Andy’s Gang with Froggy The Magic Gremlin was my favorite TV show, which aired soon after I could walk around and watch TV in the 1950s. I loved Host Andy Devine and his film segments of Gunga Ram, an Indian boy, and his best friend Rama.
Starring in the series was a devilish and irreverent frog named Froggy, who poked fun at everyone from police officers to mayors. This has always been my favorite TV show, and I can’t imagine an eight-year-old watching it now.
I am thankful to Froggy for my first exposure to challenging authority smartly.
If you wish, you can see a recording someone sent me that is on YouTube.
My story about Froggy doesn’t end here. I wandered into a local antique and oddity store just a few miles away. I saw this enormous statue of Frogie, and the owner had no idea who Froggy was, so he sold it to me. I was a couple of hundred pounds and was hand-pointed.
I fell in love with it, bought it, and made it my primary muse. I write about it once a year in memory of this very bright spot in a complex life.
Froggy sits a few feet away from me by the window, and I smile whenever I look at him and remember his taunt to the famous and influential – “Plunk your Magic Twanger, Froggy,” his then famous jeer.
Kids and the world have changed, but I’ll never forget Froggy, and I am grateful to have him in my writing place. I take my museses seriously. Stories were more straightforward then, but Andy and Guna Ram know how to win children’s imagination.
