Goatees are Evil

Back in the day, when I was a kid, when Tinkerbelle was a Walt Disney character, and E.D. stood for “Editor”, I used to watch a lot of television. Television shows were still in black and white back then, and the only types of shows that I remember were news shows and children’s shows. I avoided the former and lived for the latter. One of my favorites was "Captain Kangaroo", a nationally syndicated masterpiece with a captain, a moose, a rabbit, a farmhand, a dancing bear, a smiling clock and a ton of ping pong balls. What more do you need for unbridled television success than a moose, a rabbit, and lots of ping pong balls? That show was over the top man. I loved it! We also had lots of cool local TV shows for kids like “The Jolly Jim Show” and “The Cactus Quave Show” (a.k.a. “Bar Q Ranch”), and later, “The Romper Room Show”, “The Mr. Knozit Show” and “The Stanley the Clown Show.” I loved watching these television shows. Moreover, they were all produced and broadcast in my hometown. It seemed to me like Columbia, SC was the Mecca of children’s programming. As I recall, there was no PBS back then. Besides, Cactus Quave could beat the crap out of that stupid Big Bird any day of the week! No contest.

One of the great things about having local children’s programming is that most of these shows would let kids be on the program as members of the studio audience. I was a very outgoing kid, and I begged my ma to let me go to all of these shows between the time I was 4-10 years old. Another wonderful thing about these shows was they were broadcast LIVE….What was said and done on the front side of the camera went out the back side and into the living rooms of millions, well, maybe hundreds of families in the local viewing area. The first show I recall attending was the Jolly Jim Show or maybe it was the Cactus Quave show… but that’s beside the point as you will see. The Jolly Jim Show had three main characters, Jolly Jim, Chief Silly Horse, and the notoriously evil J. P. Sidewinder. All I remember about Jolly Jim was that he was jolly. Chief Silly Horse was a funny guy dressed as an indian with a large feathered headdress and cool tassels on his sleeves. J.P. Sidewinder was a demon from hell in the silent movie tradition. J.P. was dressed in black (and this was before the Europeans made it trendy to wear black), and he wore a matching black cape and hat. He had a handlebar mustache that he would twirl while he let out an evil laugh, and a goatee, also in black, which made him look curiously similar to THE DEVIL. One reason my memory is fuzzy about my first TV appearance is because J.P. Sidewinder use to moonlight as the villain on the Cactus Quave Show too. Columbia had a lot of kids’ shows, but there were only so many villains to go around. Regardless, J.P. Sidewinder was evil and scary enough to appear in dozens of shows if needed. He was like a combination of Jason Voorhees, Jaws, Freddy Krueger, and Snidely Whiplash stuffed into a pair of black pants. His goatee gave me the willies.

Well, like a miracle from heaven, my ma took me and my older brother to the Jolly Jim Show where we got to be in the studio audience. How cool was that! At some point during the show, J.P. Sidewinder showed up and explained horrifically that he was going to kidnap a member of the audience, and then take that poor child back to his EVIL CAVE. Yes, you heard me right. To make himself just that much scarier, that much more of a badass, this incubus had an evil cave; and sure as shit, he would steal kids and take them there! That guy always made me nervous, even on TV, but now I was right there within a few feet of him, and the circumstances had me pretty worried. As fate would have it, J.P. saw the fear in my eyes, and he decided to snatch ME. He picked me up, and held me in his mighty arms, and that was all it took to initiate the fight or flight instincts that lay dormant deep in my psyche.

I immediately began screaming for my ma, kicking as hard as I could and trying to beat the chest of this archangel of doom to the point where he would release me, but he just wouldn’t let go. He began taking me back to his evil cave, and I was kicking and screaming the whole way. At that point, I think I may have been crying pretty loudly, and I remember the cameraman looking a bit anxious about the situation. Why shouldn’t he be? He was witnessing a kidnapping! As I was being kidnapped by this fiend, I recall seeing my older brother smiling from his seat in the studio audience and looking very satisfied with the way things had turned out. I was sure that Jolly Jim and Chief Silly Horse would come to rescue me at any moment if I just cried loud enough, but they turned out to be a bunch of pussies. What a hard lesson for a kid to learn in a pinch - don’t stake your future on a bunch of pussies.

When J. P. Sidewinder got me back to his evil cave, I was still kicking, but it did no good. If J.P. would have lowered me about a foot or so, I would have found out if he wore a protective cup under those black pants, but this was not my lucky day. By this time, I was crying so hard, I was close to passing out and/or peeing in my pants. It’s kind of a hazy memory for me now due to the lack of oxygen produced by my sobbing, but I think they took an unscheduled commercial break, and let my ma come and get me out of the evil cave. It appears J.P had enough of me after all. The river of tears and snot that flowed endlessly out of my head was, no doubt, screwing up J.P’s wardrobe, so the producer decided to call it quits with me. It’s a good thing too, because I was getting heavy, and J.P. had lowered me just about enough to attempt one last kick to the groin before I went limp from terror. My ma took me back to the parents waiting area where I had to sit in shame while my brother got to participate in the rest of the show.

Over the last decade or so, goatees have become very popular. Nonetheless, black goatees send chills down my spine till this day. Whenever I walk past a guy with a black goatee who is dressed in mostly dark attire, I get this overwhelming urge to kick him in the nuts and run away. This is something I hope to eventually deal with in therapy. I suppose my ma should have sued the TV station for inducing a lifelong trauma in an innocent kid, but people didn’t run around suing each other back then. It was the good ole’ days. Besides, we were only familiar with one lawyer, Perry Mason, and he had bigger fish to fry.

Best Wishes,
Dr. JimBob