Whatever happened to Dave Scherling?

Earlier this week, I was foraging through old newspapers in search of information about the first dial telephone system in Dawes County. Like the first moving picture theatre in the county, it was located in Whitney, and I was looking for information that I could add to our Whitney Reflections website.

Unable to find the information I was looking for, I scrolled ahead and happened across the article shown here. It reported the May 6, 1954 sign-on of KCSR, the 250-watt radio station, whose offices were at 212 Bordeaux in Chadron.

It was fun reading the article. I remember all of the folks mentioned in the story, and I pretty much know where most of them went when they left Chadron -- except for announcer Dave Scherling.

Bob Fouse returned to Colorado, where he died many years ago. Bill Finch eventually went back to Colorado (Colorado Springs, I believe) and also hosted a big band program for the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service. I suspect he may have passed from our earth by now, but I don't know that for a fact. Ted Turpin ended up in Arizona, retired from the newspaper business, and is still there, as far as I know. Sherry Girmann married and moved, I believe, to Colorado.

So whatever happened to Dave Scherling? To be continued...

Banned on KCSR

As far back as I can remember, I've been a big fan of Art Carney, the celebrated actor who portrayed Ed Norton in the Jackie Gleason Honeymooners television series.

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Carney has been dead some 15 years, having died in 1993 at the age of 85. But many of us well remember his infectuous dialogue as Norton, the "underground sanitation expert," and some of us even remember his career as a singer.

Singer?

Well, his recording Song of the Sewer was popular, but it just never quite made it big in northwest Nebraska. It's one of the few songs ever banned from KCSR Radio in Chadron. I do remember hearing the song on the station in the mid-to-late 1950s, but I also vividly recall it's being "banned" some time later.

Not a great piece of music, perhaps, but it was a snappy bit of satire that only Norton could pull off. What was all the fuss? Well, judge for yourself. Quite by accident, while surfing the web, I came across this version of Song of the Sewer.



Carney apparently professed to be nothing like Norton. I remember reading that Carney was wounded at Normandy during World War II and walked with a limp for the rest of his life. Like so many from that war, he came home and got on with his life -- and what a life it was!