About a half century ago I was one of the guys who sat in the beautifully upholstered chair who—just when the TV movie was getting interesting—would say, “We’ll be back in a minute, after this important message.”

The message was always about a product, something you could buy and use and, hopefully, enjoy.

Most of these TV ads were professionally produced in Chicago, New York or Hollywood with handsome men and beautiful women proclaiming the benefits you would receive, and doing it with a light musical background.  It was all black and white in those days, but it was good.

In the early 1950s, both radio and television advertising content was unofficially regulated by an association of broadcasters that first got together in 1927.  There were rules.  There was no punishment for disobeying them, but almost everyone in the industry agreed that they were good rules for good advertising.

For instance, neither doctors nor lawyers were solicited to advertise their services, and in most cases if they contacted broadcast media to purchase advertising to promote their services, they were refused.

Imagine, if you will, a world without lawyers telling you about asbestos, car accidents, and missed overtime pay, and without doctors urging you to get a new knee.  We all slept better then.

Local commercials were often read off-camera to slides or with TV stills of products, yet some of the  local actors and announcers worked on-camera grasping or demonstrating the product they were selling. Hanging on my office wall there is a picture of me and one of the first “weather girls” of television.  There were no special effects, no radar images—only Marcia making long frontal lines on a plastic map of the U.S. with a felt pen. My job was to pitch the bliss of eating Puffin Biscuits, biscuits ready to burst from the cylindrical cardboard package when you tapped it on the table.

Then as now, automobile dealers, new and used, advertised on television.  Many used movie clips from the car manufacturers, ending the commercial with a slide that listed pricing and the dealer’s name and address.  There was no shouting, no wild gestures, no girls poised with slipping bras.

Then it happened.  Catastrophe struck. Whether it was caused by greater competition or the scheming of a clever TV advertising salesman, no one seems to know.  Used and new car dealers became convinced that they—the greatest salesmen ever—should do their own pitches on TV.  They loved it. Egomania set a new and very loud record.

Thankfully, this all happened at exactly the same time as the introduction of the mute button on television remote control units.

Mute is good.

–The Flayed Fox

(The Flayed Fox writes scary books. More info at historynerds.com)

I drove through Southern Indiana recently, visited my hometown—Evansville—and sought out the street where I spent my first five or six years.

It was gone.  My boyhood home, my grandfathers’, my cousins’, and my aunt and uncle’s homes were all gone, covered by a huge hospital.   Raised in a neighborhood surrounded by close relatives has got to be the greatest thing that can happen to two very young boys.  And as I stared at the brick and stone building sitting on my house, I remembered.

I remembered by father’s sister, my aunt, who like many other fathers’ sisters was called Aunt Sis.  Once, or maybe more than once, she took an old shoe box, cut window like holes in the side and pasted thin colored paper on them.  She attached a string to the end of the box, and then put a candle in it.  It must have been a holiday, but maybe adult knowledge is demanding a bigger reason than “just for fun.”  My brother and I pulled these mini lit houses up and down the sidewalks until the candles tilted and the house burned.

I remembered sitting on the stoop of my grand parents’ house with my Grand Dad. Since I was the eldest son of his son, I had the same name he did, just as he had the same name of his grand dad. (A custom that dates back to before our family emigrated from the Principality of Baden in 1865.)  He liked oysters and I was too young not to.  About a half block away at the intersection of Columbia Street there was a meat market.  Grand Dad would stick his hand in his pocket and come out with some small change, give it to me, and say “go up to Shorty’s and get us some oysters.” I would come back with a little white cardboard container with a wire handle, and we would eat oysters.

I don’t remember forks or even crackers.  I suspect we just stuck our hands in the container to get the slippery slurp.

I remembered when I was five years old, and on my birthday received the plaid billed cap that I had been telling everyone in the family I wanted. I walked out on the porch to show it off, then down the steps, when a rogue pigeon flew above me and splattered the cap. I was angrier that day than I have ever been.  I never wore it again.

I remembered when I was eleven years old, my Grand Dad had a serious asthma attack as he was driving home from work.  He pulled the car over to the side of the street, lost consciousness, and later died.

I remembered that the “viewing” was at his home, next door to ours.  He was in an open casket in the middle of the shotgun house—the dining room.  The porch door held the traditional wreath, and the front room was so full of flowers, it was difficult to walk there.  Our parents did not want my brother and me to go into the dining room to see Grand Dad.  I stayed for a while in the living room on the first day and took the cards from some of the flowers as souvenirs of this sad event.

I remembered being taken to the back room, the kitchen, on the second day to find my Grandmother crying.  Her grief was heartbreaking.  I had never seen so much sorrow in my short life.  She hugged me and rhetorically asked, “Who sent all of those beautiful flowers with no cards?”

One day, looking at the cards, ten or fifteen years later, I realized what I had done.

It was the early 1960s.

Unemployment was high, 3,852,000 men and women had lost their jobs  The minimum wage was $1.00 an hour.  If you were “average” and working, your annual salary was $4,743.  Protests were beginning over the bloody Viet Nam war.  Rachel Carson wrote her famous The Silent Spring , and President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

I was one of many attempting to get a United States Senator reelected.

