When the Equalizer Came to Hartford
This article appeared in the Hartford Historical Society Newsletter. Links to some radio spots featuring Dennis Brown as the Equalizer are at the bottom of the page.
“Charlie Brown’s radio spot, take one!”
Female voice, “Who’s that good looking guy in the Ski-Doo suit? It must be, oh, Tom Selleck!”
Dennis Brown, “Wrong! It’s me, Dennis, the Equalizer, from Charlie Brown’s. But I must admit, the mistake is easy to make when I’m wearing my Ski-Doo duds because they make any guy or gal look just super. It’ll make you the hottest thing on snow this winter.
We at Charlie Brown’s carry a complete line of Ski-Doo clothing from helmets to pants. And we always keep a super selection on hand. About the only thing I don’t like is that they don’t make an outfit for Dixie the super dog.”
Dixie, “Woof.”
Dennis Brown, “So for every member of your family, except your super dog, get a whole bunch of quality Ski-Doo sportswear from Charlie Brown’s on scenic Route 4 between White River Junction and Quechee. Family owned and run for over thirty years.”
(Music fades.)
Such radio ads were heard regularly on radio station Q106 from 1984 to 1988. They were the creation of Dennis Brown of Charlie Brown’s Outdoor Power Equipment and Will Stanley of radio station Q106. “It was a highlight of my life doing that,” says Dennis. “I think we got people’s attention and put our message across and were able to sell stuff and also have some fun.”
The commercials originally featured Dennis’ father, Charlie Brown. “My dad did some radio ads before I did and they were very short,” Dennis says. “My father was a man of few words. A reporter would ask him questions and he’d say, ‘Yup. Yup.’ ‘You mean that snowblower could blow snow into the neighbor’s yard?’ ‘Yup.’ That’s all he said.”
So Charlie asked Dennis to do the spots. “I think I did some regular cookie cutter-type ads to start with and then we got more creative as we went on,” Dennis says. “Then we came up with the Equalizer idea. The Equalizer is selling service and low prices. The competitors then were like Sears, John Deere, Kmart, any of the box stores, but they didn’t have service. We did, and so we touted that. So the Equalizer came to earth to counteract all that box store stuff. At Charlie Brown’s, you could have low prices and still get great service.
As the Equalizer, Dennis wore a cape and can remember doing ads where he was flying around saying, ‘We sold a new Wheel Horse tractor to so-and-so over here in White River Junction.’ Then I flew over to Reading and said something like, ‘We sold John Doe a trimmer,’ or something. It was more of a, ‘Thank you for your business,’ rather than any nuts and bolts to it.”
The Equalizer was often accompanied by Dixie, his super dog. Dixie was a miniature dachshund whose bark was featured in commercials. “Dixie got to be way more famous than I did because of the ads,” says Dennis. “When I went to McDonalds drive-thru, they would know my voice. ‘Oh, it’s Dennis. He’s here.’ Dixie would be with me generally and they gave her free food but charged me for mine. I always thought that was funny.”
Manufacturers mentioned in the Charlie Brown’s spots often paid for a portion of the air time. “We usually paid half,” says Dennis. “Sometimes it was one hundred percent on the company, and sometimes it was seventy-five percent, but most of it was fifty percent if you would advertise a Wheel Horse tractor or a Poulin chainsaw or whatever. They call this co-op advertising.”
Some spots featured the evil Les Looter (similar to Lex Luthor in Superman), who Dennis created to represent the box store competitors. Many spots were synched with print ads in the Valley News. One print ad features a drawing of Dixie tied to the railroad tracks by Les Looter while awaiting rescue by the Equalizer.
“We synched print ads with the radio spots pretty much the whole time,” says Dennis. “Print ads were mostly paid for by us because you put more manufacturers on there. But if only one is mentioned, they probably would have paid at least half for that.”
