Real People

What may not have been apparent was that they did not produce all their own film. My 15 minutes of fame was on real people. There was a river race each year called the Beaver River Rat Race. Actually it wasn't really a race you did well if you made it to the end. About 500 boats(using the term loosely) would go down the river in April water temperature 34 degrees F. The big problem was going over the dams the easy one was about 4-6 ft and the big one 10-15 feet. The boats were built around themes like a beer can, a living room sofa and all, or a jeep(that was so well built if it were parked on the street you would not realize it wasn't real, unfortunately it came apart going over the low dam). Our boat a pirate boat with firing cannons was featured because we rolled end for end going over the high dam. The footage was actually taken for a CBC program. The event was fairly large with 30,000 people coming to watch. Regards

Although I haven't seen an episode of "Real People" in about 20 years, I do remember the format: 60 minutes of various segments (most of them comedic in some way) focusing on the more offbeat facets of American life.

Some of the stories included the Flat Earth Society, a lady who took words and pronounced them backwards, an alien race that lived in volcanic lava tubes, a guy who built his house in a tree, and a guy who fell in love with the Statue of Liberty.

Between segments, they did some "ask the audience" kind of stuff, and also ran newspaper typos (kind of like Jay Leno's "Headlines" segment).

"Real People" ran on NBC, and was followed shortly by ABC's "That's Incredible!", which was a similar format but focused more on the unexplained.

As soon as I found this on Amazon Prime I knew I had to binge this. I was just a kid in the 80s but this was one of those shows that I enjoyed watching. Never mind the fact that it was a lot of adult humor that I was too young to understand, but it was shows like this that had that fun and innocent comedy that even appealed to kids like me. I remember watching this nightly when it went into syndication with its companion show, "That's Incredible" (another lost gem I would like to rediscover).

Prior to reliving my being an audience member the show, the only personalities I remembered were Sarah Purcell, Byron Allen, and Peter Billingsley. As soon as I started watching, I remembered the rest of the cast such as Skip Stephenson, John Barbour, and Fred Willard whom I completely forgot was on the show. I was like, "Oh yeaaaaah. So-and-so was on this show, too!" It felt as if I have seen these actors (among some of the others not mentioned) in a bunch of other things over the years since, but I was surprised to find that (with the exception of Fred Willard), they didn't do a lot gigs since the show. But I tell you. It all seemed like just yesterday that I was watching these people on TV.

Nowadays, audiences would yawn at the material but for me, it was a wonderful trip down memory lane. The nostalgic value alone was enough to keep me smiling throughout my binge.

Thank you to the cast (and production and crew), both living and departed, for holding a place in my memory and my heart and for being a part of this aging guy's life.

Real People was an enormous hit, sometimes coming in #1 in that week's Nielsens. It was a feel-good show about America that found its footing during the ongoing Iranian hostage crisis of 1979-81, which started a few months after the show debuted. It's hard to describe to someone who doesn't remember it just how miserable and distracting the hostage thing was to us. Some segments on Real People were just plain silly, but others showed folks rebuilding their homes after tornado strikes, doing charitable works for the poor, and so on. I think Real People made many of us feel a little better about the world around us. However, I think the show was also a creature of its troubled times; it spun down quickly during the early '80s, and a reunion special in 1991 did not lead to a hoped-for revival of the series.

What I remember most about the show, Real People (1979-1983), was when they were doing interviews of people affected by the 3-Mile Island nuclear accident. They showed people being evacuated, snarled roads, and attempted to talk to whomever they could. Most pointedly, there was an interview of a local farmer. The line that has stuck in my mind is this. They were on the farm, on the porch, and the wife said something like: "What I've noticed is that there are no flies. All the officials are saying that we are far enough away not to be affected by the radiation. But usually there are a good many flies this time of year, from the cattle. But right now, there are no flies."