TV Radio Mirror (Jul - Dec 1956)

Ernie Ford & Co. (Continued from page 24) five years the land would be ours." But the car broke down in Betty's home town of San Bernardino, California. Using his past experience, Ernie sold himself to the local radio station as a hillbilly disc jockey. Shortly thereafter, Station KXLA in near-by Pasadena offered him a better salary. KXLA was Ernie's big break — for there he met his manager and present producer, Cliffie Stone. Cliffie had a show called Hometown Jamboree. Just for the fun of it, Ernie frequently dropped in on Cliffie to clown around and sing a song or two. It had been a short six months since Ernie's discharge from the Army — and since the Fords' homesteading trip to Alaska had been interrupted. Today, more than six years later, Ernie's career has taken off like a 'possum up a tree — the pea-picker with a smile as warm and welcome as a fireplace on a cold winter's night has become a familiar TV guest in 40,000,000 homes across the country. Though "Ernie-isms" are not yet being included in Webster's dictionary, they certainly have become a part of the American language. Today, too, Betty's and Ernie's goal of a ranch on which to raise their two boys, Buck, 7, and Brion, 3Vz, has been realized. The ranch, though not in Alaska, is situated in Clear Lake, California, a 540-acre spread of lush meadow and trees, filled with deer and quail, a Government-engineered dam and lake stocked with fish, a new barn filled with registered Hereford cattle, a fieldstone house with a thirty foot living room, and a "south 40" filled with alfalfa — on which the deer come niehtly to feed. The problem that faces Ernie is this: Although television has given him the wherewithal to buy and stock such a ranch, it is also television's demands which keep him from spending as much time there with his sons as he'd like. To meet this problem, Ernie has set a schedule for himself that fills his life like a three-decker sandwich. He feels that five 12-hour days a week are enough to devote to any career; the rest of the time he has definitely set aside for his family. Summer vacations, for example, are spent on the ranch with Betty and the boys. When Ernie's son Buck was asked recently what the family did all summer, he replied, "We swam and fished. The first day I caught four blue-gill and a catfish. Daddy didn't catch nothin'." Betty reports that 3y2-year-old Brion wanted to go fishing with his older brother Buck and Daddy, too. "But half the morning had gone by," she says, "and Buck had four blue-gill on the landing and Brion didn't have anything — and his face began to grow as long and sad as one of our cows. Then Ford whispered to Buck that the next fish he caught ought to be put on Brion's line. That's when the big catfish came along. Ernie held Brion's attention for a few minutes while Buck switched the catch. Brion, suddenly aware of the tugging, reeled in 'his' fish. Landing it on the dock, he exclaimed 'Boy! Look at this one. It's got Santa Claus whiskers.' "As for myself," continues Betty, "this is my fourth year at trying to water ski — or should I say the fourth year of being dragged through the water head-first?" During the early part of the summer, Gene Cooper, foreman of the Ford ranch, went down into the city for a few days, to shop for ranch necessities, and Ernie was left to look after the stock. "All except the cow," he says. "Gene took her down to the neighbors and they milked her when they got up at 5 A.M. For the past year, I've been getting up at 5 A.M. for my early-morning show — and that milk call didn't seem right somehow. "But I did spend my days feeding and watering the horses, chickens and pigs," Ernie continues. "We have two sows — Tinker Bell and Miss Pea Picker, the boys named them — and they just go crazy when you sprinkle 'em down. I can say one thing about ranching and farming today: The tools we have to work with make it a lot more modernistic than when I was on my Daddy's farm as a boy. We have tractors and all new-fangled equipment. When I was a boy, we hauled logs with a yoke and two oxen." Ernie and his sons find pleasure in something as simple as watching a young fawn cautiously steal out of the woods at dusk to enjoy an appetizing dinner in Ernie's alfalfa field. "I took Buck and Brion down into the pine grove one evening," says Ernie, "and we waited for about twenty minutes — when out came a fawn, ears up and eyes wide. I think I can safely say Buck's eyes were wider than the fawn's, and Brion's wider still." Jliven during the season when they're not on the ranch, Ernie and the boys spend their Saturday afternoons down at Fisherman's Corner, a sporting goods store run by Ernie's friends, Dusty Rhodes and Paul Niester. They walk around picking out lead sinkers and colorful new fishing plugs. The two owners grow crickets for bait, and this glassed-in enclosure keeps the boys entranced for hours. It's a well-spent afternoon for them, and Ernie, too. The boys' reaction when they come home every Saturday evening is: "Boy, did we have some fun today." Ernie carbon-copies these sentiments. The family spends as much time as they can in outdoor living at their ranch-type house in Whittier, California. Ernie is a good cook — in fact, a specialist in the field of barbecuing (one of his favorite well-thumbed books is "Chefs of the West"). He's such an expert that, when he goes hunting with his friends in Utah, he's elected camp cook. And, at home, both Buck and Brion love to barbecue. Their first question, Saturday and Sunday mornings, is: "When are we going to make the fire?" Brion, getting hungry toward evening, said to Ernie recently, "Daddy, I want a cookie." "It's to close to dinner," Ernie said. "What we gonna have?" "Barbecued chicken." Said Brion, "I'll wait!" When they aren't at the ranch, Betty, Ernie and the boys spend weekends touring Southern California. The boys especially look forward to this, because it means a ride in Ernie's new Thunderbird or Ford convertible. If the barbecue hasn't been set up for the day, Brion asks, "Daddy, do we get a ride in the Fode?" And Buck calls the racy little sportster a "Thunderboard." On a recent weekend trip to Santa Barbara, Betty and Ernie made a new addition to the family, in the form of Bubbles, a purebred English bulldog. "Bubbles' grandfather," says Betty, "was champion Honest John. When I saw her in the kennel, I couldn't resist her, so I bought her. Ernie's always said he didn't want any dogs in the house until the children were a little older — but Bubbles, in spite of her face, is as gentle as she is ugly. Special New Tablet Relieves Monthly Cramps for 3 out of 4 in Tests! Amazing new formula developed especially for female distress gives greater relief than aspirin! 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