If you are a fan of the original Hee Haw, then the name "Charlie Farquharson" might be familiar to you. He was the news anchor at radio KORN who mangled and tangled his words in ways that always left me laughing when I was a kid. Now that I'm an adult and watching reruns of Hee Haw on Sunday nights on RFDTV, I appreciate the talent it takes to get exactly the wrong word at exactly the right time. Charlie also had a penchanct for not quite understanding the meaning of the news copy he was reading. For example, upon reporting that Mrs. Jones had "tripulets; an event that occurs only once every 10,000 times," Charlie paused, looked into the camera, and said, "By gull, it's a wonder she ever gets to her housework."
Charlie was played by Canadian Don Harron, a talented actor, director, and composer who graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Toronto. Recently, I felt inspired to write a short story featuring a character directly based on Charlie Farquharson and, fiction being so hard to place, I decided to send it to Don Harron, if I could find a way to contact him. I figured that if at least he read it I'd have something to show for my efforts.
Turns out that Mr. Harron, now 87, has a Facebook page. I befriended him and sent him a message that I'd like to send him a story inspired by Charlie. Much to my delight, he gave me his e-mail address and bid me forward the piece. I did, and the next day, I received an e-mail saying how much he "enjoyed [my] warm story as a tribute to Charlie Farquharson" and asking me where I found reruns of Hee Haw. He also told me that he would send me a book that he had written.
It arrived Saturday and was entitled, Olde Charlie Farquharson's Testament, a hilarious commentary on the Old Testament. ("At the start, there wasn't a thing. That'd be yer Void.")
I was touched by the fact that he agreed to read my story and that he sent me an inscribed book because I was a fan. More touching than the book itself, however, was the envelope in which it arrived. It was a manilla envelope, folded over and hand-addressed, and in the upper left-hand corner appeared Don Harron's return address on the kind of sticker that all of us receive free in the mail. The book didn't come from his agent or his publicist or his assistant; it came from him, from his home. One might say then that the gesture came from his heart.
Famous people are just regular folks. What is truly remarkable is a famous person who is comfortable, indeed, happy with that fact. Don Harron is a remarkable talent and a remarkable guy.
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