Thursday, March 09, 2006

Elsewhere


I watched it every Saturday morning when I was a little, little girl. A magical island, with a dragon for mayor. A dragon with kaleidoscope eyes. Yeah. And that name: Pufnstuf. Psychedelic childhood, as long as I stared at the screen.

And a magic flute named Freddy. (One episode, Witchiepoo turned him into a mushroom! Wink. Wink.) It must be that flute that launched my desire to play the flute. (A desire I never fulfilled. But there's still time!)

And who carried the magic flute? My first heartthrob:



Jack Wild!

With two teenaged sisters, I had ready access to TigerBeat Magazine, which often featured him. So I was able to be a teenager before my time, pining after Jack while staring at the slick covers of TigerBeat.

He was quite the teeny-bopper idol, too. Even cut a few albums, though no one in my family indulged me to the point of gifting me with them.

He died last week, after some apparently hard living. It's painful, really, to learn how he died. To see the more recent photo.

RIP, Jack Wild.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Just found your blog, Donna. Jack Wild was my first heart throb, too. When I heard about his death, it felt like a friend had died, though I hadn't thought about him in many, many years.