NOTE: This blog entry originally appeared in October 2009
By Andy Kubis, Producer
Charles Kuralt wrote in his autobiography that “working with a cameraman over a period of weeks or months is like having a love affair. You have to like him to begin with. And then you have to woo him to keep him from running off with some other reporter.” For more than 25 years, Kuralt successfully wooed Isadore (Izzy) Bleckman, about half of them while sharing a motor home, criss-crossing America documenting life on the back roads. The resulting vignettes became On the Road, a 20-year series now available on DVD for the first time. And on today’s show, Bleckman shares his own behind-the-scenes stories from his life on the road.
The stories Kuralt and Bleckman tell make you feel good. One of my favorites is about a son of a sharecropper in Arkansas who declared war on his own ignorance. He read 12 hours a day, mostly nonfiction. Descartes, Socrates and Shakespeare were his favorites. He told Kuralt that the more he learned, the more he realized how much he has left to learn. I feel like that every day.
Another of my favorites profiles an 80-year-old woman who had spent the last 15 years cooking meals for anyone who wanted to come by to eat them. She made some meals for shut-ins and the rest for anyone who showed up at her house. The cost was $2 and it was all on the honor system (she left a box on a table for people to make their own change). She tells Kuralt that the only thing she wanted in life was to “live in a house by the side of the road and be a friend to man.” And that seems to be the common thread in the stories. Kuralt often said that he and Bleckman and the rest of the On the Road crew had the very best job in journalism for a time. And Izzy Bleckman doesn’t disagree.
The On the Road series is available for purchase for the first time at www.acornonline.com. It’s also available at Amazon and other retailers.
(This week we’re revisiting some of our favorite interviews from 2009. Again, the listener comments from the original broadcast a couple of months ago are included below. Feel free to add to them, whether you heard this back in October or are meeting Izzy Bleckman for the first time today.)
Kuralt spurned hard news and found his voice in the soft offbeat side of things. I loved hearing how those segments were produced, how the tapes were sent back to NYC by friendly strangers on flights from towns near the filming (imagine a world without FedEx). They were doing Luddite TV and it was good.
Splendid interview, Mr. Edwards! Many thanks to you and Izzy.
Probably the best interview that I’ve ever heard on the show. The humility of the guest was incomparable and his recall was truly amazing. I only wish we could still be seeing his work. Thanks for a great program.
Bought the DVD at Amazon on Tuesday night after reading about its release in LA Times. What a pleasant surprise it was to hear the interview during my drive to work on Wednesday. I’m hoping the segment "Brick Maker" is the one about Mr Brown, the State Dept and President Nixon described in Kuralt’s book, On The Road.
Enjoyed this feature also. I note the DVDs are available on NetFlix.
OK, you made me 45 minutes late to work but it was worth it. Once the interview started, I had no choice but to drive a slow, circuitous route so I could hear all of the interview. I loved hearing again Kurat’s resonant baritone and elegant prose and meeting Izzy and hearing his enthusiasm for their journeys together. I had the opportunity to meet Kuralt once in Memphis while he lunched alone in the Peabody Hotel and to tell him how much I enjoyed his work, including the story on Eddie Lovett, the "polyhistor" who lived my boyhood home county in the piney woods of South Arkansas. Please pass along my appreciation to Izzy. I look forward to watching this DVD set and sharing the stories with my children.