It all started seven years earlier when the City Attorney of my town wandered into my ad agency, which was located three blocks from City Hall.  My secretary came into my office and said “There is a Mr. Ellis Anderson in the reception area who would like to see you .  . .”  My first reaction was, “Oh boy, what have I done now?” Ellis was a well known attorney and since obtaining the city job, his diligence and hard work gained him the respect of everyone who knew him.  And I knew him—not well—but I knew him.  So, with hand outstretched, I walked to the waiting area and greeted him and invited him to “come on back to my office . . .”

The conversation that followed went something like this:

Me:     “Ellis, have a seat.  It is good seeing you again.  How can I help you?”
Ellis:     “Thanks George, I didn’t want to do this on the phone. Vance would like for you to stop by his office today or tomorrow.  He wants to talk to you.”
Me:      “What about?”
Ellis:      “I think it would be better if he told you himself.”
Me:      “Well, OK.  How about. . .say three o’clock this afternoon?”
Ellis:      “I’m pretty sure that will be OK.  If not, I’ll phone you when I get back to the office.  If you don’t hear from me—three o’clock it is.”

So I timed my short walk to City Hall and the Mayor’s office to arrive in front of the receptionist’s desk at three.  She ushered me into the Mayor’s office, we shook hands, and I was invited to sit. Then he told me.  Mayor Vance Hartke said that he planned on running for the United States Senate and he wanted me to handle the advertising and publicity necessary to get the nomination.  I said, “Vance, you don’t want me. I’m a Republican.  He replied, “That’s not a problem; I’ll change that.”  We negotiated a bit and I agreed to work for him. I was 27 years old.

He received the nomination and won the election, and in the fall of 1958 resigned as Mayor to become a United States Senator.   I received a lot of credit for the win that I didn’t deserve. Later, I also found my self working for other members of congress, and even the Governor of Indiana as the years flew by.

But, back to the beginning.

Six years later when Senator Hartke was running for reelection, I was there, perhaps a bit wiser, and, as the Senator had predicted, somewhat more liberal.  I had determined that men and women seeking political office are just like anybody else.  I also found that they were honest and extremely hard working… at least those that I worked with.  They were ordinary folks with a persuasive talent that I split into two categories: One I called the messiah complex, that is, the political candidate that is running who is sincere and confident that if elected he/she can do good and that is why they want the office.  Salary,prestige, etc. is not important.  This candidate is out to save the world.

Type Two candidates are power-hungry.  They seek the prestige of the office and the authority it presents.

For me, all of this was further proof that politicians were just like everybody else.  And, I enjoyed working for them.  When the Senator’s first term was about over, either he or his administrative assistant thought it would be a great idea to storm the county fairs, to go to fair after fair and shake hands with the crowds and meet with the political chiefs of each of the counties.

The problem with this idea was that all of the counties were holding their fairs at about the same time of the year, and getting to multiple fair sites on any single day meant that some new transportation technique was necessary.  The solution was a small single engine airplane that could accommodate no less than three passengers.  The next problem was where to land it.  That problem was solved by contacting the county chairmen of the party and requesting that they obtain permission from farmers or others who owned property near the fairgrounds that was suitable for us to land the plane.  That worked, too.

In the plane—the pilot, the Senator, me, and my assistant, Diane.  Diane carried the “name list,” the who’s who of each County plus a list of special events happening at each fair, each day.  By the third day we were exhausted, that is, the pilot, me, and Diane.  The Senator was gung-ho all of the way.  He appeared to gain energy with each hand he shook, and once we completed our duties, he was turned loose in a crowd. Then, the pilot, me, and Diane could seek out a hamburger or hot dog stand if we were hungry and the toilets if we had eaten or drank too much.

At each stop we had a “meeting place” and a time to be there so we could rush back to the pasture where the plane was parked and take off for the next county fair.

I think we had been to three fairs on the day of the most memorable event of the campaign.  We took off to fly to fair #4, the last stop of a busy day.  In the small Piper it was about an hour away. After take-off and about the time the plane leveled off, aiming for our next fair, the Senator began squirming around in his seat next to the pilot.  The Senator was a healthy man and this sort of action was very unusual for him.  I felt obligated to ask him if he was alright, and if there was anything wrong.

He replied, loudly:  “I’ve got to go to the toilet, and I’ve got to go soon!”  Diane, never at a loss for words, asked: “Number one or number two?”  The Senator didn’t reply immediately, but when he did, he almost shouted, “NUMBER ONE!”

Except for the sound of the airplane’s engine, it was quiet for a long moment.  I could see Diane was feeling around inside her purse.  She was unflappable.  She took something from her purse and gave it to the Senator and said, “Try this.”

It was a rubber band.

The Senator began laughing and we were laughing with him, and it was very hard to stop.

It is like I said:  Politicians, even the good and devoted, are just like everybody else.

(We landed on a country road.)