TV Week listings for Friday, October 6, 1973.

 

In 1927, the New York Yankees were the dominant baseball sportsball team, winning 110 regular season games (in a 154 game season) and winning the myopically named World Series.

The first six batters in the 1927 Yankees lineup were known as Murderer's Row.  Over the season, they had 1141 hits, collective batting average of 0.337, on base percentage of 0.411, 142 home runs, and an unbelievable 670 RBI - an average of 4.4 runs per game from just 2/3rds of the lineup.  All six ended up in the baseball Hall of Fame.  I'm not a big sports dude so I only recognize the names of two of them: Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth.

In 1973, actually from 1971 - 1975, CBS had the ultimate TV version of Murderer's Row on Saturday night:

All in the Family
M*A*S*H
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
The Bob Newhart Show
The Carol Burnett Show

Television  is different today; networks and even most cable channels don't bother with first-run programs on Saturday nights anymore but in 1973, the three most highly-watched evenings were Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.  And CBS's Saturday night lineup was one of the highest rated, most critically acclaimed, cash cow blocks in TV history.  Each program is legendary to this day, each for a different reason.  Some of us TV geeks lived through it and that's why - sometimes - baby boomers scoff at what TV - network and cable - has become today.

Despite the dominance of CBS, the other networks still had to broadcast something.  At 7:00 PM, NBC had the long-running "Emergency," kind of a dose of adrenalin and warm fuzzies to counter-program the CBS comedies.  ABC had "The Partridge Family," which was a hit on Fridays from 1970-1973, but was getting stale, so they sacrificed it on Saturdays while they burned off the final season.

And that is our dive into TV listings from exactly 50 years ago thanks to the Minneapolis Tribune's TV Week and my pack rat ways.

TV Week listings for Friday, October 5, 1973.

 

It seems I lost a couple of days.  I hate it when that happens.

Back in the day, and "back in the day" was 50 years ago this week, Friday nights were BIG in television.  Audiences were huge and the networks put some heavy hitters in the line up.  ABC's line-up included "The Brady Bunch," "The Odd Couple," and "Room 222."  Their fourth comedy, "Adam's Rib," was new this season, starring the guy from "The White Shadow," Gwyneth Paltrow's mother, and Mother Nature.  A married couple, one a prosecutor and the other a defense attorney, played out their marital issues in the courtroom.  I watched one, maybe two episodes and it was as bad as it sounds.  "Adam's Rib" was gone before New Year's Rockin' Eve 1974.  At 9:00 PM, ABC played "Love American Style," an anthology having to do with anything love, romance, and yes, sex.  Especially sex.  Well, it was racy for 1973 but today, I wonder.  I don't recognize all the names of the guest "stars" but how about Dick Shawn, Roddy McDowell (pre-"Planet of the Apes"), Elaine Giftos, Pearl Bailey, and Ossie Davis.  Doesn't sound terribly cutting edge but it was something everyone seemed to watch back then.

NBC was feast-or-famine on Fridays, leading off with the very popular "Sanford and Son."  Then it was the middling "Girl with Something Extra" with Sally Field and John Davidson.  Think "Bewitched," only after getting married the bride told her new husband not that she was a witch but that she had ESP.  Oh, the hijinks! Seriously, ladies, after saying "I do" is not the time to spring that kind of surprise.

"Needles and Pins" was a new workplace comedy that didn't last until January.  It might have been adequate for 1973 but today, we'd call the workplace a sweatshop.  Or worse, you couldn't make this program today because no one makes clothing in the United States anymore.  They followed that with "Brian Keith Show," about a pediatrician in Hawaii.  It ran two years.  Brian Keith was big in the 1970s and they tried, and almost succeeded, in capturing some of his magic from "Family Affair."

At 9:00 PM NBC ran the ninth and final year of "The Dean Martin Comedy Hour."  Tonight's guests were Bob Newhart, Nipsey Russell, and Phyllis Diller, with musical guest Petula Clark, and just because, William Conrad.  We think of Dean Martin as a racist drunk now but he was hot in the 1960s and 1970s.

CBS tried a few different things.  At 7:00 PM, it was "Calucci's Department." If I tell you the department of this workplace comedy was the unemployment department, would you be shocked to hear that it went away after 11 episodes?  At 7:30, they tried "Rollout," which was on the cover of the Tribune's TV Week this week.  It had all the hallmarks of strong show - produced by Gene Reynolds, who was also producing "M*A*S*H," and instead of the Korean Conflict, "Rollout" was about World War II, so at least there would be victory at the end.  Maybe in real life but not on CBS in 1973.  It was gone after 12 episodes.

