MISTER ROGERS -- WON'T YOU BE MY MUSE?

The Inquirer


MISTER ROGERS -- WON'T YOU BE MY MUSE?
By Charles E. Kraus
Published in the 7/9/18 edition(s) of the Philadelphia Inquirer and it's related papers

​​​​​​​​​​My wife and I were a bit surprised when we received a thank-you note from Mister Rogers. I’d attempted to get him a copy of the book we’d written about children’s parties. It had been passed from one children’s entertainer to another until it reached a musical event where Fred Rogers was giving a keynote.

Six months went by and I’d assumed Mr. McFeely’s speedy delivery service had mistaken our book for junk mail and tossed it.  Rogers apologized for the delay, explaining that he was a little behind in his correspondence.  Our book was being added to his permanent collection.  I was elated! His thank-you was going into the permanent keepsake file in our office.

In truth, I’ve kept more than his kind note. As a life-long children’s performer, I hold his methods of communicating with children in my heart. His approach to interacting with young people went beyond “entertaining” them. He mirrored curiosity, kindness, thoughtfulness and wonder, respecting, accepting and celebrating the vulnerabilities and limitations felt by all children. He helped them to develop attitudes that would allow neighborhood visitors to flourish as the years passed.

In the 1960s, television programming aimed at the younger set consisted of live shows hosted by ex-vaudevillians, comedians and radio broadcasters who had ventured into TV and meandered to the kid show niche.  Most were just passing through this career phase on their way to more sophisticated adult programming. A few found the genre attractive and decided to specialize in the children’s entertainment field.

Captain Kangaroo, Shari Lewis, Miss Frances, and Buffalo Bob Smith reigned among the most successful.  The Captain, Bob Keeshan, had begun his TV career as an NBC page, graduating to a stint as Clarabell the Clown, then transitioning into a Captain’s costume. He was congenial, warm, and ever so befuddled by the other characters on his show.

Shari was a charming, aggressive, talented ventriloquist who communicated especially well with her adorable puppets. Miss Frances, the agreeable hostess of Ding Dong School, projected a friendly, if bland, nursery-school teacher persona. Technically innovative, her program kept cameras unusually low, giving home viewers a sense of watching from a child’s perspective. Buffalo Bob, a veteran broadcaster, starred on The Howdy Doody Show. He was highly involved with marionettes, props, and juvenile situations, part of a cast of outlandish characters who chased one another around the set and got squirted from a seltzer bottle.

Mister Rogers brought something else to the screen. He didn’t do gags, pratfalls or anything that smacked of show business. He was an explainer, not a costumed character, just a man, being himself.  A person who enjoyed sharing his enthusiasms. These were contagious because they were genuine. That’s the message that I got from him, that I’ve made the center of my programs for kids.  Respect yourself and your audience.  Be caring and be authentic.

What a wonderful way to approach life.

DETAILS FROM LIFE and from the internet

DETAILS FROM LIFE and from the internet
By Charles Kraus

As we age, we continue to learn about ourselves.  Part of this involves assessing outcomes.  You get the law degree or didn't you?  You find the life partner?  Enjoy becoming a parent?  Make those career moves?  Did you see the world like you planned, or sit things out in Bakersfield?  Are you pleased with yourself, over time, or disappointed?

There is another kind of self-knowledge   I've been getting it on the internet, finding details about my past, updates regarding old friends and associates, filling in gaps. Collecting information about the neighborhoods where I grew up, and the schools I attended.  I've come across uploaded photographs and home movies of events in my life taken by strangers, or by people who knew me more than I knew them.  Every once in a while I seem to be reading my obituary, but it turns out there are lots of guys with my name, and some of them have passed away.

I'm accumulating personal-historical data.  Checking memories against hard facts.   I have had this vague image of Pennsylvania Station, the old Penn station, and the old Madison Square Garden, two locations my family frequented when I was a boy.  Magnificent structural blurs. 
A quick search and there they are in virtual detail. I was right, Penn Station was a doozy.

PS 79 still exists, though they've given it a new name and turned it into some sort of middle school.  I attended kindergarten there in 1950s.  Google Maps just took me to the attached house I lived in on Walton Avenue that we occupied back then.  The stone lions are gone from the stoops.  And though I doubt the current owners realize it, that narrow set of steps, leading down to the basement door, is where the coal truck anchored its shut before releasing our delivery.  Rosie Wagner's place is next door.  We raised a lot of cats.  Her family had birds.  And a giant box turtle that ever so slowly explored  the back yard.  For all I know, he's still out there; they live a long time, don't they?  Google's roving tour, a moveable street view, takes me across Walton.  I'm looking at Beth Rose's front door.  Then, at the apartment house above.  Kids could do all of their trick or treating without leaving that building.

The past used to remain speculative, we either left it full of holes or filled in the empty spaces with guess work that, over time, began to masquerade as facts.

Obviously, I'm not the only one trying to reconnect with my roots.  Perhaps you've received an email from someone from your past, asking if you're the person who lived around the corner back when.  You write back, adding a few more details to her record and pick up a few for your own.

During the 15 months I spent on the USS Fulton, the ancient sub-tender was generally tied up in New London, Ct.  I left the Navy in 1970.  Little did I know that two years later the ship would make it's way to the Mediterranean, and eventually to La Maddalena, Italy.  Until finding this itinerary on Wikipedia, I'd believed the Fulton was so obsolete that needed to stay close to shore.  Just one more piece of my past that benefited from reevaluation.

In the early 1960s, for part of my high school education, I was sent to Kingsley Hall, way up in North Egremont, Massachusetts.  Recently,  I was wondering about its fate.   My fingertip research told me the school closed long ago.  If I understand correctly, one of it's buildings is now a police station.  Makes sense to me.