Charlie Brown’s didn’t keep close track of the Equalizer’s effect on sales, but the spots continued for nearly four years and spread to other local radio stations. Many spots were produced at Will Stanley’s Q106 office in Lebanon, NH. Other radio people who helped produce Equalizer spots included Dave Rhode and Bob Sherman from WTSL, and Dave Westphalen of WNHV. “They all helped me,” says Dennis.
Most spots ended with a reminder that Charlie Brown’s was located, “on scenic Route 4 between White River and Quechee.” “I take responsibility for that slogan,” says Dennis. He also takes responsibility for promoting a sale that featured one-hundred dollar riding mowers. “It got a lot of people there. They showed up real early and lined up on Route 4 to buy stuff.” Radio station Q106 helped with some promotions. “They gave a Porsche away once, and they brought that up to our place for awhile. Later, they gave a house away.
How Did the Equalizer Come to Earth?
(Cue music.) Announcer: How did the Equalizer come to Earth and why is he here?
Dennis: Well, I’ll tell you. This is Dennis, the Equalizer, from Charlie Brown’s and it was just over thirty years ago on a planet called Equal far away, that I was born. The problem was that the planet Equal had been over-run by chain stores sellin’ outdoor power equipment that they didn’t service. As a result, everybody’s yard was filled with broken down snow blowers, chain saws and tractors. Disgusted with what they saw, my folks blasted me off towards Earth to save the world from a similar fate.
Since that day, my mission at Charlie Brown’s, where I landed on Earth, has been to provide the Upper Valley with the best service, at the lowest price, on the finest outdoor power equipment around. You see, on the planet Equal, the department stores thought of themselves as number one. But at Charlie Brown’s we’re not number one, you are.
So, for the lowest prices, the ultimate in service, and the best lineup of equipment in town, see the Upper Valley’s own super hero, the Equalizer, that’s me, at Charlie Brown’s on scenic Route 4 between White River and Quechee. Family-owned for over thirty years.
(Music fades.)
They did all kinds of promotions and we were part of that. They’d broadcast from our shop.”
Twice, Dennis traveled to Hollywood to attend the Grammy Awards with his radio colleagues. While there, he met celebrities such as Casey Kasem and June Foray who voiced Rocky in The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle. He also saw celebrities like Howard Stern and Cesar Romero. Howard Stern was next to Q106 and someone punched him in the face while he was doing an interview.
The radio ads brought Dennis considerable notoriety. “It was just crazy,” Dennis remembers. “I had people stop me and want my autograph. We were up in Island Pond one time, launching a canoe, and a kid came over and said, ‘You’re that guy on the radio aren’t you?’ And I said, ‘yeah,’ and he said, ‘I love hearing you,’ and then he went on and on. So you could say I had some fame, I guess. It didn’t happen a lot but it happened a fair amount. I’d hear people say, ‘There goes the Equalizer,’ or something like that. There’s one guy I bump into occasionally who still says that.
“We had a good time with this,” he continues. “I thought it should be fun and not just the nuts and bolts of, ‘Here’s a snowblower and this is what it costs and here’s why you should buy it.’ We incorporated all this other stuff with it.”
Dennis sheltered Dixie from the limelight saying, “She wasn’t the most friendly dog to other people. It was almost a social nightmare actually.”
Charlie Brown’s opened in 1958 and Dennis Brown was born in 1961. The family lived next door to the store, which is now owned by Dennis’ second cousin, Cathy, and her husband Scott. “I’ve known Scott forever,” says Dennis. “I sold him a Ski-Doo many years ago and mentioned him in a radio ad, “There goes Scott Willey on his new Formula Plus!”
“I started working there as soon as I could hold a wrench,” Dennis says. “I did everything at the store from sharpening blades to selling tractors. After school I had hockey practice and I was beat when I got home, but there’d be a whole lineup of snow blowers waiting to be put together. I can hear my father now, ‘You can’t sell it in the box.’ My main job growing up was to put the new equipment together.”
Dennis recalls driving the company’s propane delivery truck when he turned sixteen. “We always did well in the summertime with our power equipment,” he says, “but we had some snow less winters when it was very tough to stay afloat so my father took on Home Gas, which I think is now Amerigas.
