Here’s a setting that reminds this corner of the Veterans Memorial at the Gwinnett Justice and Administration center. It’s for a far different subject, and your job is to tell us about it, and where this photograph was made.
Lots of people recognized an exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation in Dearborn, Mich. Among them: Channing Haskell, Peachtree Corners; Jay Altman, Columbia, S.C.; Michael Blackwood, Duluth; Steve Ogilvie of Lawrenceville; and Don Bollinger of Loganville, who wrote: “That is the RV used by Charles Kuralt that he used in his ‘On the Road with Charles Kuralt’ for CBS. He was the original host of CBS Sunday Morning, and set the tone for in-depth reporting for the show, emphasizing the Arts. Personally, he was a keynote speaker for a conference in Jefferson City Missouri, and I was assigned the task of taking him to the airport in St. Louis, a 2 1/2 hour ride. We talked about the backstories of national and international politics the entire ride. His insight was indescribable, always in search of America’s people and their doings.”
Allan Peel of San Antonio, Tex. added: “Each year from 1967 to 1980, Kuralt traveled roughly 50,000 miles throughout the 50 states in a number of different motorhomes. He would roam off the beaten path in search of stories that otherwise might have gone unreported.The last motorhome he used was a 1973 FMC 2900R, the one depicted in the mystery photo (FMC is short for Food Machinery Corporation, but that’s a whole different story!)”
Others recognizing the photo were Susan McBrayer, Sugar Hill; Jim Cofer, Snellville; John Titus, Peachtree Corners; Lou Camerio, Lilburn, who added: “This is when Walter Cronkite was the ‘Most Trusted Man in America.’ Things have really changed in tv broadcast news;” and George Graf of Palmyra, Va., who wrote: “The FMC 2900R shown in your photo was the last and most celebrated of the six On the Road buses. Kuralt’s introduction to it, however, was grim. ‘The first time we turned on the windshield wipers,’ he says, ‘one of them flew off and vanished into the storm.’ Nonetheless, it was driven 240,000 miles.
“Apart from two CBS eyeball logos and a largish TV antenna, the exterior of the FMC is remarkable only for its grotesque trapezoidal shape and its unremitting ungainliness—it’s 8.5 feet tall and almost 30 feet long. It is powered by a 440-cubic-inch Chrysler V-8 tucked catty-cornered behind the right-rear wheels and weighed 12,500 pounds.”
>>> SHARE A MYSTERY PHOTO: If you have a photo that you believe will stump readers, send it along (but make sure to tell us what it is because it may stump us too!) Send to: elliott@brack.net and mark it as a photo submission. Thanks.
Another sign of the warm weather: Roving photographer Frank Sharp captured the large blossoms on what he says is a tulip poplar tree, with the Collins Hill Public Library in the background. Other signs of springs are enlivening us all around Gwinnett.
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