Troubleshooters

This show was my very first recollection of TV. Through the power of the internet I was able to search on 'Kodiak', 'construction', and 'TV' and got a couple hits which brought me here. If this show aired in '59, then I would have been 3 years old at the time. Sort of amazing considering it was on for such a short time and I may have seen it only a few times. But I loved playing in the dirt and big machines. I actually was training to operate earthmoving equipment but then got my old job back and never went into construction. I too would like to see tapes of this show and see if it was really so cool that a three year old kid would remember it after 46 plus years.

Seriously, I caught this show in second run on WGN in Chicago,(like at least one other poster), in the early 1960s. As I remember the opening, Keenan Wynn comes uphill towards the camera on a motorcycle, (make, unknown), and Bob Mathias comes down towards the camera riding a hook on a construction crane. They are, the troubleshooters ! Interesting look at the life of 'globe trotting' construction workers. Aside from their work, these two, naturally, get involved in the lives of the people who work for, with, or, around them. One episode had them, and their crew, build an iron lung for a young local/native lad who had apparently contracted polio, or a similar type of respiration paralysis. Another had them hold a carnival, subsidized by the construction company they work for, to raise funds for something or other. The highlight of this episode was a booth where each kid got a free ice cream cone, which they could either eat, or, throw at Keenan Wynn's face sticking through a canvas backdrop. Now, the telling part. As I remember, the name of the construction company was Corbett. At the same time, early 1960s, my uncle worked for a Corbett Construction Company, on the project to build what is now the Michigan Ave., Oak St. Lake Shore Drive interchange. Yet, I can't find it on Google.

I know Keenan Wynn was a character actor in the show, I seem to remember him riding a Harley or an Indian in the show. Does anyone out there remember if he did? I was just wondering, I would love to see tape of the show if anyone out there has one. I was very very young when the show aired, and I remember watching it. It always involved something to do with construction, and it seemed they were always traveling all over the world, and Wynn would at some point always end up riding a motorcycle in the show. I seem to remember as it being an early American Vtwin, either a Harley or an Indian. Like I mentioned I was extremely young when the show aired, so I don'r remember to much about the episodes.

Back in 1959, me & the boys would play construction, digging up the dirt, moving it around in dump trucks, etc. So, here comes a TV show about guys that do just that. Of course, they used dynamite to move more dirt! Hey, we could use firecrackers! You get the idea, eh? A really cool show for 9-year-old boys...

Keenan Wynn as the grizzly old troubleshooter, a real take-no-crap kind of guy.

And, by the way, wasn't Bob Mathias an Olympic decathlete? Is that the same guy who was on the Wheaties box? I think so.

I remember the show... it was shown on a local independent (WGN) here in Chicago as an after-market show...

I saw the notice of Bob Matthias' death today on cnn.com and remembered that he and Keenan Wynn starred in the show.

They were always tearing around on bulldozers and such, and blowing stuff up.

I vaguely remember Slats... just the name... what did he do? The opener to the show started off with an explosion... I can remember one episode where Bob Matthias had to get over a ditch... so he made a pole out of bamboo and pole-vaulted over the ditch...