(First Memories Book)
If you grew up in Oklahoma in the Sixties, you HAD to watch the Foreman Scotty Show every day after school. It was the law.
The half-hour show featured Foreman Scotty, Xavier T. Willard, Cannonball and a whole mess of screaming kids.
If you were lucky, one day you got to be in the WKY-TV studio audience when the show was broadcast live.
If you were really, really lucky, and it was your birthday, you got to be on the show AND ride Woody.
I was exactly that lucky on my fifth birthday ─ March 15, 1961 (100% authentic invitation below).
I can still remember when my Mom took me, Steve Madden and my cousins all the way to "The City" so we could be on the Foreman Scotty Show.
It was the greatest day of my life, then the worst, then the greatest again, all because of Foreman Scotty himself.
I was so little that I couldn't reach Woody's stirrups to mount up. I was humiliated.
Then Foreman Scotty rode up to save the day.
"Let me help you there, partner," he said, grabbing me under the arms and swinging me way up high onto Woody.
I got to sit up front and hold Woody’s reins, with the rest of the Birthday Boys and Girls behind me.
About 25 kids, including Steve and my cousins, were in the Circle 4 Ranch’s floor seats. The Moms had to sit off-camera in the Hay Loft.
The show ran like clockwork until, on cue, we all shouted “NIX-O-BILLY” at the top of our lungs. Then it was absolute bedlam.
Every boy in the audience acted like a complete idiot, whoopin’ and hollerin’ and carrying on, trying to get the (superimposed) Magic Lasso to land on him so he would win the Golden Horseshoe.
I hate to say this, but as much as I loved Foreman Scotty, I’m pretty sure the Magic Lasso giveaway was rigged.
It always landed on some cute little, freckle-faced, well-behaved girl. Never on a rowdy boy like me. There may be a life lesson there.
(From" Memories of an Okie Boomer; Growing Up in Norman in the 60s and 70s", available on Amazon)
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