Maybe it was because my birthday was last week, or maybe it’s because Trump and I are close to the same age and were born into the same American culture of George Washington and the cherry tree, and Pick Temple, who hosted a 1950s kids’ show on Washington D.C.’s WTOP-TV.
Or maybe it’s because of the midterms…
Wait a minute, who the hell is Pick Temple? He jumped out of my subconscious from, like, 70 years ago… Yes, it’s the midterms.
When I was about eight or nine years old, my mother signed me up as a possible “Birthday Boy” on The Pick Temple Giant Ranch show.
Mr. Temple was a sort of cowboy god for after-school cowboy and cowgirl third-graders. The half-hour show was like a combination of Mister Rogers and Mister Ed on black-and-white TV.
On TV, Pick Temple appeared to be dressed entirely in white, and he played a lot of guitar. If you were chosen to be a Birthday Boy or Girl, you were singled out and got to ride in the saddle that was positioned on a sawhorse while the William Tell Overture played.
You were allowed to pull your six-guns out of their holsters during the music and fire them wildly at the sky — but there were NO caps allowed, apparently for fire safety.
It was black-and-white TV, but in person Mr. Temple was not dressed in all white like he looked on my TV at home.
He was dressed in light blue from hat to boots, because the studio lights, I was told, would make Mr. Temple “shine too bright on your TV at home.”
This was disturbing, I remember. But it was minor compared to what came next.
When my mother put my name in to be a Birthday Boy, she accidentally wrote down her brother’s birthday instead of mine. While I was being driven to the studio, a shocking thing happened.
My mother told me to lie about my birthday.
I held it together while they sang “Happy Birthday” to me as I sat in the saddle — up until they turned on the music and I pulled out my guns.
Then, as the William Tell Overture blasted over the speakers, I could not tell a lie. I started screaming over and over, “It’s not my birthday! It’s not my birthday!”
The music continued and the chaos grew as people off camera waved their hands, trying to get me to play along. But I had integrity, dammit, as a nine-year-old.
And it got worse. Because I couldn’t get anybody’s attention, I pulled out the guns and started firing, but I had forgotten to take the caps out.
They stopped filming for an instant while they snatched my cap guns, then went right back to filming with the music at full blast.
Before the broadcast, my mother had invited all my friends and their families to sit on our living room floor after school and watch my performance when it aired a week later.
I was worried I would be embarrassed for the rest of my life.
In hindsight, it wasn’t as bad as I thought. They had cut the film and spliced it together so that, in an instant, the William Tell Overture lost track of itself and came back in a different place, and I appeared for the rest of the performance without any guns, my hands at the sides of the saddle, motionless and almost in tears.
My classmates didn’t really catch the interruption, but of course all the adults had been talking about it all week and were laughing hysterically. They left, saying things to my parents like, “Well, he shot the lights out with that one!”
As for those parents, I’m sure they’re all dead. Even the Reflecting Pool has lost its memory in an algae bloom. I hope the truth is restored and the lies end with the midterms, but I suspect not.
Wouldn’t it be great if our leaders had the integrity of George Washington — or, at a bare minimum, a nine-year-old?