CBS played comedy movies on Friday nights and tonight it was "The Wrecking Crew," starring Dean Martin as Matt Helm.  Yes, the same Dean Martin who anchored the NBC Friday line-up.  Matt Helm was a series of movies and would have captured a lot of eyeballs for CBS that night.

Comedy continued in late night.  WCCO ran a W.C. Fields movie at 10:50 PM, followed by a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie.  KMSP ran "Fathom" at 10:30, starring Racquel Welch and Tony Franciosa.  11-, 12-, 13-, and 14-year-old me LOVED "Fathom," and I watched it every chance I could, including, no doubt, this run in October 1973.  Racquel was an American secret agent assigned on the spur of the moment to do something spy-ie, no doubt, and look good doing it.  She was all of the Bond girls (ahem, "Women") rolled into one and we didn't have to waste time with Bond's toxic masculinity.  It was a lot of fun, for 1973, and not to be taken seriously.

NBC ran a weekly show after the "Tonight Show" called "Midnight Special." Tonight's musical acts were Gladys Knight and the Pips, B.B. King, Earth, Wind, and Fire, and Stories, who had a hit that year with "Brother Louie."  There was another act I had to look up, Chris Smither.  Turns out he was, or is, as he's still performing in 2023, a folk-rocker who never quite made it big, but is well regarded as a song writer and wrote a couple hits for Bonnie Raitt.

Tomorrow: As we wrap up, a visit to Murderer's Row.

TV Week listings for Thursday, October 4, 1973.

 

On KTCA, our primary PBS station at 7:00 PM: "The Advocates," "Should the Senate Watergate Hearings Stop now?"

No.  They should not stop.  The hearings should very much continue.

Can you imagine how history would change if this program prompted a change in events?  No, thank you.

Not a lot going on on this particular Thursday.  Mainly established shows and nothing terribly exciting.  I didn't watch it at the time, but the NBC program at 9:00 PM is "NBC Follies."  According to IMDB, it was an attempt to mimic a vaudeville show, something from 40-90 years earlier.  Tonight's guests include Sammy Davis Jr, Joey Heatherton, Wayne Newton, and Mickey Rooney.  Not exactly a forward looking program.  It didn't last long and NBC would take a stab at avant garde comedy a couple years later with a program called "Saturday Night," what we now know as "Saturday Night Live."

"Kung Fu" on ABC seems to be remembered fondly by many people in my age bracket, but I watched a few episodes and I thought it was pretty boring.  I may have been a little young to understand it but I wasn't so young that I wasn't taken aback by having a clearly Caucasian dude play a clearly Chinese character.  Next!

Tim Conway was a guest on "The Flip Wilson Show" at 7:00 PM on KSTP.  Can you imagine the fun those two could have had if allowed?  I wonder if their improv wasn't sanitized for the time slot.

Tomorrow: Friday was all laughs in prime time.

TV Week listings for Wednesday, October 3, 1973.

 

Before Burt Reynolds was the biggest movie star in the world (He was!  Really!  Late 1970s-early 1980s) he was a run-of-the-mill TV star.  In 1970-71, he played a Santa Barbara, CA, homicide detective on ABC's "Dan August," alongside the guy who would become Mr Roper on "3s Company" (Norman Fell) and "The Six Million Dollar Man's" boss (Richard Anderson).  In 1973, Burt was gaining traction, so CBS aired reruns of "Dan August" in the summer of 1973.  On October 3, 1973, CBS was still getting ready for its new Wednesday, 9:00 PM show, "Kojak," so they burned a rerun of "Dan August."  That seems crazy today, but their cost was near zero and the ratings were as good as any of their current shows, so why not?

At 3:30 PM on KMSP, the ABC "Afterschool Special" was "Rookie of the Year."  An 11-year-old girl (played by 10-year-old Jodie Foster) who was the equipment manager for a boys team, takes to the field and turns out to be better at the game than most of the boys.  Chaos ensues.

Also on KMSP, at 10:30 PM, they were running the syndicated "Dick Cavett Show."  Tonight's guest: Katherine Hepburn.

In 1973, the marriage of Sonny and Cher was ending and their "Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour" was about to blow up as well.  Tonight's guests were John Davidson and Truman Capote.  Truman Capote on a network variety show?  That would have been worth tuning in for just for the cringe.

