The puppet wagon was a summer highlight when I was a
kid. Once a week it would come into town
playing music to alert the neighborhood that the show was about to begin. The internet tells me the show has been going
on for 35 years. It was the coolest. It was the place to be.
The picture above is the same wagon with the same puppets
from back in the day. The skunk named
Aroma is the main character. On the back
of the wagon is a mailbox so you can write the puppets fan mail. Seriously, that was a big deal. I would draw pictures, bring them cool-looking
rocks, and give them candy, all sorts of things. I was a puppet groupie.
At the end of the show, the puppets would check the mailbox
and read the fan letters out loud. When
you’re five, this is as awesome-sauce as it gets.
Every week, this older kid named Davey would turn
up during show time to pick on the younger kids and make fun of the puppet
show. He generally made our little lives
miserable; a real troublemaker.
One day my brother and I told my mom about miserable Davey. She hatched a devious plan. Since miserable Davey would be at the show to
heckle the puppets, wouldn’t it be nice to write some fan mail from him?
So out came the construction paper and crayons and we made a
beautiful letter that probably looked something like this:
I was nervous about the plot, but when the puppet wagon rolled into town I mustered up some courage and put the letter in
the mailbox. At the end of the show they
read the love letter from Davey. I can’t
remember his reaction but I know all the other kids giggled.
And that my friends, is how I learned how to humiliate a ten year old. To this day my mom will still say he had it coming.
Probably not our proudest family moment.
*Miserable Davey moved away a couple of years later (for non-puppet related reasons). I don't know whatever became of him.
