A backward walker helps get a career going forward
How Plennie Wingo benefited columnist
Some big stories you work your butt off to get, some just fall into your lap.
An example of the second type, so rare, was the day Plennie Wingo walked into my life. Or did he walk out of it? With Plennie, it was hard to tell.
It is the summer of 1976, our national bicentennial, and I am stuck in a deadend job as the sports editor — and entire sports staff — of the Lompoc Record. Lompoc is a small town on the coast, about an hour north of Santa Barbara. For me, in terms of journalism-career networking, Lompoc is the dark side of the moon.
I am five long years into my first journalism job, still hoping to move up the ladder but making no contacts. Man, I need a break.
One night I’m watching Johnny Carson on TV. Back then, kids, there was only one latenight TV talk show, and Johnny was it. This night, one of his guests is an elderly, dapper gentleman named Plennie Wingo.
Plennie, 81, had been a sports superstar in his younger day, world’s greatest backward walker, setting records for speed (45 miles in 121⁄2 hours) and distance (8,000 miles in 18 months).
Now, in 1976, he is making a comeback. As a bicentennial gimmick, Wingo is walking 400 miles, from San Francisco to Santa Monica. Heading south while facing north.
Watching Wingo on the Carson show, I am fascinated. I would write, “You seldom see people like Plennie Wingo in real life. Mostly, guys like him hang around in Dick Tracy comic strips. Ludicrous, yet genuine.”
On TV, Wingo says his walk is sponsored by Ripley’s Believe it or Not. The San Francisco Ripley’s features a statue of Plennie.
The next day, I’m at the Lompoc Record, slogging through my day, writing a highschool wrestling story or typing up Little League results, fighting the boredom with my third Pepsi of the morning.
I take a break, shooting the breeze with the receptionist near the front door.
Suddenly, something on the sidewalk outside catches my eye. Holy youknowwhat, there he is! Plennie Wingo! Walking down the sidewalk, backward.
He’s rocking the same suit and hat he wore on Johnny Carson last night, same accessories: rattlesnake walking cane, glasses equipped with little sideview mirrors. Trucking down H Street!
We didn’t get many celebrity athletes in Lompoc. Zero, in fact. I did score one juicy celeb scoop a couple of years earlier, when George Foreman came to town unannounced. The world heavyweight champion sauntered into a local bar one night, La Purisima Inn. He told everyone who he was, then romanced one of the cocktail waitresses. The next morning, she gave the champ a ride to the bus station, then phoned me, worried that she might have been seduced by an impostor. I had to break it to her, “George Foreman doesn’t travel by Greyhound.”
Now here is Plennie Wingo, and there’s no doubt he is the real deal. I rehinge my jaw, grab a notebook and sprint out to catch him.
He is quite friendly but doesn’t slow down, so I take notes as we walk briskly through town. He says something about being thirsty, so I invite him to stop at my house, a few blocks away.
There in my living room, over Pepsis, I conduct my first celebrity interview. Plennie (his real name) isn’t super quotable, so the column is mostly my impressions. Here are a couple of samples of the quality humor Lompoc Record readers got for their 25 cents:
I ask him how it feels to become a celebrity again at 81.
“It don’t make no difference to me,” he shrugs. “I’m just the same guy.”
A humble superstar. How could you not love him?
Looking back 44 years, I realize why I felt such an affinity for Plennie. We were practically soul brothers. I was hoping to climb the journalistic ladder to the big time, but was catching nobody’s eye, and the longer I was stuck in Lompoc, the bleaker my resume looked.
Like Plennie Wingo, I was going backward at a record pace.
Less than a year later, I got a break, hired by a big paper in Long Beach. The sports editor said he liked my clips, which included a column on a backwardwalking superstar.
Plennie died in 1993, at age 98. By then, I was a bigtime columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle.
Plennie has a 48yearold wife and a 61yearold daughter (by a former marriage, no doubt). He met and married his wife when he was 50 and she was 17. Don’t ask how he walked down the aisle.
Plennie didn’t talk about his service record, but I assume he washed out of boot camp the first time the drill sergeant barked, “Forward, march!”