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| Martha Raye |
published by the StarTribune
October 8, 1951
DOROTHY KILGALLEN noted in her column the other day that Martha Raye's daughter was a disc jockey at 6 years of age. My kid is one at 2 1/2--an accomplished one.
But I'm not bragging about it. It moves me to tears as I ponder the folly which was wrought eight months ago. It was then that we took the old portable phonograph out of mothballs and made it our son's own.
On that bleak day pandemonium came to our household. In trooped Quackie the Duck and the Three Little Pigs and Tubby the Tuba. Bozo the Clown followed, fetching along all the beasts of the circus. Now we have everything from talking fiddles to laughing hyenas. Close your eyes at any time of day around the joint and you can imagine yourself in zoo, circus tent, barnyard or frog pond.
IT ALL STARTED innocently enough. No expert in the care and raising of children could have quarreled with the theory which brought this soul-shattering Frankenstein into the family circle. Teach the offspring to go it on his own. Make him self-assertive. Ingrain in him the ability to amuse himself. Get him to do something besides suck his thumb. It was all quite progressive.
Well, he took to platter-spinning like a born soap salesman. I fancy he could learn commercials readily had we the stomach to parrot a few in his presence.
In a matter of hours he had "Old Buttermilk Sky" worn right down to the curds. "Rumors Are Flying" then bit the dust, along with "Full Moon and Empty Arms," "Doin' What Comes Naturally" and other tunes which had spun their way out of our adult hearts.
But our cherub's appetite was insatiable. Soon we had the choice of letting him finish off the Unfinished Symphony and cracking the Nutcracker Suite or buying him some records of his own. I chose the latter course, feeling that if I did not he might one day even get his destructive mitts on "Uncle Josh at the Roller Skating Rink."
SO IT CAME to pass that the jungle and the barnyard engulfed us, that the drama of Goldilocks was to unfold relentlessly, that Mr. McGregor and Peter Rabbit were to bend our ears so incessantly I wished to the good Lord that both would be put into a pie by Mrs. McGregor.
This is what distresses me most about it all. I find a cruel and choleric attitude clouding my view of all things juvenile. Much as I try to combat it, a mere child is turning me into a churl, steering my ship of life toward cynical, Machiavellian shoals.
THIS DRIFT toward depravity I hope to arrest, but it comes hard. No longer can the mere reading of a story satisfy my son just before bedtime. I must be Farmer Brown's horse--with sound effects. And I confess I have learned to whinny in a way that should make Farmer Brown come running with the oats. My present project is to make like Percy the Penguin. This is rendered difficult by the fact that I have no grounding whatever in the penguin tongue.
But these World Series days are providing the ultimate test. I doubt that sanity will remain. How could any rabid baseball fan, tuning to the Polo Grounds, be expected to stay composed when he got confused as to whether Yogi Berra or Pedro the Piccolo was at bat? How be jolly when, with the bases full and two out, an elephant keeps butting in to say "You're just in time to feed me some peanuts?"
Were it not that I am indulgent as a senile grandfather and as long-suffering as a bell-hop at a convention, I would crack these plastic horrors over my knee and bring sweet silence back to my abode. But that is easier said than done. The dern things are unbreakable, cuss it!
Copyright 2014 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.
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| Uncle Josh at the Roller Skating Rink |
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