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Show A TIME WIRTH REMEMBERING Craig Wirth prefers to live in the past...and maybe he did. By Alexandra L. Woodruff If you recognize Craig Wirth, you probably remember him as a television reporter for NBC Overnight or for his Wirth Watching reports on Salt Lake tv, exploring the comedy of the mundane. Soap opera fans, may remember him as the florist, Mr. Lancaster, on the Young and the Restless. As a journalist, Craig has covered everything from the Berlin Wall’s collapse to punk hairdos in New York City. From the Soviet Union to Japan to East Germany, Craig has covered news all over the globe. But you only have to go as far as his home in Summit Park to get a taste of days gone by. Movie projectors, gramophones and old newspapers fill his house--it is, in a sense, his own time museum. Craig has collected everything from old beer cans to baseball gloves, from comic books to old radios and phonographs. He doesn’t have the latest sound system Ps Fi ‘ % ai $ es the Packard," Craig recounts, "Something made me say, ‘I would like your car." He didn’t even ask if the car was for sale but, transfixed by the automobile, he knew he had to own it. The next thing Craig knew, he was down at the bank asking the teller for enough twenties to cover the price of the car (the owner insisted on being paid with 20 dollar bills). The next day Craig drove off in a car that served him no practical purpose. Wirth lived in an apartment at the time and didn’t even have a place to park it. "It was like buying a Rose Bow! Parade float...there is really not a lot you could do with it,” Craig explained. A few days later, he offered to lease the car to his employers at KTVX, Channel 4 to do history reports on Utah. They accepted the offer and the car became a symbol for his reports on Utah s Centennial. The rest is history. pats or a high definition television, but he does have a version of the first electric radio from 1928 sitting in his living room. Next to his laptop is a black rotary dial phone from the 1930s and parked in Wirth’s garage is his pride and joy: a buttery yellow 1932 Packard, fully equipped with a rumble seat and side view mirrors strapped to the spare tires. Craig doesn’t know exactly why he collects, but he does admit he has little willpower to resist buying when he sees a relic that captures the past. The Packard purchase was just one of those impulse buys that he can’t really explain. "I was doing a story at a guy’s house and it had nothing to do with the Packard; he opened up his garage door and there was His inability to resist keeps him buying anything that gives him a taste of those wonderful and adventurous times. "I have purchased the darndest stuff. I have dozens of old 1930s movie posters. Anything with the 30s, I have no problem buying, I don’t know what it is." For Craig the 30s was a time when people lived on the edge: "When you took off in an airplane, you really didn’t know if and when you would land...well, you figured you would land, but would it be where you wanted it to be? If you went skiing you didn’t know if you would make it down the hill in one piece." > bk By'O WE'LL = <oers : tee BUR ActTio eR Westlight Photography eve ann ei ee HOTS YOU BE SEEING SOON... On the Sand Flats... On the River... In this new Millennium! Preserving your wildest moments on film. 331 North Main St. 259-8086 Ee i "lege | BE» aN OHes \ \ |