When I was a little kid, I watched several kids shows on TV that featured cartoons. One of these was called The Happy Hal Show. It was hosted by a man named Hal Miller. He had an odd puppet called L’il Bow that he talked with on the show as he introduced the cartoons. One of the reasons he appealed to kids like me was his pleasant demeanor. He also talked a lot about toys. In addition to hosting his show, he also ran a chain of toy stores in Memphis. There was even a rack of “Happy Hal” toys at the pharmacy where my family went in the small town where I lived about 2 hours away from Memphis. I remember most of the toys on this rack were small enough to ask for as an occasional treat during a shopping trip. I don’t remember anything on the rack being big enough to make a Christmas wish list. I remember the Happy Hal Toy Rack probably better than I remember his show.
Imagine my joy when my mom took me and a bunch of cousins and friends to the West Tennessee Strawberry Festival Parade in Humboldt, Tennessee and we got to see Happy Hal marching down the street. This would be the first time I had a celebrity encounter. My mom and her friends coaxed Happy Hal out of the parade for a few moments to come and pose for a picture with us. It seems like this might have been the first time we had been to this parade and Happy Hal made it an instant hit. The only thing that might have made it a better experience is if Happy Hal had given us toys. This parade would have been close to the time that Happy Hal stopped doing his show. His show had started in the 1950’s and ended in the early 1970’s. Happy Hal’s toy stores were still around Memphis in the late 1970’s and I’m sure that the sign on the toy rack at our local pharmacy had the Happy Hal Toys sign on it well into the 1980’s. And Happy Hal is the biggest star I ever remember seeing at the Strawberry Festival parade.
