Party Time

Like most really good stories, this one is real. I wish I could say that this happened to me, but it didn’t. It happened to a guy I used to work with at Sepety’s art studio back in 1973. His name was Rob, a nice, young guy, trying to establish himself in the competitive world of commercial design and illustration just like me and everybody else that worked there.

It was a very different world from today. There were quite a few large art studios in Detroit at that time, all geared to the promotion of the automotive industry. However, as a result of the advertising agencies’ success with car sales, other clients also sought their professional expertise and a surprisingly well-rounded collection of first-rate commercial artists thrived and prospered in the most unlikely of art colonies, Detroit, Michigan. Sepety’s studio arrived on the scene a little late in the game, but had a staff of young, enthusiastic, and talented people. None of us knew that the day of the large commercial art studio only had a few years to go and we looked forward to exciting and highly lucrative careers drawing pictures.

One night at Sepety’s we were pulling an all-nighter for a client and while waiting for photostats to be processed (or some other equally obsolete activity) we started telling stories of our misspent youth. Someone recalled a mildly humiliating incident, which was topped by the next guy and then the next guy. Rob laughed along with the rest of us and said, “When I was a Cub Scout, our troop went downtown to the “Milky’s Party Time” show,” 

In the 1950s Detroit had a handful of locally produced TV shows, the most prominent being, “Lunch with Soupy,” a pretty wild kid’s show featuring a young Soupy Sales who went on to national fame and success. “Milky’s Party Time” had been around longer than Soupy, and had been created as a way to sell Twin Pines Dairy products. They hired a local magician, Clare Cummings, to become “Milky the Clown,” the featured performer and host. No one knows how many ad executives it took to come up with the name “Milky,” but I think everyone appreciates the fact that they didn’t come up with “Cheesy.” (Had Vlasic sponsored the show he may have been called “Gherkin.”)

Milky did magic tricks and interacted with sidekicks such as “Willie Dooit,” “Gee Whizzer,” and the most uncomfortable and unfortunately named character in all of children’s programming, a hand puppet named “Creamy.” The show also presented old westerns, “Felix the Cat” and “Bozo” cartoons. They had a live audience of kids, called the Peanut Gallery (thank you Howdy Doody) and as a Detroit kid of the 50s, a visit to Milky’s television studio was about as close to a true show business experience as there was. It was as good as things were going to get and it all seemed to work, and Rob and his Cub Scout pals found themselves on a bus headed downtown one Saturday.

They got inside the TV studio and were seated and the fun began. Rob couldn’t remember if the show was good or bad—he just knew it was very cool to be in a TV studio and to watch a show play out right in front of him. During a commercial break a couple of ladies went into the Peanut Gallery and started handing out Twin Pines ice cream sundaes! Good Lord—could it get any better than this?  

Rob happened to be seated in the last chair on the left of the back row of the Peanut Gallery and patiently awaited his frozen paper cup sundae (and complimentary wooden stick-spoon) but as they had started handing out the goodies from the front row, Rob had to wait. Finally, they gave the scout sitting next to Rob the last sundae in the box—there had been a tragic miscount and Twin Pines was one cup short of a full sundae and Rob was the goat. By this time the commercial break was over and the show was about to resume. Rob was not happy and the Twin Pines staff shifted into high gear to correct the problem. A few minutes later one of the ladies returned and handed Rob a nice bowl of Twin Pines cottage cheese. Whether it was large or small curd, I really don't know.

Unfortunately, that was as good as it got for Rob that day. Every kid’s dream was his—a bowl of cottage cheese. No fruit topping, just curds and whey. As far as he was concerned, Milky, Gee Whizzer, and Creamy the hand-puppet could all go home and die, or at the very least go home and become very ill. Not that the incidents were related but Milky went off the air a few years later and Twin Pines folded. I don’t know whatever happened to their fleet of home delivery trucks.

I suppose in the grand scheme of things this incident doesn’t mean much, but it is interesting to note that twenty years after the fact it was still vivid in Rob’s mind and thirty-seven years after that, it is still painfully clear to me as well. Surely, there is a lesson here for all of us but I can’t imagine what it might be. It must mean something.

©2010 Tom Roy