Attribution: TV studio, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports the keeper’s experience with the question of “Is he dead or alive?” as the blunt inquiry was recently asked about the invisible Senator McConnelly.
The keeper’s occasion was part of his news reporting on the climax of the two-day pursuit of a man who had murdered three former coworkers at a camper sales business near Bloomer, Wis.
A fleet of sheriff’s deputies and an aircraft observer had pursued the murderer into a grove of pine trees, and there was the sound of a single gunshot that signaled an abrupt end to the tension as word went out that the murderer was down.
The keeper, on a tight deadline with the Milwaukee Journal State desk, needed to know the “dead or alive” status of the murderer before phoning in his story, and he tried to explain this to the deputy restricting access to the pine grove.
After adamant negative responses to the keeper’s pleas, the deputy finally said, “Nobody goes in there until the coroner gets here!”
It made the keeper feel a little like the old TV rain-coated Columbo when in actuality it had nothing to do with his being clever and was due only to dumb luck and a talkative deputy.
Phyllis says she remembers “Columbo” and recalls how he would point his finger up in the final scene of the show and say, “Just one more little thing!”
The keeper will be practicing Columbo’s performance for the next time he tells Phyllis his “dead or alive” story.
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