Part 5 (1/2)
A couple of years later I received the highest honor any News Anchor can be awarded-the Golden Anchor. It was usually reserved for network anchormen, but it was only fitting that after a career unmatched by anyone's I should receive this prestigious award. They all came: Cronkite, Jennings, Curtis, Brokaw, Rather, Sawyer, Mantooth, Couric, Lehrer. The room was filled with news greats. A lot of scores that had gone unsettled got settled that night. I wasn't able to even get to my thank-you speech before a fight broke out between Rather and Koppel that then grew to a regular old-fas.h.i.+oned donnybrook. Tables flew, chairs broke, bottles were smashed, machetes were drawn, shots were fired-it was the most fun I'd had in years. It seemed fitting that the night should progress into a good old-fas.h.i.+oned news fight. It seemed more fitting that in the end only four men were standing over the broken bodies piled up in the room. I looked around to survey the wreckage and a smile came to my bloodied face. There beside me was my old news team, triumphant again, standing tall and victorious over the battlefield.
HOW TO RELATE TO CHILDREN.
As a father I've experienced many ups and downs raising a child. Parenting can give us so much joy. To see the wonder in a child's eyes is as close to heaven as I've ever come. (I'm speaking metaphorically of course. Physically I've come very close to heaven, as I was on the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro with game show host Gene Rayburn and Beatle Ringo Starr.) There can also be great dissatisfaction when it comes to children. I've had interactions with them that have left me feeling sad and alienated and hollow inside, to the point of wanting to kill myself. If you're not careful a child can spin you into a suicidal drain from which only pills and s.e.x and circus rides can save you. Their brains are mysterious puzzles that confound all human reasoning. I've been very frustrated talking to children and I'll admit it, I'm always a little terrified of them. If you get in a room alone with one you can't help but start thinking about how irrational they are. It's only a matter of time before you begin to wonder if they are going to attack you or start flying around the room or speak backward. I was locked in a room with a small girl one time who started to speak backward. I nearly fainted but summoned the courage to try and kill her. I was moving toward her with that intent when the child's mother entered the room and stopped me. She explained that they were from Poland and the child was trying to talk to me in Polish. I guess they speak backward in Poland. My point here is that children say and do stuff that makes no sense. It can be very unsettling. I keep a candy bar in every room in my house just in case I'm left alone with a child. So how do you relate to a creature that lives by no rules?
Every summer for one week I run something called Camp Ronny. I get a bunch of poor kids from broken homes and bad neighborhoods and take them out into the woods for some hot dogs and sing-alongs. It's my way of giving back. There's only one rule at Camp Ronny, and that rule is, have fun! Many of the kids come from environments where they hardly ever just have fun. The first day I teach them some basic Boy Scout/American Indian stuff like making smoke signals and tying knots. Boys and girls just love this kind of outdoor fun. On the third day they are on their own. They have to make their own shelters, forage for food, make tools and fire. The little ones, in the eight-to-nine-year range, always have problems with this, but eventually they get it. When they see I'm not going to help them they get it. Over the years we've had some close calls with some of the children and animals. Some nosey child welfare do-gooders have shared their opinions with me about Camp Ronny, but I'll tell you what, many of these kids go on to become prominent wrestlers, stockbrokers, Realtors and bouncers. Do these children become part of our great social fabric that ties us all together? No, but that wasn't going to happen anyway. What I've done is instilled in them a ruthless instinct for survival at all costs. Kids who come out of Camp Ronny are some of the scariest and worst citizens in the country. Famous alumni include Kenneth Lay, Sean Hannity, Junkyard Dog, King Kong Bundy, Paul Wolfowitz and Laura Ingraham. They may be hated and feared by regular Americans but they are survivors, and that's what's important.
If you can instill a little confidence in a child, then you've gone a long way to being a great parent. A ten-year-old will feel on top of the world if you can teach them to drive on a freeway. From what I understand the Chinese allow their children to operate heavy machinery making garments and fabricating car parts at a very young age. This must do gangbusters for their confidence!
Apart from that there's not much more I can say about relating to children. Scientifically speaking the medulla oblongata of children is smaller than that of adults, and so that's something I'm sure.
MY NEIGHBOR: MY BAD.
Weird development in the whole Richard Wellspar affair. I found my Craftsman leaf blower in my garage sitting on the workbench with a plate of cookies and a very nice handwritten note dated a month ago. Can you believe it? He must have returned it the day I lent it to him! What a goof. My bad. Sometimes life gets silly. Only in San Diego, folks, only in San Diego.
WHERE I'M AT TODAY.
Don't you worry, life's pretty good for Ron Burgundy these days. It was touch-and-go there for a little while but counting my chips, I see I came out the big winner. When all is said and done I will walk away from the poker table of life richer than when I came in-except I will be dead, which in many ways is not richer than when I came in. Someone once said one day we all end up at the banquet of our own consequences. For many men that banquet is an unsettling and fitting end to a life of poor choices. For me I'm at the banquet of my consequences and there's roast beef and mutton chops and red wine and cheeses and pancakes and a stack of Heath bars and creamed corn and succulent other foods like shrimp c.o.c.ktail, hot dogs with sauerkraut, ravioli and three-bean salad, to name a few more-ice cream too-anyway it's quite a banquet, really, and it's all consequences of a life well lived. But it didn't feel that way a few years back and I'll tell you why.
In 2004 I was basically retired. My day consisted of a round of golf with Merlin Olsen, a five-dollar lunch at China Buffet, some checkers with Captain Willoby Faloon, a few personal appearances and then home for dinner. If I was lucky, and frankly I'm always lucky, I got some you-know-what from Mrs. Burgundy. She's still got it. Even at our advanced age we can still do stuff that would make a Nevada prost.i.tute sit up and take notice. Anyway, that's how a typical day went before the fall of 2004. Somehow through one of my many personal appearances I got involved with a gentleman by the name of Fast Eddy Keel. People in and around San Diego know the name and face of Fast Eddy as it appeared on many bus stop seats advertising home loans. He approached me early in 2004 with an opportunity too good for me to pa.s.s up. I've never been one to try and profit from my name unless there's money in it, but here was a case that spoke to a particular pa.s.sion of mine-namely building a high-end gated housing community. The Burgundy Estates, as they later were so named, was to be an ambitious housing development of fine homes heavily guarded and protected from the disintegrating social contract threatening our way of life. Each home would have fifteen rooms, including a screening room and a great room; a granite-topped kitchen; huge stainless appliances; a four-car garage; two swimming pools; a guesthouse; an indoor rock-climbing wall; an old-timey ”make your own sundae” ice-cream parlor; his-and-her walk-in closets; koi ponds in every room-in short, only the best! Not to mention all the gadgets and gizmos the world had to offer at that time. Land clearing and building started in the spring of 2005. Each house was presold at about $2.5 million. With thirty houses to be built Fast Eddy and I were looking at a nice tidy profit. I supervised some of the building myself. I designed the houses on c.o.c.ktail napkins and sc.r.a.ps of paper. It was kind of an indulgence but I walked around the construction site with a hard hat on and really got to know the gang working on the houses. There was Jose, with his infectious laugh, and Hernandez the happy whistler, Manuel the prankster and Jesus and Raul and Pepe-just a buncha construction guys whose names I made up every day. Here I was, retired, in my golden years, and I should have been enjoying an easy chair and Turner Cla.s.sic Movies, but instead I was hanging with the guys, pouring footings and slingin' drywall mud. I really loved it.