, which later expanded to include roadside fatality markers on foreign roads, Canadian travel, then the Canadian health-care system; and finally, the tunnel currently under construction beneath the English Channel.

The rest of the calls mixed in other ideas: gambling in Union Station, the cultural amnesia that allows cities to tear down historic buildings to make room for parking, lots, and unfair rate increases for health insurance, gasoline and propane. Most callers talked about at least two of these subjects.

The second hour usually is generally centered on a specific topic. A panel of guests scramble into the studio and shove on headphones during the one-minute break for station identification.

There are regular features, such as book reviewers, movie critics, and restaurant critics, in which local reviewers compare notes and answer calls from listeners; the Hellraisers, a show on which listeners can get advice on complaints against businesses or any local state or federal agency; shows featuring local writers; shows featuring experts on topics such as finance, AIDS or Down syndrome.

By Lee Ingalls 

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