Saturday Morning ~ circa 1952

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!