Maybe
you remember me. Name’s Kukla. As in Kukla, Fran and Ollie? I’ve been away but
maybe you remember.
You’d
think, being a kid’s show and all, that things were pretty quiet on that set. Everyone minding their p’s and q’s. Well let me set the record straight: Peyton Place had nuthin’ on Kukla, Fran
and Ollie.
Ollie.
What a goofball, don’t even get me started. Speaking of goofballs, you know he
was on ‘em, right? Years. Look at those eyes. Drank like a fish, too. Bad juju.
That
Fran was a hot tomato, though. Ollie and me had more than a few dust-ups over
that dame. ‘Course, it didn’t take much to get Ollie fired up, with all those bennies he was taking.
Oh
sure, bennies too, well it was that time, they gave ‘em out like candy. In the business, I mean. Show business. And okay, I took a few here and there,
so did Fran, by the way. Don’t let that lilywhite shtick of hers fool ya.
So
yeah, I took a bennie here and there. Drank a bit. Not like Ollie of course. I was the straight man, Ollie played it for laughs. I was the one who kept it all together.
Then
one day, in the middle of a show, Ollie did that thing
where he turns himself upside down and looks up at ya—“endearing”, I heard it called it once.
Yeah.
I guess ol’ Ollie can be endearing, if you’ve never seen him after about
fifteen beers and god only knows what else.
Anyway,
for whatever reason, that day I’d seen that move of his one too many times. I looked around, where we kept the props and junk, and
there was this bat. Like a baseball bat. Little tiny one, of course.
And
I just wailed on him. I beat the livin’ crap out of him, is what I did. Miss Goody-Two-Shoes, Fran, just stood there, like butter wouldn’t
melt in her mouth. Oh no.
So
that was in ’57. The last show. Since then I’ve been upstate doing a 15-year bit for assault.
But my time's up next week. Then it's back to the real world.
Seven days, then back to Puppet Land.