“Do the Hokey-Pokey”

For over thirty years, no childhood in Cincinnati, Ohio, was complete without a visit to the “Uncle Al Show.” This locally produced live television show was such a high, such a seminal moment in children’s lives across what we call the “Tri-State Area” in our corner of southwestern Ohio, Northern Kentucky, and southeastern Indiana.

Earlier this week, while talking to my sister and my father, on our weekly conference call, Elizabeth said, “A Cincinnati icon has died,” and my dad chimed in, “And I’m looking for your picture!” Okay. A puzzle to solve. Which Cincinnati icon? And what did my father mean as he said he was looking for my picture? I pondered… hmmm… Rosemary Clooney has already passed on, and I don’t know what my dad would mean about my “picture” with the likes of Doris Day or Andy Williams…wait…”Did Uncle Al die?” I asked. I had guessed it.

When you went to Uncle Al’s show, every child on the show that day got a group picture of the whole gang on the show, and so when this legendary broadcaster died the other day in his mid-80s, they must have been showing scores of group pictures on the local WCPO station—home for 40 years to Uncle Al.

This was not just a “kiddie show” in that unctuous, pejorative way we use that term to denote some seedy guy and kids and balloons. Uncle Al’s show was among the most magical memories of a Cincinnati childhood. So in the last couple of days I have been trying to remember what made it so special.

Hello! You got to be on television! For any hammy child, that had to be the most exciting thing.

Okay, let’s do some background for those of you not from Cincinnati…

Al Lewis was a jack-of-all-trades kinda guy hired by a local TV station around 1949 (all this from is from my memory bank when he retired 20 years ago and the tributes poured forth from around the Tri-State). He played the accordion and a banjo and had been to art school. Since they had so many hours to fill in those early days of television, executives probably racked their brains trying to guess how to fill the time. Lewis was hired to play for a polka show. Legend has it that one day a bunch of kids wandered onto the set (what kind of TV station is this, and why is there a bunch of kinds hanging around, who let them on the set, I don’t know—maybe I am forgetting a key piece of this story, maybe they were the children of the polka-lovers, I am just recounting the legend…) and Al Lewis entertained them, mesmerized them, and they left happy. The TV station thought, maybe a kids show might be an entertaining way to fill a couple of hours of TV. So in 1950 Lewis started doing a children’s show in Cincinnati.

In the next few years the TV show took shape and it had a winning formula, and Lewis kept at it until 1985. He became “Uncle Al,” and his wife (Wanda) became “Captain Windy.” It was a whirlwind show—first two hours, and then as we all became more sophisticated, 90 minutes, and then again, a blast of sophistication, a 60-minute show—and the centerpieces of the show were exercises to release a child’s imagination. However, one of the most interesting things about this show was that it was not an old man, a fuddy-duddy kinda guy (a la “Captain Kangaroo”) doing kids things, or an urban-ghetto scene like “Sesame Street.” It just seemed better than any other children’s show I have ever seen.

Okay, let’s take a walk down memory lane. I am not sure how many times I went to see Uncle Al in person. I am confident I went at least twice, because I remember talking to some big people there as if I knew them. And my mother would have taken me once a week if I had been allowed to miss school more often. I think the optimum age to go to the Uncle Al show was around age 5. I have a vivid memory of going circa 1970. I went with Kenny, my best buddy from nursery school, who had moved across town. We went together and it was blissful. The way kids today (how old are you when you start saying phrases like, “kids today…”) think of Disney World—that’s we Cincinnati kids thought of going to see Uncle Al. (Jump ahead to third grade, when I had scatterbrained Mrs. Luken, and she had us each be in charge of a bulletin board, and we had to put pictures up that represented our best moments in our lives, and a color picture of K&J with Uncle Al went on the bulletin board—that’s what a big deal it was. I still remember as I took down my bulletin board, that beloved picture fell into a crevice in the wall, and I have thought for years to go back and see if the picture can be pulled from the rubble of that classroom…)

I remember you walked into the TV studio and the set was a kind of “Munchkinland” set crossed with something out of Willy Wonka. Uncle Al always dressed with a bow-tie and a suit and a straw hat that probably was fashionable back in the 1920s. Captain Windy always flew onto the set (what a thrill to see how TV technology worked and see her “flying” over Cincinnati until she landed onto the Candyland set). Each child had a nametag—shaped like Uncle Al’s bowtie. There were other characters, but the most fun part of the whole show was the making of music and the making of art.

