ON THE ROAD WITH CHARLES KURALT {CANAL; HOT PEPPERS; SPRING; SOD HOUSES; GOLD LEAF} (TV)
Summary
One in this series of television magazines, in which host Charles Kuralt presents clips from his twenty-five years of travel journalism through the back roads of America. In this program's first segment, Kuralt explores "George Washington's failed dream," the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. In an effort to make the Potomac River less dangerous and more navigable, Washington presided over a company that eventually constructed this 185-mile canal consisting of seventy-four locks. Unfortunately, when it was finally completed in 1850, train travel rendered it obsolete. Next, Kuralt attends the International Hot Pepper Eating Contest in New Iberia, Louisiana. Contestants eat chili peppers, Tabasco peppers, jalapeno peppers, as well as the "secret weapon," the hottest pepper known to man. The winner is the one who eats them all with the least amount of outward suffering. Kuralt then travels north from Louisiana, following Spring as far north as Maryland, stopping along the way to speak to a daffodil farmer in Virginia. While the theme song of the Sod House Society plays in the background, Kuralt, in Nebraska, visits a recently built sod house as well as one of the few original surviving examples still standing. Sod, popular with the settlers of the Midwest because of its local abundance and efficient insulating qualities, has long since become simply a curiosity. The final segment finds Kuralt in Forgan, Oklahoma, where he profiles Steven Parrish, a sign painter specializing in gold leaf work. Parrish, working on a window sign for the First State Bank of Forgan, shows how he makes his own designs, uses a paper pattern, outlines the letters in black paint, trims the lettering with a tiny blade, and adheres the gold leaf with a sticky liquid. Includes commercials.
("On the Road with Charles Kuralt" consists of excerpts from Charles Kuralt's segments on the CBS Evening News, beginning in 1967. In the 1970s the show was aired in four special broadcasts, and in 1983 it was developed into a regular ten-week summer series. In addition, the series was reworked for and aired on the Travel Channel in 1993.)
Cataloging of this program was made possible by the CBS Foundation, 1998.
Details
- NETWORK: Travel Channel
- DATE: November 30, 1992
- RUNNING TIME: 0:21:57
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: T:54673
- GENRE: Magazine
- SUBJECT HEADING: Canals; Contests; Journalism, travel; Sod houses; Television journalism; Travel
- SERIES RUN: Travel Channel - TV series, 1993
- COMMERCIALS:
- TV - Commercials - "On the Road with Charles Kuralt" (home video of this series)
CREDITS
- Robert Northshield … Executive Producer
- Dalton Delan … Executive Producer
- Meredith Stark … Coordinating Producer
- Bernard Birnbaum … Senior Producer
- Phil Frank … Senior Producer
- Brook Porter … Producer
- Peter Freundlich … Writer
- Tom Harris … Writer
- Charles Kuralt … Writer, Host, Interviewer, Narrator