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Alexander after the play Animal House at Arnold High School

Recollections

Dark Shadows

Not many people will remember the soap opera, innovative at the time, named Dark Shadows. At that time, the soaps were as engaging as politics is today, and Dark Shadows was the first soap opera for preteens. It was aired just when I came home from school, about 3:30 or so, in the late 1960s. Barnabus Collins was the vampire, an aesthetic, basically good and decent vampire. The villain was the Inquisitorial Reverand Trask (who echoed the villainous conformity so reviled in those hippy days). He was responsible for putting the virtuous Victoria White in jail for witchcraft. Barnabus had a kind of Fonzy appeal, with hippy style sideburns and an aquiline nose. One episode he entombs the ever shrieking Reveran Trask behind a wall of brick, a Poe-like finale to the mean and hypocritical man. I used to watch the show while talking all the while with my friend Ted, on the long heavy rotary phone handle. We would discuss the plot as it progressed. It was a double treat if my mother happened to go shopping that day since I would watch Dark Shadows and eat wing-dings--a type of confectionery made of some sugar type good with synthetic style whipped cream on top, best eaten with a bowl of Captain Crunch nearby. Captain Crunch was another marketing marvel--an original, but that is another story.

Jimi Hendrix

Juvenile Humor