Let Me Off at the Top!: My Classy Life and Other Musings (6 page)

At the end of the week I had distinguished myself enough at the Gauntlet to receive six promising offers for News Anchor. I leapt at Tucson. In a real show of Burgundy independence I stole the family car and never looked back. Good-bye Haggleworth, Iowa, hello Tucson. The drive east was delicious. I drank up the scenery like a man freed from prison. Two straight days I drove until I overheard two truckers outside of Washington, DC, say that Tucson was in the West. I should have looked at a map but in those days they didn’t have maps, so off I went to the West. I felt like a young Horatio Alger traveling west to make my fortune. A few days later I was in the middle of Florida and getting kind of frustrated. I sometimes wonder how long-haul truck drivers even do it. How do they get from one destination to the next without getting lost? The stars? Anyway, once I got straightened out of Florida I was on my way. I went through Alabama, then Mississippi, then Arkansas, then Missouri and back through Iowa, up through Minnesota into Canada and then back into North Dakota and South Dakota and over into Wyoming, down through Colorado and Utah and Nevada and up through Idaho and back into Wyoming and Montana and into Idaho and Washington, down through Oregon to California and over to Arizona and over to New Mexico, where I had one of those “hey, wait a minute” moments where I thought maybe I had gone right through Arizona,
so I turned around. When I landed in Tucson I hadn’t slept in three weeks, and I hadn’t shaved or showered. My suit smelled like eggs and butt and was stiff from all the sweat and dirt I’d built up on the road. Big problem: I was due on the air in five minutes! It was my first time on camera … and I knocked it out of the park. The station got hundreds of calls claiming a caveman had just reported the news. I got a chuckle out of that one. I worked for that station for about half a year until I found out it was in Albuquerque and not Tucson, and then off I went again until, about a month later (it’s like twenty thousand miles from Albuquerque to Tucson if you take the direct route through Maine), I finally arrived at my first real job as the nightly News Anchor for WKXM Tucson.

I’ve owned many horses over the years. I’ve had racehorses, plow horses, trick horses—you name it, I’ve owned it. I once bought a whole herd of wild horses up in Wyoming from a man in a big cowboy hat. He had no right to them at all but I bought them. I guess you could say I was conned out of six hundred bucks in that case. You could definitely say that! Anyway, breaking a horse can be a challenging but rewarding experience. Through very long and patient study it’s a skill that I have mastered through my ability to whisper to horses.

I start off by gently whispering in their ear, “My name is Ron Burgundy and I respect you, great and proud animal.
Your lineage from winged Pegasus on down to Trigger is well-known to all. I too am well-known. I am a very popular News Anchor and I do quite well with the ladies, if you know what I mean. What else … oh, here’s something—you, sir, are a piece of shit and I own you. Did you hear me? I own you and you are basically my bitch. So you might as well stop dicking around, okay? I need you to stop dicking around, ’kay?” Remember, all this is whispered so gently in the horse’s ear. I continue with “Know this: I represent one thing and one thing only to you, and that is death. You are living on this earth because I choose to let you live, so you better get your shit together fast or you will be dog food. Got it, friend? Good. Good horse.” Horses respond in a myriad of ways but I find, like children, if you can break them down fast to a place where they are nervous and uncertain about everything, building them up is more fun. It doesn’t always work but I would say I have about a 5 percent success rate.

For about a two-month period I rode a horse to work in San Diego. It was an ordeal. I would whisper stuff in that old gal’s ear every day but she never quite got the point. Finally, the traffic and honking, the fast food and always being stuck inside my office took their toll. I ended up dumping her on my friend Mac Davis for a few bucks, and wouldn’t you know it, that horse went on to win the Santa Anita Derby two years running and showed up in the movie
The Wild Bunch
! It was as if the horse had a new lease on life and made a conscious decision to enjoy each and every day. Horses, you just gotta love ’em!

The Richard Wellspar ordeal continues. You’ll remember that he’s the deranged neighbor who “borrowed” my Craftsman leaf blower. We made eye contact as he was entering his house this evening. I just happened to be sitting in one of my dining room chairs on my front lawn very casual-like so he wouldn’t suspect anything. He gets to his door, checks his mailbox and then turns his head and looks right at me! I give him a little wave and he nods his head. Nothing! Nothing about the leaf blower! I would laugh if it wasn’t so serious. This is becoming a tragedy on an epic scale. I sat motionless for about an hour and then went back inside.

Anyway, Baxter and I have decided it’s time to ratchet up the stakes in this game of chicken. Tonight I’m going to take my garbage can and unload the contents—old food and junk mail mostly—into his pool. Wish me luck!

The Burgundy family, 1942. We didn’t have much but we had each other. Unfortunately we hated each other. The boy in the dress is my brother Horner.

Is it wrong to say I was a very sexy baby? I know I felt it. How could that be wrong?

1958 graduating class of Our Lady Queen of Chewbacca High School.

My first sweetheart, Jenny Haggleworth.

Me, Miles and Bird at Pinky’s Inferno, 1952. Had I not found this photographic evidence I’m not sure people would have believed me. Whew.

Brokaw with a double-breasted suit! The guy had a knack for beating me to the punch.

At the top of my game with Barbara and Walter. They were tons of fun when they stopped talking.

Sir Humphrey. The greatest gamecock that ever entered a cockpit.