"Louie, Take A Look At This!: My Time With Huell Howser"

Tennessee-born Huell Howser, who died in 2013 at the age of 67, left a remarkable legacy of television programs devoted to his adopted home state of California. Best known for "California's Gold," a staple on public television up and down the state, Howser's easy-going southern charm encouraged ordinary people to open up to the camera.

For a decade, starting in 1991, his cameraman was Luis Fuerte, the unseen presence but the subject of Howser's frequent exclamations--and now the title of a book--"Louie, Take A Look At This!: My Time With Huell Howser" ($22.95 in hardcover from Prospect Park Books; also for Amazon Kindle), by Luis Fuerte as told to David Duron. (Duron, a producer and writer, met Fuerte at KCET-TV in Los Angeles, the home station for "California's Gold.").

The book takes the reader behind the scenes of a professional partnership based on hard-won respect. "I was the technician and he was the star. The mutual respect we had for each other--and our respective positions--was the backbone of our relationship, and it allowed us to work so well together for so many years."

Howser wanted to know only the bare minimum about his guests so "he could make discoveries on camera. His trademark phrases of 'Oh, wow!' 'Golly!' 'Oh, my gosh!' and 'That's amaaazing!' followed by a friendly, 'Louie, take a look at this!' were genuine, and you heard them more and more as we continued to work together. Yes, it's true that Huell's astonishment bar was set pretty low, but … that was the real Huell…. There was a little Gomer Pyle in there, but it worked well for him."

The book's chapters focus on the origin of the series (it had a lot to do with the reuniting of an old man and an elephant), memorable shoots, Huell's illness and legacy. There's also a list of episodes of "Gold" Fuerte worked on, including trips to Bidwell Bar Days at Lake Oroville (1992) and Paradise's Gold Nugget Days (1997); trips to Chico would come later, after Fuerte retired from the show.

A complete streaming archive is housed at blogs.chapman.edu/huell-howser-archives. It's amaaazing!