By John Murphy
I have some really weird stuff.
About the oddest item is an olive-colored western sports coat I bought about 35 years ago at the Goodwill Store in Watsonville.
My girlfriend at the time, Roseann, liked thrift stores. She got me hooked. I hit all the hotspots from Monterey to Santa Cruz.
The coat is an arguably ugly color, has off-white stitching and a garish blue and red lining. I wouldn’t have bought it except for the label inside that says “Nudie’s Rodeo Taylors of North Hollywood, Ca.” and “Allan Funt.”
Allan Funt! Of Candid Camera fame. Could it be? Had to be. Nobody would fake that. So, I bought it for a song and have had it all these years, wearing it only a handful of times.
Curious about Funt, I recently put my Main Street Dog team of researchers (Wikipedia) on the case.
Funt was born in New York and graduated from high school at 15. He earned a Bachelor of Arts from Cornell – crucial preparation, of course, for creating a goofy TV show that spoofed folks by employing a hidden camera. Hey, I used to watch it. But then I used to watch F Troop and Green Acres too.
Funt died in 1999 — but it was 30 years earlier he caused mass confusion on an Eastern Airlines flight by simply being there. Two men hijacked the plane headed from Newark, NJ to Miami and demanded passage to Cuba. But some travelers, taking note of Funt’s presence, thought it was a gag. They learned otherwise when the plane landed in Cuba. Mojito anyone?
In later years Funt bought a large ranch south of Carmel near Big Sur. He taught a class at Monterey Peninsula College where I sometimes covered football games and later died in Pebble Beach – 30 miles or so from the Watsonville thrift store where I bought the coat.
I still have that baby too. And I’m sure in 20 years when someone pulls my gnarled, arthritic hands off my keyboard for the last time and puts me six feet under, one of my relatives will come across the coat and say, “Ya know, John really had some weird shit.”
Main Street Dog 