This would be Cap’n Gus and his cartoon show on every weekday afternoon. If Captain Kangaroo was a kindly grandfather, Cap’n Gus was a jovial uncle in shiny red bowling shirt, white captain’s hat, and gigantic red moustache. He’d greet us every day with “Ahoy, Mateys!” and announce that today we would “do the do and the whole McClue!” From his seat aboard a mock tugboat he would ring his bell and present Popeye cartoons, as well as many of the older Leon Schlesinger and Harman-Ising shorts, and even for a while dubbed, serialized Russian animated fairy tales like The Magic Fish and Beauty and the Beast. Periodically he would descend on “the Galley,” bleachers filled with local children, to interview them on their favorite cartoons and what they liked to do. It was a childhood dream (never fulfilled, and considered with equal excitement and dread) to actually be on the show and meet Cap’n Gus, or even get a shout-out if you were feeling “puny.” He mugged and jollied and gave funny moral commentary on the cartoons he showed: his drawling out of “Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius” was a lecture on the perils of pretentiousness all in itself. He always ended the show with “Be good and always do what your mommy and daddy tells you to! Ba-ding-bing!”
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