I see a listing on KMSP at 7:00 PM for "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice," a series I never watched based on a movie I've never seen.  The theme of the movie was sexual liberation and spouse swapping.  I wonder how that was portrayed in a 30-minute comedy on at 7:00 PM?  You'd better have found out quickly as the series, starring a young Robert Urich, would get pulled after only seven episodes.  Side note: 10-year-old Jodie Foster had a recurring role in the series but did not appear in tonight's episode, apparently because she was too tired after being a baseball star in the "Afterschool Special" earlier today.

Tomorrow: Thursday appears to be the most boring day of the week, circa 1973.

TV Week listings for Tuesday, October 2, 1973.

The new season was kicking into high gear, as the networks were running the first or second episodes of most of their fall slates.

On ABC at 7:00 PM, season 2, episode 2 of "Temperature's Rising" starring Paul Lynde and a pre-Blazing Saddles Cleavon Little.  I caught a couple of episodes but my 11-year-old self didn't find anything terribly funny about it.

On CBS at 7:00 PM, it was the fourth episode of "Maude," which was getting a lot of buzz for its controversial topics, most of which are tame by today's standards but that is somewhat due to the battles that Norman Lear fought with "Maude."  Esther Rolle played Maude and Arthur's maid, Florida, and she left halfway through the season to go back to the projects and anchor "Good Times."

An interesting premiere tonight, also on CBS.  "Hawkins" starred Jimmy Stewart as a defense attorney.  "Hawkins" was one-third of a rotating trio of shows that CBS used to imitate the success of NBC's "Sunday Mystery Movie."  One of the other shows was a TV adaptation of "Shaft," starring Richard Roundtree, late of the theatrical movie.  It seems audiences were confused - unlike NBC's "Sunday Mystery Movie" ("McMillian and Wife," "Banacek," "Columbo," "McCloud," among others) which had thematically similar programs, CBS put the cerebral Jimmy Stewart on one week and Roundtree's private dick that's a sex machine to all the chicks the next (Hey, I'm talking about Shaft).  They pulled the plug in March 1974.

NBC had three premieres this night.  At 9:00 PM, it was the critically acclaimed "Police Story." A true anthology, "Police Story" told a different story with different characters every week and the cops weren't always the good guys.  It was a direct ancestor to "Hill Street Blues" and "Law & Order," among many others.  It ran weekly for four years before being shifted to a two-hour occasional series for its final year.

At 8:00 PM, Bill Bixby was "The Magician."  Tony Blake was a world famous illusionist, who travelled the world (we only saw him travel the United States, but still) in his private 707.  He drove around in a white 1973 Corvette, and, of course, his plane had a car-sized cargo bay so he hauled the Corvette everywhere he went.  Tony helped people in need by creating elaborate illusions to help them escape or expose corruption, and solved mysteries by deconstructing crimes as intricate illusions.

Halfway through the season, NBC reconfigured "The Magician."  They jettisoned Tony's newspaper columnist friend and grounded the 707, as well as the pilot.  They had him living in the Magic Castle in Los Angeles, and had him solving the same types of mysteries but only within driving distance in LA.  They also upgraded his car, from the 1973 ducktail to a 1974 torpedo tail, still in gleaming white.  My 11-year-old self loved "The Magician," even after they ditched the 707 but NBC killed the series after one season.  Bill Bixby would go on to star in "The Incredible Hulk," so it's all good.

And at 7:00 PM, NBC rolled out he first episode of "Chase," a show that my 11-year-old self absolutely loved and why not?  A cop show specifically designed for car chases, car wrecks, and explosions?  Yes, please.  The show centered around a plain-clothes task force led by Captain Chase Reddick, played to sleazy, aggro perfection by Mitchell Ryan. Get it, his name is "Chase," and his unit specializes in car chases?  Layers, man.  The task force's sergeant was also a canine officer, so we had a cool german shepherd in every episode.  One officer was a former race driver and he drove an all-white 1973 Plymouth Satellite 4-door with a hood scoop, fat tires, and a jacked up rear end.  Another officer flew a red and white Hughes 500 helicopter.  Yet another officer drove a motorcycle.  By today's standards, the motorcycle was like a toy, probably a Kawasaki 175, but at the time it was impressive enough (Side note: my Honda Goldwing's engine has a larger displacement than my brother's Nissan automobile. Times change).  All of these officers and vehicles were mixed and matched in every episode until the ultimate, and identical conclusion, a car chase.  The white Plymouth would growl and spin its tires, the helicopter would fly too close to the ground, and the motorcycle would almost wipe out but still keep up with the bad guys.  Then the K9 dog, Fuzz, would chomp the bad guy after he ran 50 feet from the vehicle he just crashed.  Finally, Captain Chase would make a sarcastic remark or pun that would one day inspire the writers at "CSI: Miami."  Did I mention my 11-year-old self loved this show?  It was a time to turn off the brain and wait until the adrenaline kicked in.

