Up the Funky Unknown

When last we left David R. Busse, the intrepid everyman was scanning the Klan. But distilling idiocy is just one facet of television photojournalism. Sometimes, you get to go on boat rides!
Such was the case in July of 1982, when our hero strapped on a moustache and pulled up his tube socks for three weeks of flooding coverage on the Colorado River. I haven't seen a stitch of footage from that particular scene, but there is much to glean from this Reed Saxon AP photo: The trusty BVU-110 in the foreground, reporter Bill Van Amburg's unironic trucker hat, the strobing wake behind them, sound guy Tom Morris' youthful gaze ... those Jim Dangle shorts. Anyway, before I bogart any more details, let's hear from David R. Busse himself - a raconteur in his own right...

Most of our other memories of those trips were 115-degree heat, horse flies the size of canned hams, increasingly irritated property owners becoming even more irritated as they drank more cold beer to slake both thirst and anger. Local cops on the river were, of course, happy to take us for “guided tours” of the flood area for the first week or so, and those times on the water became our salvation from the hellish heat. The boat rides became so common, that we almost used them as scheduled respite from the midday heat. After a couple days of this flood duty, I dispensed with any sort of dress code and decided that cut off jeans and tee shirts were the way to go. This made me look like a local and simplified the “afternoon swim” that also became part of our flood-coverage ritual.

Hey, don't apologize. I'd have killed for a moustache like that in '82. I was but a schoolyard punk at the time; not yet even dreaming of the kind of adventures you were already racking up. Now, tell me about the space shuttle again...