The day I met the Cisco Kid

The Cisco Kid

Remember when there was no television?  I do.  I guess that makes me a dinosaur. I don't feel like one though. I have always felt that I was on the cutting edge of the  technology of the time. Certainly, my father was. He would buy and read the magazines, "Popular Mechanics" and "Popular Science." He had to always have the latest gadgets of the day. This was the early '50s and a commercial type TV set was just coming on the market. They were expensive to buy and the channels you could get were local and usually the reception wasn't that good.

Every Friday night my father would take my older brother, Tony, and I down to the local radio store. In the front window was a television set which they left on for advertising purposes. We would stand along with other folks watching Friday night wrestling. This was all local stuff, being broadcast from the local National Guard Armory. These guys were far from being professional,  just some local yokels beating the heck out of each other. But it was free and seeing it on a TV made it that much more amazing.  After watching it,  My dad would say, "I got to get me one of them."  And he did. I think we were the third family on the block to get a TV set. The Goodlows and Moore's got theirs before we got one. Speaking of the Moore's, that reminds of our BB wars with the Moore's and my Daisy Red Rider BB gun. But that's another story.

We got our TV. It came in this big cabinet, but the screen was small. You had to put an antenna on the roof of your house and make sure you could turn it to get the best reception. They later came out with motorized antennas so you turned it from your living room.  Where we lived we could get three channels: From Mobile, Ala, NBC and CBS. If the atmosphere was cooperating we could get the ABC channel from Pensacola, Fl. There was very limited national programming, mostly Soap Operas. My sisters and mother loved those shows.

The local shows were always more interesting to me and my brothers. I remember one from the Pensacola station. This TV show came on in the late afternoons. It featured this character name "Tony L" or something like that. He would dress in this leopard jumpsuit. It was supposed to be a kids' show. This was all live television. This guy would have all these kids jumping up and down on this beat up old couch from one of his sponsors. This was to show off how tuff the couch was.  

Another one of his sponsors was a local car company and he would sing this song about their cars being so clean that you would never get greasy.  I remember one time he had a bunch of cub scouts on the show. He told them to jump on the couch and see if they could damage it. The scouts started jumping up and down on the couch and all of a sudden the insides of the couch started flying in the air. Handsfull of cotton stuffing came flying out all over the floor. It turns out one of the cub scouts had a knife with him and cut a wide gash into the sofa and the other scouts started pulling out the stuffing. That's what early TV was like.

So what about the Cisco Kid? Well the "Cisco Kid" was one the first  nationally syndicated TV shows. My brother, Tony, and I loved the show and watched it faithfully. We would play the parts of the Cisco Kid and his sidekick, Pancho. "Hey, Cisco!" "Hey, Pancho!"   "Away!"

So being a TV celebrity it was expected of him to make personal appearances for their local sponsors.  Our local sponsor was the maker of "white bread."  You know, that  gummy white stuff they called bread. To me it was like eating white pasty-glue. As it happened, one of my older sisters, Loretta, was working for the local TV station that carried the "Cisco Kid." 

So Tony and I got to have a personal audience with the "Cisco Kid," Duncan Renaldo. To us, it was like meeting the President of the United States or the Pope. We were in awe of this man. My brother, Tony, and I were about ten and eight, respectively.  I remember entering the studio and walking with my parents to a room. When the door opened, there stood the "Cisco Kid" in all of his glory. He was a giant of a man, dressed in a black outfit with silver trimmings. He was much bigger in life than he ever was on that little TV screen.

I think Tony and I, looking up at this giant of a man and then at each other, tried to say something, but nothing came out. He just looked at us with his big wide smile. Then he knelt down to be eye to eye with us and said something like, "Well amigos, I understand from your sister, Loretta, you wanted to meet me." Both of us just stood there saying nothing,  just shaking our heads up and down in agreement. We had met our TV hero and he had spoken to us. From that day forward, when we played the "Cisco Kid," we fought who was going to be Cisco and who would have to play Pancho. Cisco Kid was a friend of mine for real.