Well friends, it probably comes as no surprise that my current
transitional employment status has led this extraplanetary disc jockey to reflect on the highs and lows of the ol' curriculum vitae. Though I've spent the better part of my adult life in the Steel Tower of Radio, I've also held my share of odd jobs here and there. Some of you may recall my mentioning, in a
Tweet of Solidarity with the costumed characters rousted from Hollywood Boulevard last summer, that I once spent two months portraying Happy the Dwarf at Disneyland. I figure I owe you the story.
Like many boys and girls of the 1950s, I spent a large portion of my childhood engaged in a fervent love affair with all things Disney. I was a committed Mouseketeer, an avid collector of Uncle Scrooge comics, and a dedicated viewer of the
Disneyland TV series. (I was a little young for the height of the Crockett craze, but I was a great fan of some of their subsequent frontier serials, particularly the ones about Elfego Baca, a Mexican-American lawman portrayed surprisingly convincingly by Robert Loggia.) My preteen imaginative romantic energies were entirely focused, in succession, on Annette Funicello, Haley Mills, and Julie Andrews. And I was fascinated by the feature films about boy genius college student
Merlin Jones, whose experiments inspired many failed invention attempts on my part: hovercraft, robot servants, hypnorays. (I also liked that Annette Funicello played his girlfriend.)
By the late sixties, however, my Disney loyalties had been supplanted by a new fixation on rock n' roll and the thriving counterculture. From my parents' Southern California living room, I jealously watched the Summer of Love play out on
The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. I vowed that the following June I'd be making my own way to San Francisco, as many flowers as possible in my hair. It was only when the next school year ended, and I discovered how much a bus ticket alone would cost, that I realized I was going to need to save up some money. I volunteered to mow our neighbor Mr. Sanderson's lawn, and he paid me a generous fifty cents. When I showed up the next afternoon offering to mow his lawn again, I think he realized I was looking for a more long-term sort of employment. Turned out his brother was mid-level management at Disneyland, and he put in a good word for me. And that's how I, somewhat reluctantly, took a summer job at the Happiest Place on Earth.
