Your Favorite Mister Rogers Memory

Fred Rogers passed away yesterday at age 74.  He hosted his show for 32 years.

I remember the "Spoon Mountain" musical, where the villains were "Wicked Knife and Fork."  And I was always a fan of Cornflake S. Pecially's Washer-Dryer-Sorter-Dumper.  What better way to wash, dry, sort, and dump your potatoes?

TAL's show about Neighbors featured a story about Mr. Rogers:

http://thisamericanlife.org/pages/archive01.html#184

Growing up in Pittsburgh as a little kid, I watched him all the time. I don't remember specific moments of the show, but I remember the things that kept coming back, like the traffic light seperating the rooms, and all the characters and locales of the Land of Make-Believe.  Truly sad, another piece of pure innocence lost.

.o0 There's never any trouble here in Bubbleland 0o.

If anyone wants to look, there's a picture of me on my profile page as a small kid, holding a picture of a postcard I got from Mr. Rogers. I had sent him some drawings I had made, and received back a postcard with a typewritten message referring specifically to each of the drawing s I had made and signed by "your television neighbor, Mr. Rogers." Amazing, especially to a young kid.

what about the bubbleland musical? there's a laundromat by my house called bubbleland, and *every* time i pass it, i sing, "there is never any trouble here in bubblelaaaaaaaand!" i remember idolizing lady aberlin -- i thought she was *so* beautiful. and i loved henrietta piussycat and daniel striped tiger, and i lvoved to hate lady elaine fairchild and her boomerang zoomerang.

neal claims that there's an episode of mr. rogers where he got a traffic ticket for speeding on his motorcycle. i think he's on crack. anyone else know what on earth he's talking about?

I loved Mister Roger's, but my most vivid memory of him isn't a pleasant one for me.  I think I was about 6 years old, and my mom was out shopping, so my dad was watching us which basically means we were unsupervised.  I was watching Mister Rogers and he was doing some kind of little project, I forgot what he was making but I remember it involved cutting an old shoebox with scissors.  My dad probably didn't notice me get up and get our super-duper hedge-clipper scissors and start cutting an old shoebox...  Needless to say, stiches were required, my mom was MAD, and I still have the scar on my hand to this day.   But I don't blame Mister Rogers, I loved him.

And Gella steals my thoughts yet agian.

I think Bubbleland counted as the most sureal musical they did, and that says a lot.

I remember how much I'd look foreward to the musical episodes. They were always so much fun

Which might have been my favorite TAL bit (at least that I've heard)

I was always (and still am) a huge fan of the picture picture segments. How else does a five-year-old learn how a towel is made (or a 21yr-old who does't have class until noon ;) ?

I also remember when I realized that the opening credits were over a model and not a real city.

Oh, and Daniel was always my favorite puppet. I'm not sure if I want to know what that says about me, but it fits with Telly being my favorite on Sesame Street.

I dunno, the show did have some weird moments.

Anyone else remember him making peanut butter out of peanuts and a stick of butter?

Or the episode where henrietta had a big bag of sand delieverd?

But the weird thing were part of what made the show so fun. (And makes it still worth watching, for me at least, today)

Wasn't there a picture picture one where they make saxophones?  I loved that one.

I remember the episode where Mr. Rogers showed us the neighborhood model, and spoke to the guy who made it.

 

i always liked the one that showed crayons being made. unless that was sesame street. i remember realizing it was a model, too. and finding out that mr. rogers did all those puppets' voices.

Picture Picture had the amazing ability (ahead of its time) to accept just about any medium shoved into it, different kinds of films, videocassettes....

i always loved the show.. has something to do w/ growing up around Pittsburgh. it does in the sense of, i always wondered which part of the city the "neighborhood" was modelled after. the only thing was that i always (sometimes to this day) thought that Mr. Rogers lived in the apartments at the one end of the neighboorhood & came to the little house specifically to talk to the kids, yeah weird, i know. the favourite thing about the show for me was either... the fish tank ("time to feed the fish"), all the different models used for the Land of MakeBelieve (the ones he would put on the kitchen table when he didn't use the trolley as a segue), or just the trolley itself (my great-grandfather actually drove a trolley when Pittsburgh still had them). ok, i'm a sap, i really just can't pin it down to one good thing. *sob* but everyone knows that he was actually that nice in person, which i think is wonderful in itself.

The one that stands out in my mind is when Yo Yo Ma was a guest star, and he did a duet with his son... and then Yo Yo's son and Fred played the piano while Yo played Cello.  It was just one of those moments.