Alas, after 13 episodes, NBC reconfigured the show.  That's a polite way to put it.  They gutted it.  Reached in and yanked out everything good about the show.  The chopper? Gone.  The white hot rod? Gone.  The frail little motorcycle? Gone.  The three 20-something pretty-boy officers?  Gone.  Now it was a show about a task force that solved crimes the old fashioned way and rarely had a car chase.  The three young officers were replaced by two yawn-inspiring veteran officers.  11-year-old me was crushed.

But I liked the first few episodes so much, I saved the Tribune's TV Week from the week of "Chase's" premiere for posterity.  Then forgot about it for 49 years, until I was cleaning the house a few months ago.  And that is why you are being entertained by scans and recollections of TV from 50 years ago this week.  My 11-year-old self says, "You're welcome."

Tomorrow: Jodie Foster and Truman Capote, but not at the same time.

TV Week listings for Monday, October 1, 1973.

 

Here is the Monday listing from the Minneapolis Tribune from 50 years ago today.  The full day listings for the PBS stations are included.  Notice some very specific educational programming.  You don't see targeted programming like that today, and probably with good reason.  TV stations are "broadcasting," not "narrowcasting."

In prime time, "Gunsmoke" was beginning the 19th of its 20-year run on CBS, and Lucille Ball's "Here's Lucy" was beginning its sixth and final year.  "Here's Lucy" was not the same as "I Love Lucy."  The listing for "Dick Van Dyke" was also not the show you're thinking of but "The New Dick Van Dyke Show."  Like "Here's Lucy," "New Dick" was kinda bland, riding on the coattails and carryover charm of the previous shows.

After Dom Deluise's "Lotsa Luck at 7:00 PM on NBC, came "Diana," a comedy starring Diana Rigg, late of "The Avengers" and 40 years later, would be the grand dame Olenna Tyrell on "Game of Thrones."  "Diana" was essentially following the Mary Tyler Moore, workplace, homelife, sex drive formula, and it was the drop-dead gorgeous, 35-year-old Rigg's first and only attempt at TV comedy, and it would be gone after 15 episodes.

Shecky Green was the guest host of "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson."  If I recall, Carson worked Tuesday through Friday and left Mondays for guest hosts.  Notice that "Tonight" was 90 minutes long back then and it was the only talk show in late night.

Tomorrow: The reason I kept this edition of the Minneapolis Tribune's TV Week for 50 years.

TV Week listings for Sunday, September 30, 1973.

 

Here is the Sunday listing from the Minneapolis Tribune from 50 years ago today.  If it's Sunday in Minnesota in the Fall, there will be Vikings.  On this particular day, the Vikings played the Green Bay Packers on WCCO at 12:30 PM and won, 11-3.  The Vikings would go 12-2 during the 1973 season and end up playing in the Super Bowl.  I don't remember how that turned out but it must have been good.

You'll notice that 60 Minutes isn't on today.  In 1973, it was only broadcast from January - June and even then CBS ran it on Sundays from 5:00 - 6:00 PM - before prime time.  It was hardly the ratings behemoth in 1973 that it would become a few years later.

Notice also that the network programs started at 6:30 PM and the 9:30 - 10:00 PM slots were filled by a news feature program on WCCO and syndicated (non-network) programs on the other affiliates.  The networks wouldn't start broadcasting from 6:00 - 10:00 Sundays until the Fall of 1975.  Having an hour-long program start at :30 minutes after the hour seems odd today but I liked it then and I like it now.  The 9:30 show on WCCO was called "Moore on Sunday," and it was an institution in the Twin Cities for ages.  Hosted by WCCO's 6 & 10 PM news anchor Dave Moore, "Moore on Sunday" was an unpredictable show, sometimes with hard news, investigations, opinion pieces, interviews, comic skits, and even pie-in-the-face gags on occasion.  It was must-see television before we knew what that term meant.

The CBS program at 6:30 displays as "Perry Mason" in the grid but it's really "The New Perry Mason."  The ill-fated reboot starred Monte Markham and Sharon Gless (pre Cagney and Lacey) and was yanked after 15 episodes.  I remember watching it and liking it. If you wanted the original Perry Mason, WTCN aired a Raymond Burr episode at 10:30 PM.

