Rubbing Elbows with the Rich and Famous

As a world-famous blogger, I’ve naturally had my share of encounters with glamorous stars. Relax for a bit and I’ll regale you with some dirt on how stars REALLY act when the cameras aren’t around.

My first brush with fame occurred when I was about seven years old. At the time, one of the local Birmingham, Ala., television stations aired an afternoon kid’s show featuring Sergeant Jack. My memory is hazy, but I think Sergeant Jack was a law-enforcement official of some type. He wore a brown uniform, anyway. He sat at a desk, interacted with some puppets, showed a couple of Popeye cartoons, and talked to the in-studio audience, which was about 20 kids on a small set of bleachers. Members of the viewing audience (which seemed vast at the time, but was probably a total of about 400 kids in the Greater Birmingham Metropolitan Area) could also win prizes by mailing in a postcard with their name and address on it; if Sergeant Jack drew your card out of a big barrel, you won the prize.

Anyway, one day I was a member of the in-studio audience on Sergeant Jack. For a long time, this was the crowning achievement of my existence, although it’s never seemed to impress anybody else that much. Certainly the few times I’ve used it as a pick-up line in my adult life, it didn’t carry a lot of weight with the ladies.

I’m sure you’re dying to know what Sergeant Jack was like. Contrary to what you hear about a lot of big stars, he seemed very nice and not stuck-up at all, but he wasn’t too smart. The sad truth is, he was pretty stupid. I base this observation on the fact that when I was in the studio audience, he asked us to tell him when one of the puppets poked its head around the curtain of the puppet stage behind him. I don’t remember why he wanted us to do that, but those were the instructions he gave us. And no matter how loud we yelled, or how strenuously we pointed, Sergeant Jack NEVER saw the stupid puppet. He’d be blathering away at the camera, talking about the next Popeye cartoon he was going to show, and the puppet would appear behind him, furtively poking just part of its fuzzy body around the curtain, and we’d holler and scream and have conniptions on the bleachers, and Sergeant Jack would say “Huh? What? The puppet? Where?” and by the time he turned around the wily puppet would have disappeared again.

If Sergeant Jack truly was a law enforcement officer, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that crime rates soared in the mid-70s. If you get my drift.

My next encounter with a superstar happened when I was around 12 or so, when one of my classmates sang on another television show, Country Boy Eddie. In a stark departure from the Sergeant Jack Show, which was a cheap locally produced show broadcast in the afternoon, Country Boy Eddie was a cheap locally produced show broadcast early in the morning. The main thing I remember about Country Boy Eddie’s show was that he had a line of cards in front of his desk that spelled out “Country Boy Eddie.” People could call in and pick one of the letters, and Eddie would turn it over to reveal what prize the caller had won. I don’t remember what the prizes were, but I don’t think viewers were burning up the phone lines every morning in an effort to win, so they couldn’t have been that great.

My classmate, who was a decent singer, performed a gospel song live one morning while Country Boy Eddie accompanied her on his guitar. She seemed to get more fame from that than I did with my appearance on the Sergeant Jack Show, which I thought was amazingly unfair, because she didn’t have to deal with the frustration of the furtive puppet like I did. Still, though, she didn’t let her fame go to her head, as I’m sure I would have done in her place. She remained very nice and approachable at school, even though she kept turning me down whenever I suggested, based on our common bond of stardom, that we should go steady or at least make out a little.

I don’t want to give the impression of being a name-dropper here, but I’m not done yet. A few short years later, when I was 15, I visited Biltmore House in Asheville, N.C., during the filming of The Private Eyes. While I was “on the set,” as we say in show business, I got a glimpse of what I believe was the back of either Tim Conway or Don Knotts. Whoever it was seemed very nice, based on the split-second we were in roughly the same geographic area.

So there you go – three separate encounters with some of the biggest names in show business. I realize this may make some of you look at me differently, or even consider me to be above you. Rest assured, that’s not the case. I put my pants on the same way you do, assuming you wear pants with two legs.

 

(c) 2012 John Puckett