When I was a child, shortly after recorded history began, and with it, advertising, things were much simpler. I generally watched Cousin Cliff in the afternoon on Channel 13. I occasionally watched Benny Carl on Channel 6. Mr. Carl seemed like a nice guy, but he carried the adventure cartoon "Clutch Cargo," who was no match for Cousin Cliff's Popeye and the Three Stooges for cinematic artistry. Channel 6, your clear picture station, did, however, feature Bugs Bunny. I did, and still do, like me some Bugs Bunny and associates. I don't know what was up with Clutch Cargo. It was like watching a comic strip with the characters having human lips a la Conan O'Brien, animated by flipping the frame every three seconds. I can still whistle the theme song, I just discovered. Haven't thought of that for awhile. Hope I don't dream like that tonight. Comic strip characters with live lips. Scary. But I regress . . .
About this time of the year I anticipated the commercials on both programs more than I anticipated Popeye, the Stooges, or Bugs. The breaks were full of slinkies and wheeloes and silly putty and Operation and Mouse Trap and banana bikes and frisbees and walkie talkies and model trains and racetracks . . . Way better than the Sears or J. C. Penney's Christmas catalogues. Mattel, Hasbro, and Parker Brothers were household names, at least in my part of the house.
I believed what those advertisements said. If you couldn't trust Cousin Cliff and Benny Carl, who then?
One advertisement that really hooked me was not about Christmas toys. It was about shoes. Back then all athletic shoes were called tennis shoes, even when playing basketball, football, or baseball. I thought they were "tinney" shoes until I was about 40.
These particular shoes, not when I was 40, but back when I was six or so, were called P.F. Flyers. I had always been a Keds kid. But this television ad rocked my world. P. F. Flyers had a "secret built in wedge." I don't know why they chose to let the secret out of the bag on national, or at least Birmingham TV, but there it was right there on both Cousin Cliff and Benny Carl. They showed a engineer's rendering of the wedge buried underneath the rubber of the sole, doing what it did. I never really knew how the wedge worked, but, according to the 60 second documentary, it promised to make me run faster and jump higher, which is pretty much every six year old boy's goal.
I harassed and harangued my poor mother until she finally bought me a pair of P. F. Flyers with the secret built in wedge. I don't think she knew the secret. Shortly afterward I won the gold in the Olympic decathlon.
Not really. But when I put those shoes on I felt like I could, except at that age I didn't know what a decathlon was. I most definitely felt like I could run faster and bound across ditches in a single leap, which I did for a few days, annoying all who came around. Feeling like I could run faster and jump higher probably helped me do so. I'm not sure the secret wedge did.
Looking back I wish I had cut into the soles of those P. F. Flyers to check out that secret built in wedge, sort of like I unwound the coil on my brother's Cub Scout crystal radio to see how it worked. The consequences of that experiment are probably why I kept my curiosity in check for awhile.
So I never checked. And I guess I'll never know.
There are a lot of secret built in wedges around these days. Things that we are told exist, and will make things great, if we'll just trust and buy it, without looking too closely.
I don't think we can afford to do that anymore . . .now without some serious sole searching.
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