Christmas, 1955, and I found this under the tree: my first stringed instrument, made by my Coonskin cap-wearing hero, Davey Crockett. My father, a musician, tuned it up and put it in my tiny hands. I must have been a musical savant because I played and sang, with no mistakes, the theme song to the Disney show Davey Crockett. My parents, flaber and gasted, grabbed the Brownie Box camera and took my picture while I was wailing on my miniature ax, mailing it the next day to The Arther Godfrey Talent Hour in New York City. I continued to give impromptu recitals around the neighborhood for my buddies until Georgie accidentally sat on my Davey guitar and crushed it to splinters. After that, I couldn’t remember the words to the song and forgot how to play, and wouldn’t you know it, a week later, Arther Godfrey called my folks for an audition. I could’a been a contender!
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Notes From The Cactus Patch 
Ah, Arthur Godfrey.
In 1968, I was a student pilot working on my cross-country requirements and landed at the Leesburg Airfield to get my logbook signed by the airfield operations supervisor. As I walked into the office, which wasn’t very large, the Ops guy asked, “Did you just land in that Cherokee?” I admitted it. He said, “You’ve got a phone call.”
The phone receiver was lying on the counter. I picked it up, “Hello?”
Arthur Godfrey was on the line, and he chewed my ass for about three or four minutes about “coming in too low” over his barn, adding something about cows not wanting to milk and chickens not wanting to lay, and then slammed down his phone.
I may have been a bit under the glide path, but I was still learning how to fly. He’s lucky I didn’t do a touch-and-go off the roof of his barn. For years, I marveled. How many people can say Arthur Godfrey had chewed them out?
I may be the last one left alive.
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Great recount, Mustang. I read he was a bit of a prima donna, but had a great show.
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At least you ended up happier than the raccoon whose skin you put on your head.
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Well, for a child, I guess, I did. Poor Rocky.
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Raccoon caps were popular until Stetson invented his western hat … in any case, form follows function: The coon-skin cap helped to retain body heat whenever temperatures were severe, causing people to freeze to death. Raccoon meat doesn’t taste like chicken, but it did keep people alive until Clarence Saunders invented the supermarket (Piggly Wiggly) in 1916.
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Without the twist of fate, early fame may have interfered with your cap gun slinging childhood.
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