Brownies

Brownies

“Kids say the darndest things!”
Art Linkletter

My sister, Mary Ellen, and my cousin Lynne were Brownies at the same time, which makes sense, since they lived across the street from each other. My cousin Stephen and I were Boy Scouts together, for similar reasons.

The girls must have just gotten their uniforms, as they certainly look delighted in this picture, taken in our backyard when they were eight and nine-years-old, respectively. Check out those white gloves.

We lived in West Los Angeles at the time, just a few blocks from CBS Television City, where they filmed a lot of TV shows. One day, my mom surprised me by asking if I wanted to go see the taping of the Art Linkletter show, Kids Say the Darndest Things!
That was one of my favorite shows, because it had my kind of people on it, kids. And Art Linkletter was pretty funny too.

The big day arrived, and my mom let me in on a little detail she hadn’t mentioned when she first asked me if I wanted to go. We were going with twenty-two Brownies, and I was the only boy in attendance.

Sitting on the end of the long row of Brownies was the most embarrassing thing that had ever happened to me, up until then. Of course, I’ve been way more embarrassed since then….

But I did enjoy the show, and, years later, Art Linkletter and I became friends. He was always as warm, friendly and funny as he had been on his show, when I was a six-year-old boy with a red face at the end of a row of Brownies.