4/19/2007

My reminiscence yesterday about my first public appearance brought to mind another the first- the very first parade I was in as “Son of Svengoolie.” It was in late November or early December of 1979- and it was what was then the big State Street Christmas parade! Now, I’m not sure if, back then, they didn’t have separate floats for the various television and radio stations, or if they just wanted to include a bunch of celebrities in different places, but, I ended up in a fire engine with a whole group of people from various stations. I’m not sure if I’m blurring two different Christmas parades or what, but I recall they first had us all crammed into a sort of penthouse at the old Executive House, and I do mean, shoulder to shoulder! I met Linda Yu (who had very nice shoulders) who introduced me to her new co-anchor , the newly-arrived Ron Magers! I also met, for the first time, my friend the late Tim Weigel, who told me what a fan he was, and introduced me to his two children, Jennifer and Rafer (who are now all grown up with media jobs, and, boy , am I feeling old right about now!) Eventually, we were moved down to a staging area, possibly in a restaurant that used to be called “the Little Corporal”-where I was placed at a table with singer/actress Stephanie Mills (who was Dorothy in the stage version of “the Wiz” and didn’t seem to want to be in a parade right then) and Chicago broadcast legend Lee Phillip (who later, with her husband, Bill Bell, created many successful network soap operas) and two of her young daughters. One of them, seeing my top hat, asked me “are you some kind of magician?” (Guess Son of Svengoolie wasn’t standard viewing fare in the Bell household…) I know one of these two girls later became a featured actress in her parents’ show “the Young and the Restless”- that day, she certainly seemed both. Eventually, they brought me out to a fire truck, which I shared with several broadcast personalities, including Jay Levine. Some wandering clown with a squirt gun came by, and all the celebs on the truck were cringing to avoid any spritzing, as Jay Levine intoned to me, “you know, It’s YOU that he’s trying to hit…”- the one thing I remember is that the truck had some huge round balloons on it, and every time we’d get to , say, El tracks that crossed over State Street, we had to pull them down so we could go under the tracks. Then, when the truck would speed up, the balloons would come down and hit us in the head! Well, that was somewhat better than in another State Street parade, when I was presented with a travel mug filled with hot chocolate – that preceded to leak when I put it into the inside pocket of my Sven coat… or, other parades where they had me on a fire truck WITH THE SIRENS GOING FULL BLAST THE WHOLE TIME! I…I’m sorry, was I screaming, trying to be heard over the sirens?! My ears were ringing for a couple days after that kind of exposure… anyway, I’ll expose you to more Sven blog tomorrow!