Stewart B

Hee Haw was always funny with jokes often so corny that being so corny is what made them so funny and kept us laughing. During my senior year in college while working toward a career as a photojournalist, I was on an internship with the newspaper I'd be hired by upon graduation and spend my next 30 years there, I was given an assignment that would never be topped as the most fun assignment of my 30 year career. The assignment sent me to Nashville to spend 3 days documenting the taping of Hee Haw. The moment I set foot in the door of the TV station that was home to the studio where Hee Haw was taped, I knew this was going to be fun. George Lindsey saw me with my cameras and instantly broke into a classic ballroom dance in slow-motion, every move greatly exaggerated almost to cartoon character level of contortions, without music, in an office environment with people at their desks, not the least surprised or interested in the performance that was the funniest things I've ever seen in an office. Apparently, Goober, as we knew him from Mayberry in the Andy Griffith show, was well known by the office staff. From that moment on, my three days there just got more and more enjoyable and just down right funny. I grinned and laughed so much, my face muscles hurt for a week after I got back home. Roy Clark was sort of the circus ring leader, always grinning with that look own his face like he was plotting the next practical joke and looking for his victim who more than once was Junior Samples a big, quiet, soft spoken country boy with a big barreled chest standing 6 feet in coveralls. When Kenny Rogers performed his current hit "Daytime Friends, Night Time Lovers" by lip-syncing on a brightly lit set, the couch from the front porch of another Hee Haw scene was leaning up long ways against a wall, in the darker area behind where the cast, studio people and I were standing just behind the cameras where we all watched Kenny nail it on the first take. A few moments after Kenny finished when there was a rare moment of near silence in the studio, Roy, who was standing just to my right, said in whisper loud enough for us to hear: "Hey, check out Junior!" as he motioned behind us in the low light darkness where Junior had apparently stood in front of that couch leaning up against the wall, and dropped backward onto in and was snoring up a storm while standing, feet firmly planted on the floor but sound asleep as if he were laying down on a regular horizontal couch. When several of his fellow cast members called out: "Junior wake up! you're on!" The look of a cross between relaxation and terror in his eyes followed by him mumbling: "You sure?" the laughter that followed assured Junior he had time for another dream or two before he'd play the used car lot owner advising us to call BR-549 for his great deals. After those hilarious three days and a thirty-year career later, I look back over the many amazing things I witnessed as a newspaper photographer, that assignment with Roy Clark and the rest of the Hee Haw cast was never outdone as the single most fun assignment of the thousands I had throughout Kentucky and across the US and Central America. It was a very sad day when I heard of Roy's passing, one of the nicest and funniest persons I've had the great honor of meeting. RIP Roy, George, Junior, Kenny and the others all gone way, way too soon.