I work at the local PBS affiliate.  The TV in the breakroom is always running PBS Kids during the day... so I'll often be standing at the microwave watching King Friday and crew or watching Mr. Rogers being creative with construction paper and toilet paper tubes.  as i said earlier... my inner child weeps.

i didn't notice if it was posted earlier, but if you want to send your condolences you can address them to:

Family Communications
4802 Fifth Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213

i watched mister rogers for SO long!!!! 

being more 'old skool' than all of you whippersnappers, my favorite memories are different.  like i was 'pre-bubbleland'.  my favorite was every summer, they would go to visit the platypuses{sp?} and i LOVED that!!! 

i have somewhere at home{ i THINK}one of those fold-out paper puppet stages of the land of make believe with cool little paper doll-type puppets of the characters.  i used to love to play with that as a child.

and we know that i emulate henrietta pussycat's speach pattern  ;)

also. lady elaine fairchild.  oh to be so opinionated and straight-forward.

and another of my favorite characters was also donkey hody.  whose name, of course, i didn't get til -years- later.

and on the names...man...how creative.  king friday the 13th.  queen sarah saturday.  prince tuesday. {actually, i remember when he was -born-  *gasp*}x the owl.  donkey hody{as mentioned before}grampierre.{sp?}

and the best thing about watching mister rogers was my mom HATED him.  she called him 'gink'.  don't ask me why...

*sigh*  saaaaaad girrrrrrrrrrrrl.

i think to go along with the muppet ones, we now need them to produce 'land of make believe ' action figures!!!!

tee hee

i remember seeing the school episodes and being so excited about getting to go to school when i was older. it looked like so much fun to ride the little bus and buy school supplies and sit in those cute little desks in the one-room schoolhouse. and then there was the attendance song: oOdaniel, prince, and anna...daniel, prince, and anna...daniel, prince and anna are heeeeere!Oo and king friday wanted the song to go "prince, daniel, and anna" instead. :)

when i was little i saw a show of his that said if there was ever a tornado get under something sturdy...well guess what a few months later there was a tornado and i got under the coffee table and everything was good. except that my play school kitchen that was in the backyard was no longer in the back yard. God Bless Mr. Rogers and everything he did...he will be truly missed

was anyone here seriously afraid of getting sucked down the tub drain? i never even considered it until i saw mr. rogers sing about it -- and then it was one more thing to worry about. :) they did a great parody of that song on "rugrats" once -- the kids are watching a cartoon where a scary toilet and a scarier bathtub are singing in these awful, shrieky voices, "THE WATER'S YOUR PAL! THE TUB IS YOUR FRIEND! YOU CAN'T GET SUCKED DOWN THE DRAIN!" and the rugrats are absolutely horrified. :)

I loved that one too... then a few years later my family went to the binney & smith crayon factory and it was just like picture picture showed us. After that I had trouble separating out my actual memories of the factory from the picture picture segment.

There was one ep where Mr. Rogers was talking about grandparents... and I remember that he told us that he called one of his grandfathers "ding-dong." I always thought that was funny, That might have been the time he took us to the aquarium... the big one, not the one in his house.

Ernie and Bert also sang a song about not getting sucked down the drain. I never really considered that, no... i mean, come on... i was bigger than the drain. I was more afraid of things coming *out* of the drain than I was about going down it.

I loved those models. I always wanted a set of my own.

I always thought he just visited the house to talk to the kids too. I'm not sure where I thought he really lived, but I always wondered why there was no bedroom in the house.

My favorite was the trumpet one. He would blow in the trumpet in different areas and talk about how different it sounds in those places. He took a tour through a big cave and blew in it there, and it echoed all neat sounding. :^) This sounds like a Fuzzy Memories

I don't remember much about the show other than I loved to watch it. But I remember being so fascinated by the puppets. I thought they were the coolest. That and Mr. Rogers was always so good natured. Sarah

What I remember most, and I haven't seen it in FOREVER, is the fantastic theme song (did he write that?) and the trolley that took you to that imaginary puppet world. I also remember it was on just before the Electric Company and after Reading Rainbow. We'll miss you Mr Rogers!

"and on the names...man...how creative.  king friday the 13th.  queen sarah saturday.  prince tuesday. {actually, i remember when he was -born-  *gasp*}x the owl.  donkey hody{as mentioned before}grampierre.{sp?}

and the best thing about watching mister rogers was my mom HATED him.  she called him 'gink'.  don't ask me why."

Shelly,

You have a few years on me but I still remember a lot also.  My mom hated him as much as yours did but I can't seem to recall the name she used to call him.  :)

~Karen

I had that record of Mr. Rogers about going down the drain!

o/~ you can never go down can never go down can never go down the drain....

...the rain may go down....but you can't go down...o/~

I wish I had that LP today. :(

omg, I was _totally_ going to bring up the homemade peanut butter episode.

I also loved the general snarkiness of Lady Elaine Fairchild, and Daniel-Striped-Tiger was such a sweetie that I nicknamed one of my friends after him.