Orville The Dragon

Today we started seeing iguanas again, sunning themselves around our building. It has been a hard winter for them, as it has been colder than normal in the Keys. Iguanas are not indigenous to the Florida Keys, When B and I lived here in the early nineties there were no iguanas running around free. People who kept these lizards as pets must have freaked out when their cute little lizards grew to the size of alligators , and just turned them loose. In the wilds of south Florida and the Keys, the iguanas prospered and spread. I guess that sharing space with the iguanas doesn't bother me too much, they don't seem to cause much trouble. I do how ever take exception to the Burmese pythons, and cobras that also seem to be prospering in south Florida. We have all seen these stories on the news shows.

Now I got to thinking about small dragons, funny how my mind works at times. I was reminded of my favorite dragons when I was a child. I used to watch Bennie and Cecil the seasick sea serpent cartoons, some of the first I remember seeing. We had black and white television, and next to Bennie and Cecil my favorite show was the Popeye Club with Officer Don. Officer Don was a local broadcaster in Atlanta Georgia, who dressed up as a friendly police officer, and children loved him.

I have to pause here, and try to explain to a lot of people, how television in those days was a very regional operation. The Popeye club appeared on television every afternoon from 4:30 till 5:30. The show was broadcast live from WSB studios, housed in what then seemed to be a huge building at the corner of Peachtree Street and Beverly road. The building had huge white columns and in fact was referred to as "White Columns on Peachtree". The show featured a live audience of children every day, and every day it was a different group of kids. It was popular in those days for parents to take a group of kids to appear on the show as a birthday party, sort of the Chucky Cheese of it's day.

On the show between showing Popeye cartoons, children were allowed to play games and win prizes. Games such as musical chairs and the all time favorite Oooie Gooie. In Oooie Gooie there was a lazy Susan turn table loaded with paper bags all the bags had a prize except one, and it held a mixture of raw eggs, mud, syrup and anything gooie. A child was blind folded and the bags were spun around, then the child would reach into the bag hoping to win a prize and more times than not would stick their small hand into goo.

Now your thinking what has this to do with dragons and lizards? Officer Don had a puppet side kick called Orville the Dragon. Orvil appeared through a wobbly piece of plywood that served as part of the shows set, and provided comic relief to Officer Don.

Now, in the year of 1965, the old Chief got to make his television debut on the Popeye club. The occasion of the trip to the show was my friend Tim's birthday. We got to leave school piled into Tim's Mom"s car, about half a dozen of the best behaved young men that the world had ever seen. All our faces were washed clean and we were dressed in our best looking clothes, because no mother wanted her child to appear on WSB television looking like we had running wild playing on a dirty playground. I think I even had on new underwear, because Mom said you could just never know what might happen.

I did not want to play any games or count down any cartoons, I wanted to rip the head off Orville the Dragon, and pull him off the hand of the puppeteer on live television. I would be the hero of the known universe. My plan was to be picked for a segment where you could go up and stand on a peach crate look Orville in the eye and ask a question, which he would answer with a joke.

The time came and Officer Don asked, who would like to ask Orville a question, and I was chosen, because no one else really wanted to do it anyway, you did not win a prize for asking a question.

I made my way from the bleacher seats to the plywood set climbed up on the shaky peach crate and Officer Don said " go ahead ask your question". I had a moment of brain lock, I didn't really have a question. I forgot that part of the plan. Then I burst out, why are you green? What a stupid question, how could I ask that? No matter, at this point the plan started moving ahead, I reached through the window in the plywood and grabbed the puppet dragon. Try as I might I could not pull it off the puppeteer's hand, but I continued to pull as the show went off the air.

The puppeteer was not amused, and Officer Don just smiled, but for one fleeting moment I was a hero.

Officer Don, is still around and writes a blog about being in the television business for over fifty years. Officer Don, here's to you thanks for making the world a fun place to grow up in, and if you see Orville tell him I am sorry.

Old Chief sends.