Big Grin II

Whee! My previous post was published to Captain Ernie's Cartoon Showboat in Captain Ernie's Seabag. Thanks Rich!

After Captain Ernie's Cartoon Showboat was over we kids had to switch over to Dark Shadows for our afternoon entertainment. When I was a kid it scared me. As an adult I tried watching it and just didn't get it. Now I am one of the biggest fans of very cheesy, bad horror movies.

Enter Vincent Hedges the Vampire and Acri's Creature Feature hosted by Chuck Acri in a leisure suit. The cheesiest, campiest late night horror film show I have ever seen. My Dad and I would stay up late, pop a big bowl of popcorn and watch the show. We saw great horror flicks like "The Mummy" and "Creature from the Black Lagoon" and some really bad ones who's names I cannot remember. The bits in between the movie were the funniest with Vincent Hedges, Emmit the Hunchback, Beauregard the Werewolf, The Missing Link, the Caveman, Bernie the Skull and Fang the Wonder Dog. The was fan art and viewer mail to become "Creep of the Week". Years later I became acquinted with Chuck's daughter. She was a friend of one of my roommates at the time. Which was kind of cool in it's own way.

Clicking around the site just floods me with all kinds of memories from my childhood, my teens and well, right up until I moved to Des Moines. I hadn't realized how much the television and radio stations and the people that worked there were such a large part of the fabric of my life. Forty years of my life. I'm forty-five now and we had moved to Davenport in 1968 shortly after my Dad returned from the Vietnam War.

These people came into your living room every day at least three times a day and they became, in a way, a part of your family. Dinner at six with Channel 6 was the norm at my house. You felt a little sad when some one would move to a different station, move on to a different market or into an unseen position with the station. You would have a little thrill when some one you liked from a different station would move over to your favorite station. When you would see them out in the real world you would just stop and stare with your mouth hanging open. Ya, that would be me when I saw Jim King from WQAD and his family out shopping at whatever Seasonal Concepts was in a previous life.

I consider myself quite lucky that in the twenty some odd years of waitressing and bar tending I got to meet a lot of the local celebs, become acquaintances with a few, friends with others. Which led to me ending up in a few news bits because they knew I was a bit of a ham.

All sounds a little pompous doesn't it? But no, they sparked a lot of memories from my life too long to list here that brought laughter and tears.

And a big grin.