The guests on "The Wacky World of Jonathon Winters" on KMSP this week were Chuck Connors (Gunsmoke), Jo Ann Pflug (not sure what her claim to fame was), Tony Orlando and Dawn, and singer Maureen McCormick.  "Wacky," indeed!

Notice as well the advertising insert at 8:00 PM.  Can you imagine a network promoting a 65-year-old actor as a way to hook new viewers today?

Finally, the program on KSTP at 9:30 PM that shows as "Surgeon" is actually a syndicated Canadian program called "Police Surgeon."  Believe it or not, it ran for almost 100 episodes over four seasons.  I remember watching the show a few times and it wasn't as crazy as it sounds but it wasn't great.  Sam Groom played a doctor who was also a police detective.  Not a medical examiner or coroner but an actual detective who was also a doctor.  I don't recall how cases came to his attention but he drove around Toronto in an ambulance van - with police livery, not ambulance - and interviewed witnesses and suspects and usually figured out what was wrong with his patients in the nick of time, saving the victims' lives and, I suppose, preventing a crime like poisoning from becoming a homocide.  I guess "Police Surgeon" was sometimes like "House MD," only with a badge.

Tomorrow: A connection to Game of Thrones.

TV Week from September 30 - October 6, 1973

 I was cleaning out a closet a few months back and came across a manila envelope with a couple of TV Week booklets from the Minneapolis Tribune, one of them for the week of September 30 - October 6, 1973.  That's 50 years ago, starting today!  This week, I'll be showing you some differences between the media universe from 1973 and 2023.  It's very like me to save souvenirs for no particular reason and at first I didn't understand why I saved this particular edition but it came to me after couple days.  I'll share that reason with you on October 2.

If you need someone to explain what newspaper was, or what a weekly TV booklet was, or what broadcast television was, I'm not your guy.  We're just going to have fun looking at what the three-channel television universe looked like and see how different it was compared to today's 500-channel cable systems and multiple streaming service reality.

First, I should probably point out that the Minneapolis Tribune is now the StarTribune.  For almost a century, the paper's owners published the Tribune in the morning and the Minneapolis Star in the afternoon.  In 1982, they killed the afternoon edition and changed the morning paper's name to the Star and Tribune.  Later, they dropped the "and" and pushed the two names together.  When I think about the Minneapolis paper these days, which is rarely, I still call it the Tribune.

On the cover of this TV Week is a promo picture for a new 30-minute Friday night comedy on CBS called "Roll Out."  It was supposed to be a World War II comedy in the style of M*A*S*H, and was produced by the company that produced M*A*S*H.  "Roll Out" would be gone after January.

When we start looking at the daily listings, you'll notice the Tribune only lists four channels.  That's because there were only six TV stations broadcasting in the Minneapolis-St Paul market at the time.  The two PBS stations (KTCA-2, KTCI-17) apparently weren't worth the newspaper's trouble to include in the schedule grid, although they did have a small side area each day - with small print - for readers who wanted to seek them out.  The stations in the grid are your standard CBS, NBC, and ABC affiliates, and one independent.  Compared to today's endless cable channels, the listings look kinda sparse.

Today's Lesson

Today's lesson is on the subject of Home Renovation, or Home Repair, whichever you find yourself doing.  When installing a toilet, you are obligated to cut off the bolts that secure the toilet to the flange.  The instructions tend to say to use a hacksaw.  If you find yourself using an angle grinder, and if you have an angle grinder or have ever wanted to have one, you will find yourself using an angle grinder for this purpose, get ready to spend some time prepping before you cut.  Like many things in life, doing this task right will take much longer than you are imagining.

There will be sparks when grinder meets bolt.  This is an incontrovertible fact yet it may be overlooked.  Do not overlook this fact. It is incontrovertible.

Cover the toilet and the nearest wall with barriers of some sort.  Painter's tape will do fine for the curvy parts.  Heavy paper or cardboard is adequate for the walls, floor, and large parts of the toilet.  Estimate where the sparks will go and cover the porcelain thoroughly.  Then measure the distance from your bolt to where the barricades end, then double the distance and cover that area.  Then increase the amount of the covered area by half again and cover that area.

Check for gaps in the covering and cover any gaps with tape.  Check again.

