I watched a
political town hall meeting this week, and the antics reminded me of a valuable
lesson I learned as a child. In the
first grade, I suddenly discovered the after-school television shows for
children. For me, this was huge, because I discovered they showed
cartoons.
I must have been
one of the last kids in America to make this discovery, but I think my belated
discovery can be excused because the family television set was not yet a
centerpiece of family life...at least in our house. My parents could not quite make up their
minds whether or not television was a good idea, and they warmed to the idea
only slowly. For the first couple of
years, the television was kept in the basement, next to an ancient ping pong
table that my mother used to sort laundry.
The set was rarely turned on during the week.
Then on Saturday
mornings….”Out of the clear blue of the western sky comes SKY KING!”
I won’t say I was enamored of the
show...exactly...but I can tell
you that the first of the three airplanes named “Songbird” was a Cessna T-50
Bobcat, a Bamboo Bomber, specifically N67832.
I can still quote technical specs on all three airplanes, but I have a
dim memory that the show also featured a couple of kids whose main role on the
show was to get kidnapped.
Eventually, the
television made its way out of the basement and up to my parents’ bedroom, so
that they could watch Gunsmoke on Saturday nights. On Saturday mornings, I still got to watch
Sky King, but I had to do it while lying on floor of their bedroom, for I was
not allowed to sit on their bed. After
about a year in their bedroom, the set finally made it to the living room. (I strongly suspect that this was because my
father had discovered that football games were televised on Sunday
afternoon). And once the set was in the
living room, we all watched it more often.
It was in that
living room that I discovered the after-school programs for children. One of the few television stations we could
pick up with our basic antenna was KFJZ-TV out of Fort Worth (or as I knew it—Channel
11). KFJZ was an unaffiliated network station,
meaning that it had to produce a lot of its own content, interspersed with old
movies, local news, and a lot of kid shows that featured ancient cartoons.
Everyone working
at that television station joined in on the fun. Some of the cameramen
routinely wore ape masks, and Bill Camfield became something of a local legend
as Icky Twerp as he presented clips from The Three Stooges while hosting the
Slam Bang Theater.
My absolute
favorite show, however, was Cap’t Swabbie’s. George Nolen was the station weatherman, but
every afternoon he donned a fake beard to read letters from his “Mateys” and
introduce Popeye cartoons, while sitting next to a crude cardboard boat. (I was addicted).
I was also
fascinated with the idea of letters. I
had just recently come to understand the concept of mail and was really eager
to write my own letter to Cap’t Swabbie.
Unfortunately, though I was only in the first grade, I still knew that
printing monosyllabic words on a Big Chief pad using a large red crayon was
only appropriate for writing your congressman.
Luckily, I had an
older brother. Mike was in the seventh
grade, so I dictated my letter to him while he carefully recorded my every
fawning word. I rushed to the mailbox
and mailed the letter off to Channel II.
For the next week,
I carefully watched as Cap’t Swabbie pulled letters out and read them on the
air, and could hardly wait until he read mine.
Finally, one day, the captain pulled out a letter and read it on live
television.
“Dear Captain
Swabbie”, he read. “Is that a real
beard?” Nolen, paused from reading the
letter, and a slight smile appeared as he slowly shook his head.
Cap’t Swabbie may
have been amused, but I was horrified.
Who would write such a mean letter?
“Aren’t you really
the weatherman? Is that boat real?” Cap’t
Swabbie stopped and looked down at the studio prop. “Nope, sure isn’t.”
I don’t remember
the rest of the letter, except for the closing.
“Sincerely,” the
Captain said. “Mark Milie-orn”
He pronounced the
name so badly it took me a full minute to realize he was talking about me! I can remember just standing there with my
mouth open. I was horrified, but I soon
realized that my brother had not written what I had dictated, but had
substituted his own words in my name. Naturally, being six, I promptly told on
my brother, expecting swift justice for this evil deed.
The horror I had
felt upon hearing the fake letter with my name attached read on TV paled in
comparison to the absolute mortification I felt when my case was thrown out of
“The Parents’ Court”!
And that is when I
learned the great lesson of this story:
You can get away with almost anything if the authorities can’t stop
laughing.
Oh, man, I grew up on Popeye and Icky Twerp, but this was after they moved to afternoons for the after school crowd. He had this gang of moth-eaten apes on Slam Bang Theater were Ajax and Delphinium, Caladium, Arkadelphia. and Linoleum. And not only were there cartoons, but there was The Three Stooges. The show ran from 1959 to 1972. There's a website with archived footage from the show. It was NOT strong on production values, but hey. He was playing to 10 year olds.
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