Three families gave up modern conveniences to replicate life as Montana homesteaders for five months for PBS' Frontier House (9-11 p.m. Monday-Wednesday, Channels 48, 54, 16). It's the best family TV viewing event since the Winter Olympics.

        Instead of competing for a $1 million prize, the stakes were much higher, as they encountered bears, rattlesnakes, sick dairy cows, freak June snowstorms and diminishing food supplies.

Three 21st Century families spent five months homesteading in PBS' Frontier House (PBS photo) | ZOOM |

        “This wasn't Survivor. This was surviving,” said Mark Glenn, 45, a Tennessee junior college teacher who shared a small cabin with his wife, Karen, 36, and her two children, Erinn Patton, 13, and Logan Patton, 9.

        From 5,000 applicants, producers chose the Glenns; the Gordon Clune family of five (plus a niece) from Malibu, Calif.; and Nate Brooks, his retired father and fiance, from Boston.

        After being trained in ways of the Old West, the three families had to clear their land, build cabins, dig latrines, plant gardens and care for their livestock as pioneer families did after the Civil War. They did this wearing heavy period clothing — a corset and eight other layers adding 12 pounds to each woman.

        Nobody was voted out of the prairie, though Mrs. Glenn wanted nothing to do with the Clunes. She called Gordon Clune, 41, the president of a Los Angeles engineering and manufacturing company, “a Gen. Custer look-alike.” She called his two teen-age girls “West Coast cutie-pies.”

        Yes, in these homes on the range, seldom was not heard a discouraging word. In that way, Frontier House was similar to the back-biting heard on Survivor island, and as much family viewing fun. (Too bad it doesn't air 8-10 p.m. so young children can watch on a school night.)

Secret shampoo stash

        The adjustment was hardest for the wealthy California Clunes, who cheated by trading baked goods to off-limits neighbors for deer burgers, elk steak and vegetables while their kids watched MTV. They also hauled a discarded metal box-spring into the cabin, andpacked contraband personal items (makeup and Herbal Essence shampoo) for their trip back in time.

        “We don't think we look that good without makeup. We look like 4-year-olds,” said Aine Clune, 16. She and cousin, Tracy, 16, missed shopping malls, the beach, cheeseburgers and Diet Coke.

        The exhausting days often brought Adrienne Clune, 40, to tears. “I feel like I've almost been sentenced to five years of hard labor,” she said.

        She cried again when her family ran out of sugar and honey. “I can't handle any more bread without something sweet to put on there. I sure didn't think we'd be deprived this much! I can handle a lot — but life's just not fair!” she said.

ON THE AIR

What: Frontier House    When: 9-11 p.m. Monday-Wednesday, Channels 48, 54, 16    Monday: “The American Dream” (Families get pioneer training and travel by wagon train to settlement area); “Promised Land” (Building shelter).    Tuesday: “Till Death Do Us Part” (Nate marries Kristen); “Survival” (The Clunes break the rules; families erect fences before a cattle drive).    Wednesday: “A Family Affair” (Converting a shed into a one-room schoolhouse for the children); “The Reckoning” (Families gather for a farewell Harvest Fair; experts assess their winter preparedness).

        On the two-day wagon train journey to the settlement, Mrs. Clune told the camera crew the trek “would be so much easier” with her Land Rover. Her husband complained about losing weight (33 pounds), shaving with a straight razor and hauling water 150 feet from a mountain stream.

        Observed Rudy Brooks, 69, a retired corrections officer: “The Clunes kind of remind me sort of the reverse of The Beverly Hillbillies. It's more like Hollywood moving to 1883.”

Couple ends up separating

        The harsh lifestyle eventually took its toll on the Glenns, who have separated since returning from the May-September taping last year.

        Mr. Glenn, who arrived in the Montana valley singing the Green Acres theme, changed his tune after close quarters with his domineering, self-righteous wife. “I think my wife has turned into some sort of Hitler,” he said.

        “We're at divorce level. I'm ready to kick him out,” said Mrs. Glenn, a nurse.

        Another time Mrs. Glenn said: “It's not quite as charming as it once was, and the Garden of Eden has turned into Hell.”

        Viewers who invest six hours in Frontier House will be rewarded by watching the transformation into, oh, pioneers.

        Despite the hardship, each family adapted. They milked cows twice a day. They raised chickens, horses, sheep or goats. They churned butter and chopped firewood, and built fences and root cellars.

        When their line of credit at Hop Sing Yin's general store ran low, the families traded baked goods or eggs for staples. A resourceful Mr. Clune wiped out his $38 debt — about three month's wages in 1883 — by selling moonshine to Mr. Yin, who could market it as “tonic.”

        “You've got to do whatever you must do to feed your family,” Mr. Clune said.

Sept. 11 intrudes

        In Survivor style, producers threw surprises at the participants: a cattle drive threatening their pastures; the arrival of a school teacher (not in their budget); visits by Mrs. Glenn's mother and Tracy Clune's parents; and a deer feast with Dale Old Horn from the Crow Indian tribe, which was forced off the Montana land at gunpoint in the 1880s.

        In addition to the flagrant rules violation by the Clunes, the 21st century also intruded on Frontier Valley on Sept. 11, when producers decided to inform the families about the terrorist attacks. The fleeting reference in the final hour, with scenes of Mrs. Clune sewing a flag, doesn't accurately portray how the families reacted to the tragedy.

        Viewers won't see them reading newspapers and listening to radio bulletins.

        “It just seemed so important to share it with them,” said Beth Hoppe, executive producer for Frontier House and PBS' 1900 House two years ago.

        After “three or four days,” the families “felt that they had absorbed the information and asked that they were taken back into the 1883 experience,” she told TV critics in January.

        Viewers also won't see Mr. Clune saying he wanted to go home immediately on Sept. 11. “I thought there was bigger, more important things that were at hand, that we had to do,” he told TV critics in January.

        But he changed his mind in two days: “I thought, no, on the contrary, what we're doing could be very, very important — to understand the life that we're living.”
       

Life-changing experience        

        A few weeks later, when they had to leave their little houses on the prairie, everyone cried. Nate Brooks was too choked up to speak about the life-changing experience.

        “When I get back to the 21st century, I will never again say that I'm overworked, or that I'm way too busy,” Mrs. Clune said.

        Her niece Tracy, the mall rat who hated the smelly cows, left Montana with an affection for life without flush toilets, television, eye shadow, conditioner or the Gap.

        “I think the year 2001 is kind of boring,” said Tracy, interviewed in the Clunes' jacuzzi overlooking the Pacific Ocean. “There's nothing to do. You get kind of tired of going to the mall every day.”

        The pioneer tribes have spoken.

        Contact John Kiesewetter by phone: 768-8519; e-mail: jkiesewetter@enquirer.com.
       

Works in progress
1883 a true frontier for PBS families
DAUGHERTY: Everyday
Her avocation is collecting career-oriented Barbies
KENDRICK: Alive and well
Laying his illness on the line
TriHealth doctor gets more time to study alternatives
Carnegie celebrates centennial, renovation
Delhi Flower wins show's top prize
DEMALINE: The arts
'King' revisits dysfunctional family
MCGURK: Film notes
Miami draws Marsalis
MARTIN: Foodstuff
Serve it this week: Dill
Trot to Parker's or Turfway for Derby dining
Get to it