Ground Control To Commander Tom

Source: http://megomuseum.com/community/showthread.php?69360-Mego-Museum-Podcast-Growing-up-Parkdale-Tomland-Famous-Monsters

You hear stories from older generations about having to “walk a mile back and forth to school each day… in a snowstorm… and it was uphill both ways!”

Well, truth be told, for my brother and me, it was just under a half mile each way. Four-tenths of a mile from our house at the end of the street (187 Abbott Parkway) all the way up to the school bus stop at the corner of South Park Ave, then a narrow two lanes.

Living in Blasdell meant we were in the crosshairs of the lake effect snow machine south of Buffalo, so you could bet your bottom dollar we often walked during snowstorms. And rainstorms. And thunderstorms. And thundersnow. And even hot (almost) summer days towards the end of the school year. Yeah, mom made sure we always dressed for the weather. So we learned from an early age to pay attention to the weather.

And, yes, sometimes Kenny and I felt like we were walking uphill both ways.

But walking up and down the street was like riding a commuter train. We “boarded” at the end of the line, but as we “rode” towards our destination, we “picked up” fellow travelers along the way. It didn’t take long for us to find other passengers, either, as our next-door neighbors immediately joined us on our journey.

Things really got hopping at the halfway point, when my best friend Angelo and his younger brother Markie would meet us for the rest of the commute. Their companionship made going to school a daily joy (and sometimes an adventure).

I’ve written about those adventures in these pages, both the amazing but true stories, (see the start of the trilogy “Terror At The School Bus Stop,” Mendon-Honeoye Falls-Lima Sentinel, January 11, 1990) and the harsh lessons (see “If You’re Not Guilty, Don’t Act Like It,” Mendon-Honeoye Falls-Lima Sentinel, November 9, 2017). There are probably more stories to tell. If something happens to trigger my memory, I’ll happily share them.

But this story is more about the end of the line in the other direction: the return home. Going to the school bus stop represented an invigorating crescendo of the day’s coming excitement. Even cold winter winds couldn’t deprive us of our enthusiasm.

And those winds were cold. Very cold. How cold? Imagine thirty-odd elementary school children huddled en masse, as close to the brick walls of the small house on the corner of the street, desperately trying to retain as much communal heat as possible.

At the end of the day, however, we got off the bus only to have the immediate reality of the hike home hit us like a ton of those cold bricks. With each house we passed, we’d lose a few more kids. They’d be home. They’d be done for the day. But Kenny and I had miles more to travel (actually, tenths of a mile, but for our small legs, it might as well have been miles).

The worst feeling came midway to our terminus. That’s when Angelo and Markie “got off the train.” I could still see Angelo’s eyes, stricken with sorrowful guilt, knowing he was leaving us on our own.

Not quite. Remember, our next-door neighbors had to walk almost as far as us, but they stuck to their respective packs and, being older and with longer strides, were well ahead of us by that point. Angelo, Markie, Kenny, and me. We were our own pack. And when Angelo and Markie peeled off for their front door, it was like Kenny and I ventured forth alone into some barren wasteland.

From that point, we would invariably pick up our pace. Kenny more than me. His legs were shorter than mine back then, so he had to spin the gears faster than me just to keep up.

The last tenth of a mile was eerily quiet. These houses had older folks. Their kids had long ago grown up and moved out. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Immediately after those homes, and right before the last few houses at the road’s dead end, lay three empty overgrown lots straddling the not-so-wide street.

It was here, when I was in kindergarten and before Kenny walked shotgun beside me, that I once saw a giant sewer rat waddle across the road in front of me. The sewers were open back then and, from that point on, I always hesitated at that spot in the road, looked both ways, then scurried through that rat path.

I never told Kenny about the rat until years later. In fact, at the time, I insisted I had seen a possum.

It wasn’t a possum. I knew it. My father knew it. We just didn’t want my little brother (or mother, for that matter) to know it.

For all the anxiety held within those last few footsteps, walking into our raised ranch home returned us to that elevated joy that we had in the morning. For one thing, our mother was there to greet us. But she wasn’t the only one.

Before we unloaded our school gear (you know what I’m talking about: book bags, lunch boxes, change pouches), we rushed to the TV and quickly turned to Channel 7. We always got home before 3:30pm but we didn’t want to risk missing the familiar refrain signaling the start of The Commander Tom Show.

The Commander Tom Show was the afternoon bookend of our before-school/after-school TV day. It started each morning with Rocketship 7. Oh, how we yearned to have Dave Thomas call out our names on our birthday or other special day and say, “Go look under your bed for something special.” Alas, it was a desire never realized.

Not that it would have meant anything. No matter what pleasant surprise was hidden under the bed, we would have still had to begin the half-mile hike up Abbott Parkway on our way to school.

Unlike Rocketship 7, however, there was no duty to perform following The Commander Tom Show. The affable Tom Jolls held just the right character to keep us entertained and smiling until just before dinnertime. Heck, if it wasn’t for Commander Tom, how would we have ever been introduced to The Adventures of Superman, Flash Gordon, and the Three Stooges? (OK, that last one aired on Saturday mornings, so we got an extra dose every once in a while from The Commander Tom Show.) In the 1970s, he added other shows, but we had moved to Rochester by then and couldn’t get Channel 7 on our TV very well.

Before the opening theme started, Kenny and I nestled ourselves either directly on the floor in front of the TV or on the couch a safe distance away. Very quickly, the debate began. Was Tom Jolls voicing the puppet Dustmop? Was it his hand moving the puppet’s mouth?

These are important questions when you’re not quite seven years old.

By the way, for those of you keeping score at home, the opening theme of The Commander Tom Show was a song called “Dancing Notes.” It appears at the 10:45 mark on the YouTube video of “The Exciting Sound of Acquaviva and His Orchestra.” The Decca album was released in 1963, two years before the December 20, 1965 debut of The Commander Tom Show.

Commander Tom, both in his actions and in the short old-time serials intermingled throughout his 90 minutes of air time, taught us important lessons in life. Some serious (“do a good deed”) and some healthy (“salubrious”). His promotion of the idea that kids could hold their own Muscular Dystrophy carnival inspired me to convince the kids on my street (after we had moved to Rochester) to hold an annual summer carnival.

They lived in Rochester, so they never heard of Commander Tom. That made them different from every other kid from Toronto, Canada, to Erie, Pennsylvania. The Commander Tom Show was an after-school treat. Even Betsy (who grew up in Jamestown) has fond memories of it (as well as Dave Thomas and Rocketship 7). It was a delight every school-age kid within the viewing area looked forward to after a long day in the classroom. And Commander Tom never disappointed us.

Tom Jolls, a.k.a. “Commander Tom” also served as the weatherman in Buffalo’s famous Eyewitness News triumvirate. He’s probably the reason I became so interested in meteorology. Together with news anchor Irv Weinstein and sports director Rick Azar, the three ruled the news broadcast airwaves in the Queen City.

On June 7, 2023, Jolls, the last surviving member of these three icons, passed away at Buffalo Hospice in Cheektowaga. A native of Newfane (just north of Lockport, NY), he was 89 years old.

He once said in an interview he had the entire run of The Commander Tom Show on tape. He showed it to his grandkids. Would that the kids of today had the same access to those archives. Who knows? Maybe fifty-odd years later, they, too, would remember what they looked forward to once they ambled into the house after trudging miles home from school. In a snowstorm. Uphill. Both ways.

Maybe, like me, they wouldn’t remember that odyssey as a burden.

Instead, they’d view it as nothing more than the last hurdle to overcome before relaxing to savor the best part of the day in the comfort and warmth of home and family.