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We were not bombarded with the kind of collective, commercial, high-volume, all-purpose noise that surrounds us today.

After the evening news, we turned off the radio and did our homework or read or went for a walk or went to watch a sandlot baseball game or went to the movies or met some friends and hung around the corner or sat on the porch. Our radios played much of the day and we could listen to adventures in the evening, like Superman and The Green Hornet and Batman and The Shadow and Intersanctum and Johnny Dollar, and news and soap operas during the day and news programs after supper.īut that was it.
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The point is, that our heads were not as full of noisy distractions as they are now. I was still in grammar school at the time. I would go next store many evenings after supper to watch it with Bill. It was very sophisticated and literate for a kid’s show. That’s where I first saw Kukla, Fran, and Ollie, a witty, bright puppet show out of Chicago, with Fran Allison as the only human.
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My neighbor and friend, Bill Doheny, had a TV with a 4-inch screen and a magnifying glass installed in front of it. It was all in black and white and the screens ranged between 6 and 12 inches. And we had morning and afternoon newspapers, many delivered to our front door.

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And we had movies and many movie theaters. We had radio, thank God, which was wonderful. So there was very little broad-based commercial noise. We grew up at a time, in the late-1940s, early ’50’s, when there was no color television, let alone 50-inch, color, high-definition TV, no Internet, no cell phones, no Walkmans, no DVDs, no CDs, no cassette tapes. That was especially true of my generation. I had no idea of Buster Brown’s rich history until I saw the exhibit on him at Geppi’s Entertainment Museum in Baltimore, MD.There are certain songs, certain jingles, that get into your head when you’re young and stay there forever. Here’s a vintage Buster Brown TV commercial from the 1960’s. The Brown Shoe Company is still in business, but it is now called Caleres, and they also own Naturalizer and Dr. He made a brief reappearance in the Buster Brown shoe store ads in the 80’s and 90’s. Buster got his own comic book as a shoe store giveaway in the 40’s & 50’s. From 1904 to 1930, the company hired little people to play Buster in stores and theaters (not very P.C.). That is when he was signed to represent the Brown Shoe Company. You think that comics are widely merchandised now? In 1904, Outcault took Buster to the World’s Fair and licensed him to 200 different companies. He would get in trouble, get spanked by his mother, but it’s unclear if he ever repented.

His dog Tige completed the famous trio.īuster was a pretty boy with rich parents, but he was mischievous and a practical joker. Buster Brown had a girlfriend, Mary Jane, who was based on Outcault’s daughter of the same name. They changed his name to “Buster” because of the popularity of comedian Buster Keaton. Granville had the famous page boy haircut (which is why some folks think he is a girl). In 1904, he was adopted as the mascot for the Brown Shoe Company.ĭid you know that Buster Brown was based on a real person? His name was Granville Hamilton Fisher, and he was from Flushing, NY. Outcault, who also created the famous Yellow Kid. Our wooden Buster Brown is a the base of a vintage shoe display (and yes, he is for sale).īut did you know that he started as a comic strip in the New York Herald 1902? He was created by Richard F. I remember Buster from the Buster Brown shoe store from my childhood, but I never knew his history. They ask, “Who’s that girl?” But it is a boy, and his name is Buster Brown. Our younger customers wonder about the five and a half foot wooden figure hanging in one of our dressing rooms. Who’s the kid in the dressing room? He’s from the Buster Brown shoe store!
