Reading the post by![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
rebellibrarianon Fred Rogers jogged my memory of the show, and helped push me to solve yet another minor childhood mystery. Like most kids of my age group, I watched Mister Roger's Neighborhood (and Sesame Street, but that's another story) in my preschool years. At such a young age, I found it difficult to tell reality from make-believe, and the show-within-the-show Neighborhood of Make Believe was as real to me as anything else. I've had this persistent memory lately of something really bad happening on Mister Rogers, something so negative that it caused me an inordinate amount of anxiety at the time, but I couldn't recall the specific event or episode.
After I saw the LJ post on Mister Rogers, I was talking about it with J, and I suddenly remembered it was a fire of some kind. Did the castle on the show burn down? Did one of the characters die? J didn't remember any fire or death on the show. I thought maybe I had been confusing Sesame Street's Mr. Cooper, who died, with Mister Rogers?
Googling furiously today, I just came up with the answer. According to various sources, in Mister Rogers season 1, episode 63, air date 5/15/1968 (I would have been 3) there was a fire at Cornflake S. Pecially's factory and it burned down. That was it! I was very unhappy about the fire as a child. I'm sure Fred Rogers was calm and reassuring as he explained what happened, but I must not have heard him with all the crying and running around in a panic. I didn't realize things could burn and people could get hurt. WTF!?!? Was it some sort of a Vietnam reference? Leave it to childhood Mr. T to react with fear and anxiety to a TV program universally praised as gentle, affirming and soothing for young children! My fear of fire didn't last long, as I soon became a dedicated pyromaniac, but to this day I find the memory of Corny's factory burning down on Mister Rogers Neighborhood vaguely unsettling.
rebellibrarianon Fred Rogers jogged my memory of the show, and helped push me to solve yet another minor childhood mystery. Like most kids of my age group, I watched Mister Roger's Neighborhood (and Sesame Street, but that's another story) in my preschool years. At such a young age, I found it difficult to tell reality from make-believe, and the show-within-the-show Neighborhood of Make Believe was as real to me as anything else. I've had this persistent memory lately of something really bad happening on Mister Rogers, something so negative that it caused me an inordinate amount of anxiety at the time, but I couldn't recall the specific event or episode. After I saw the LJ post on Mister Rogers, I was talking about it with J, and I suddenly remembered it was a fire of some kind. Did the castle on the show burn down? Did one of the characters die? J didn't remember any fire or death on the show. I thought maybe I had been confusing Sesame Street's Mr. Cooper, who died, with Mister Rogers?
Googling furiously today, I just came up with the answer. According to various sources, in Mister Rogers season 1, episode 63, air date 5/15/1968 (I would have been 3) there was a fire at Cornflake S. Pecially's factory and it burned down. That was it! I was very unhappy about the fire as a child. I'm sure Fred Rogers was calm and reassuring as he explained what happened, but I must not have heard him with all the crying and running around in a panic. I didn't realize things could burn and people could get hurt. WTF!?!? Was it some sort of a Vietnam reference? Leave it to childhood Mr. T to react with fear and anxiety to a TV program universally praised as gentle, affirming and soothing for young children! My fear of fire didn't last long, as I soon became a dedicated pyromaniac, but to this day I find the memory of Corny's factory burning down on Mister Rogers Neighborhood vaguely unsettling.
- Mood:
restless
