I feel like unwrapping a giant Hershey Bar, opening my
extra large bag of Ann Page potato chips, drinking my Coke in a
frosty
glass bottle, and plopping down on the sofa with my Dad for Saturday
morning television so we could
watch...
Sky King
The Lone Ranger and Tonto
Hopalong Cassidy
and the ultimate Saturday Western,
Roy Rogers and Dale Evans!
on our Giant Motorola Television!
Afterwords I would put on my Hopalong Cassidy suit and
boots
and go outside to ride my Hopalong Cassidy tricycle,
which I named
Trigger*...
I got my 'Hopalong Cassidy' Trike for appearing in a live WDAF television
commercial for the company my Dad worked
for,
Flavor Kist Cookies & Crackers. They were having a give-a-way
contest for a trip for a family of four to the set of Hopalong Cassidy in
Hollywood. They gave me the Hopalong Cassidy
Costume and the Hopalong Cassidy
Tricycle for doing the commercial. All I had to do was set on a live
pony while Randal Jessee, WDAF announcer, did his spiel about the
contest.
I cried for days when I
found out I didn't get to keep the pony.
I named my tricycle* 'Trigger' because I had a picture of the
ultimate
girl's tricycle in 1952. The
Roy Rogers Trigger Tricycle!
That trike cost more than my Dad earned in a
month, so I never got one. The picture was folded up and placed in a
small cedar box that had a lock and key and sat on my dresser. I
took the picture out every Saturday morning after Roy Rogers and Dale Evans
left my
television screen and I would say a little prayer over it and put it
back in the box and lock it until the next Saturday. I never got bitter or depressed
because I
didn't get that tricycle. I actually felt hope that there was such a
wonderful thing in the cosmos that I could aspire to own.
It
probably
made me a Capitalist for life!
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