Local Hero

"Red light ... green light."

Engineer Bill

Engineer Bill was the hero of every kid under twelve in Los Angeles during the mid-sixties. He had a two-time Emmy Award-winning television show Monday through Friday on Channel 9, showing cartoons and featuring a child guest who would help operate the train set.

A popular feature of the show was “Red Light/Green Light.” The at-home audience would play along, drinking a glass of milk at the announcer’s direction. The game was played quickly. “Green light” was the signal to drink, and “red light” meant to stop. But the announcer would often throw in tricky directions, such as “red dog” or “green cat,” so you had to pay attention.

Every kid in L.A. knew about Red Light/Green Light and how to play it. The game was Engineer Bill’s own invention. He and his wife, Ruth, came up with it to get their daughter, Kathy, to drink her milk at dinner.

Engineer Bill was our next-door neighbor and easily the most popular adult in the neighborhood. Not only did he give out the best candy on Halloween, but Engineer Bill was simply a wonderful guy. Every kid under twelve on our street loved him. The older ones did too, though they were sometimes too cool to admit it.

One day, my parents told me that Engineer Bill had asked them if I would like to be on his show. Wow, would I! Going to the studio, playing with the trains, and running the cartoons were great fun, but I also got a bunch of free toys, an engineer’s cap, and oversized candy bars. Engineer Bill’s only instructions to me were to have fun and not mention that I was his next-door neighbor.

One of the prizes was a foot-long caramel sucker. As I went to sleep that night, I took a couple of licks and put the sucker on the chair next to my bed. When I woke the next morning, the foot-long sucker had become one-inch long, as our dog had spent the entire night standing by my bed licking it.

When the Beatles took over America, one of their stops was the Hollywood Bowl. Everyone went nuts at the thought of the Beatles playing just a few miles away. As a local celebrity, Engineer Bill was invited, and he took Kathy along. She took pictures of the performance, which she showed to all the kids in the neighborhood. Though the pictures were small and in black and white, we could clearly see the Bowl, and we just knew that those four black specks onstage were The Beatles.

Even the twelve-year-olds were impressed with that.

-Hank

"Local Hero," from The Saturday Morning Post, at hankfrazee.com