“We had a 1974 one-ton GMC truck that I learned to drive on. It had a stake body with a hydraulic tailgate and we would deliver gas cylinders that weighed one hundred and seventy five pounds–seventy-five pounds for the tank and one hundred for the gas. When we ran out of full tanks, we would put the empty cylinders in the truck, drive to Fairlee, and swap them out for full tanks. Today, propane is mostly delivered by bulk trucks rather than swapping tanks like we did.
“I just had my driving permit then and one time while coming back from Fairlee on Interstate 91 just short of Norwich loaded with full tanks, there was a sudden “Crash! Bang!” One of the dual rear wheels on our truck broke off and rolled past us down the Interstate, and the other tire and wheel ended up behind us as we skidded down the road. The truck was supposed to carry up to two thousand pounds, but we probably had eight thousand pounds on there. Today you’d have to be at least twenty-one years old and have a Commercial Driver’s License.”
“One thing that helped me,” Dennis says, “was that my father had me take a Dale Carnegie Course in public speaking when I was just out of high school and that gave me an edge. I’m a people person while my brother Donald was a better mechanic, so I think it was natural for me to go into sales.” So when his father put Dennis in charge of advertising, fame beckoned and the Equalizer was born.
In 1988, there was a family falling out and Dennis left the business and worked at Gateway Motors for the next fourteen years. Still, he kept a finger in the radio business. “After I left Charlie Brown’s,” he says, “my friend Ken Barlow from Q106 called and said, ‘Hey people are calling and saying they miss hearing you on the radio.’ That’s when we developed the, ‘All Around Town with Dennis Brown Show.’
“We did a lot of funny things,” he says. “I used to get the Weekly World News and I twisted it to suit the Upper Valley. One headline was, “The Passion of a Shrewsbury Moose.” There was a moose up in Shrewsbury that was trying to mate with a cow and it became national news. I did a lot of stuff about the moose, and went up there three or four times. It hung around this cow for a long time.
“I did that until 1990 when my National Guard unit was activated and sent to the Middle East for Operation Desert Storm.” Dennis drove a transport truck in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Kuwait, delivering supplies and weapons for U.S. troops during the ground invasion. While there, he got to know a fellow soldier named Wade Hector. “Wade Hector and I were somewhat tight,” he says. “I spent a whole night with him on guard duty and he told me, ‘You’ve got to listen to country music,’ because I never did.”
Dennis relates that Wade Hector was one of two soldiers in his unit who died in an accident the day before the ground invasion. “So, now when I listen to country music I always think of Wade Hector.”
When Dennis returned from Iraq, it looked like his radio career might be over and, in 2002, he went to work at Dartmouth College. But then came one last set of spots with Bob Sherman of radio station WGXL in Lebanon, NH.
“It’s a weird thing,” he says. “I was getting my hair cut at the Yankee Barber Shop in Lebanon and was talking to the barber whose name was Eric Hector. It turned out that he was Wade Hector’s brother, so the whole Desert Storm story unfolded. “I guess it came about that I said, ‘We ought to do some radio ads for you.’ So we did. I don’t think he played them a whole lot but they were out there. Some people at Dartmouth said, ‘I think I heard you on the radio,’ and I would tell them I couldn’t confirm or deny it!”
That was the end for the Equalizer. “I’d do it again,” he says. “It was a lot of fun and it was such interesting work. I enjoyed writing the spots as well as voicing them. I have a real appreciation for the creativity of writers. We don’t think about it when we see a TV show or a radio ad, but someone wrote it–and I did get a minor sense of that.”
Did he think of moving to Hollywood? “No, I’m pretty well planted here, but I admire clever ads to this day. I didn’t have any formal training for the things we did, we just got creative and did our thing.”
Radio Spots
Hartford, VT Historical Society
1461 Maple St.
Hartford, VT 05047
(802) 296-3132
info@hartfordhistory.org