In Supermarket Parking Lots...They were #1

The 1950's were tough for my dad. He was a TV holdout.
We were absolutely the LAST family in our neighborhood to get an idiot box.

"It'll ruin everybody!" "Kids won't play outside; won't get their homework done." They'll all be morons!" (As usual, you could take his prescience to the bank.)

Until he succumbed to the lure of televised baseball and the Friday Night Fights, (How are YOU fixed for blades by the way?), I had to practically live next door at the Chamberlain's house. They HAD TV and six kids...their very own peanut gallery. And, there I was every weekday afternoon huddled with the Chamberlains as we gazed at the TV test pattern waiting for the magic hour of 5 o'clock when we would hear the magic begin.

"HEY KIDS, WHAT TIME IS IT?" It was, as we all responded: "HOWDY DOODY TIME!"

Howdy, Buffalo Bob, Dilly Dally, Mr. Bluster, Clarabelle, Chief Thunder Thud and the always HOT Princess Tinka Tonka were a national show out of New York that every kid in America thought was just about the best damn thing they had ever seen. It was the cat's nuts and it was just for us.

Local broadcasters, never shy about copying success especially when it would allow them to pocket a couple jillionty dollars, were quick to get on board the kid train.
Local kiddie shows sprang up in nearly every metropolitan area large enough to support a TV station. Playing to the tykes was a GOLD MINE! Overnight, guys,( it was mostly guys), who were perhaps weathermen or TV engineers donned cowboy, clown or space cadet get-ups to entertain and sell stuff to the ever so coddled baby boomers. It was a classic scenario of local broadcast ner'- do- wells becoming very LARGE celebrity fish in dinky show biz ponds.

While it lasted, it was sweet.

In southern Michigan, Detroit spawned a huge stable of kid show hosts. I thought they were just about the biggest stars EVER and so did the Chamberlains and the rest of my gutter-snipe pals.

There was Soupy Sales on Channel 7, WXYZ. Soupy went on to greater fame at all the ABC owned and operated stations and enjoyed a long career. (The kids missed most of the innuendo on Soupy's shows, but the adults didn't and that produced jumbo ratings.)

There was also Johnny Ginger, Wixey, and Milky the Clown who didn't do much for me.




Milky and his loser friends





One of the best Detroit area kid show hosts was a guy named Ted Lloyd. Thanks to the Internet I just recently learned his name. (Hey, what's 50 or 60 years when it comes to finding out important information?) To me his name will always be Sagebrush Shorty.

"Here he comes ridin' into town again
It's Sagebrush...Sagebrush Shorty.
Here's Shorty NOW!"

Every time I heard that jingle I knew it was going to be a good time with Shorty. He had his little wooden pal, Bronco Billy Buttons, and a whole mess of really cool cartoons. It was kid heaven. I loved that show.


Thanks again to the Internet, I learned that Shorty left Detroit in 1965 and headed for L.A. where he mostly paid the bills by teaching ventriloquism until his death in 1999.
It made me sad to think that old Shorty was living just up the road from me in Southern California for all of those years and I never even knew it.

Sometime in the late 60's or early 70's the government got involved in children's television programing producing shows like Sesame Street and the Electric Company. They were, and I guess still are, good shows that kids enjoy. Why our tax dollars are helping to provide this entertainment is lost on me. It's just another example of the federal government getting into a business they don't understand...like maybe... banking. Oops.

With the assent of children's programming on public television, just as the blacksmiths and telegraph operators of the old West, the local commercial kiddie show hosts began to disappear. Today, like investment bankers, they are all gone.

Hey gang, how about a Popeye cartoon for old time sake??

Now, where's that cartoon machine?

Do we need a cartoon machine bailout?