Al and Wanda never quite left their art school roots—and there would be drawing and dancing and orchestras—it was like the most wonderful daycamp watching the show and being on the show. Uncle Al and Captain Windy were also great salespeople—they made sure their advertisers got their due, and came up with clever jingles that the children would remember, and so then the nagging to parents would start (“We have to drink Barq’s!” or “We have to buy our furniture at Pat & Joe’s—Uncle Al said it would save our daddies dough!” Clever, clever…)

If it was your birthday you got to ride the special merry-go-round, and the camera stayed on you for a long time. Why I never got to go on a lovely October 4th, I will never understand.

When it came time for snack time, Uncle Al and Captain Windy taught us to sing a grace and fold your hands. I remember it was the only time Uncle Al took his straw boater off, and there was such a seriousness on the set as we thanked God for our cookies and milk.

Uncle Al was less of a moralist than Mr. Rodgers, but there was such excitement and theatricality in the shows. Captain Windy was really in charge of the art projects, but then a highlight was when we were told to grab pots and pans and make a band! March around your house and make music!

About a decade ago there was a short story in the newspaper about an art show of the art of the real Al Lewis and Wanda Lewis. My sister and I went downtown, to meet them again—we had gone in the summer of 1975 to a live show on Fountain Square celebrating his silver anniversary of children’s shows, and then we went in 1985 for his farewell outdoor shows. But this was the late 1990s, and that era had certainly passed. There was not a show like their show anymore. They probably seemed quaint, out-of-touch to young bean counters and hot-shots.

But when we went into the art gallery, and saw a line of other thirty-somethings and forty-somethings it was so exciting to see their bright eyes and magical smiles again, a little aged, of course, but we would have recognized their electric, telegenic radiance anywhere. We thanked them for the years of the shows. I marveled at how much they cultivated a love of the arts in children—through their insistence on art and music. Who knew how many children sought out an art class because of the drawings Captain Windy encouraged, or how many lovers of music just from the appreciation you learned at the feet of Uncle Al. Maybe it was just a misty-eyed nostalgia for the innocence of childhood, but it was cathartic to get to tell these broadcasters/educators/entertainers/artists in their mid-70s what they had meant to more than one generation of children.

On the one visit I remember the most clearly, my mother was chatting with Uncle Al and Captain Windy after the show—does this surprise anyone? I was left to wander in the back of the studio—no one stopped me, and I discovered the treasure trove of costumes and props. It was the most magical closet in the world, and it didn’t destroy the “magic” of the show at all. Seeing how the technology made Captain Windy fly, seeing the costumes that Tom York, a character actor, wore and seeing the portable sets and wondrous theatrical bits, only made me want to be a part of that world in some way.

Toward the end of every show the whole gaggle of children (I can’t imagine how many children were at each live show—maybe 40? Maybe 50?) took to dancing with the Hokey-Pokey. Uncle Al was busy on the accordion, and Captain Windy smiled her way through another rendition of shaking shaking shaking and doing the Hokey-Pokey. At the end of the show the children left with a bag full of the marshmallow ice cream cones you had had as a treat on the show.

Uncle Al created an excitement that I don’t know if any American Idol or Survivor or reality show can generate. I guess I am most grateful that Uncle Al and Captain Windy stimulated the imagination—encouraged us to release our imagination! What a gift to Cincinnati from 1950 to 1985.

I remember someone said they saw him once out to dinner—he was smoking a cigar. Scandalous! I spent just a minute yesterday looking at comments on the WCPO website, and many of the comments were people my age saying that they had seen him out to dinner and he was so nice to them.

We may forget many of the actual moments from the show, and what we did. But we cannot forget the magic of going to an Uncle Al show or watching it at home. Among the most priceless memories of childhood…

Rest in peace dear man.