Dick Balch was a wacky car dealer with a maniacal laugh that you just couldn't ignore. He and his sledgehammer were notoriety in the Seattle/Tacoma area. His typical TV commercial would consist of him delivering a few choice tidbits of car salesmanship, followed directly with his signature line, "If you can't trust your car dealer, who can you trust?" At that point he would swing his sledgehammer into the car he was trying to sell you. It almost always resulted in a broken window or dented body. That's when he'd utter his crazy laugh and say something like, "how was that?" as he looked off camera laughing. Sometimes his blows just glanced off with little or no damage, but he didn't care. We still got the crazy laugh.
People of the Pacific Northwest thought of him as a celebrity of sorts. Imagine how cool it was to have him show up at a high school basketball game one evening! I played the alto saxophone back then (badly, I might add) and during basketball season played in the "pep band" that sat in the bleachers during all the games. Dick Balch made a flamboyant appearance one evening, and spent a long time signing autographs on his 8 x 12 promo glossies. He was wearing the exact getup that he wore in the picture too. Here's mine:
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