Carefully decide at what level the bolts need to be cut off.  Mark the bolts.  The correct place to cut will be hard to see once the grinder is running.  Mark the bolts well.  Cut off the bolts.  Use eye and ear protection.  Use exhaust fans if you are near a smoke detector.  The smell of burning metal is a by-product of grinding metal.  This fact is also incontrovertible yet sometimes overlooked.

If you have learned from this lesson, you will now spend about 15 minutes removing your mostly-tape barricade.  Your toilet will look wonderful.  Do not ask how I learned this lesson.  It Is Just Known.  Now excuse me while I spend the next hour buffing some porcelain.  That is not a euphemism.

Refinancing Semi-Debacle, the Way-Past Conclusion

Almost four years ago, I refinanced my mortgage and blogged about it as I neared the finish line in the post "Refinancing Semi-Debacle."  The adventure concluded shortly after that post but not without further excitement.

Let's start with the date.  In a series of e-mails where we hashed out details, my loan officer from the credit union set a closing date of January 13.  She then asked me to get a payoff statement from the old lender for the 18th, which I did.  On the 13th, she e-mailed me with "Urgent" in the subject.  "You missed your appointment," she said.  No, I didn't, I replied, you changed it to the 18th.  No, she said, the appointment for the 13th stands - the 18th is the settlement date between institutions.

I see I'm starting to lose you with this riveting dialog, so let's move along.  It turns out you can't trust everyone.  In December, she set a closing date and asked for a payoff statement for the same date.  If we had closed as scheduled then, the numbers would have been off and we might have had to start over, but only in hindsight did I find her mistake.  For the January incident, she was right, but so was I for following the same pattern she set in December.

Well, my workday is generally flexible, so I grabbed my papers and set off for Minneapolis.  On a normal business day, the credit union is about 15 minutes from my office.  On a normal day.  On January 13, 2011, the Twin Cities received 8+ inches of snow, six of them by the time I headed out.  It took just over 90 minutes to reach my destination.  I won't bore you - further - with tales of sitting in traffic, except for one distraction that I enjoyed.

If you are familiar with I-394 eastbound in Minneapolis, you know that there is a chokepoint where it meets I-94.  We call it the Lowry Tunnel exit because as soon as you clear the exit ramp, you go through the Lowry Hill Tunnel.  We Minnesotans are awfully clever with our names.  394 eastbound carries a lot of traffic and about 2/3rds of it gets funnelled into a single, curvy lane and that causes a backup on a good day and on a snowy day, it can backup four miles or so.  Like this day.

As you approach the Dunwoody exit, the last one before Lowry Tunnel, a fourth lane appears on the right.  It's a brief extra lane, part of an on-ramp and off-ramp pair that are less than half a mile apart.  A woman came off that on-ramp and her ultimate destination was Dunwoody, so even with the backup on the main three lanes, she had clear sailing to her exit.  She was also driving one of those Honda four-wheel drive cars.  Should have been easy for her.  However...

I was in stop & go traffic, making maybe 5 MPH.  This lady could could easily have gotten up to 30 MPH or so for the minute or so needed to get to her exit. I first noticed her in my rear-view mirror, where she would travel slowly, cautiously, and dare I say safely, up to about 20 MPH, then slam on her brakes.  Four wheel drive and anti-lock brakes or not, in heavy, wet snow, you slide when you slam on the brakes.  Slamming on her brakes caused the Honda to slip sideways, maybe 45-60 degrees to the right of center.  When she had stopped completely and regained her composure, she would straighten out, then slowly, cautiously, and dare I say safely resume her trip and get her speed up to about 20 MPH, and do the whole thing over again.  I saw her do it maybe three times in my mirror, twice while she was beside me, and another three times before I lost visibility around a curve.  Considering I wasn't going anywhere, it was as entertaining as anything could be at that point, but not so much for the line of people that had formed behind her.

So I eventually got to the credit union and met with a junior loan officer.  We started going over the paperwork and immediately realized that it was wrong in several places.  You remember all those details I went over with the senior loan officer?  Yeah, it appears she got all the information and did nothing with it.  So, the paperwork had to be redone.

It all worked out.  Everything that had to happen between the credit union and one-payment lender happened.  I got my lower rate and have saved $11,148 in interest and PMI since.  I mainly like dealing with the credit union more than the too big to fail banks, but I like Suntrust's web site better - the credit union doesn't allow you to apply extra principal without making a call, for example.

My trip home that day was only 75 minutes, which was a victory in and of itself.  In the scheme of things, we shall lump all my annoyances and travails regarding the refi as first world problems.