Are We There Yet?
November 12-18, 2018
By Jay Edwards
jedwards@dailydata.com
Most of my Facebook posts are of celebrity birthdays with a quote or two from one or more of their better movies. The birthday I picked on Nov. 2 was for Cactus Vick, who was a famous attraction for birthday parties back in the late ‘50s and through the ‘60s. He had a trailer he pulled behind his car that held a small merry-go-round.
His full name was Volmer Voss Vick and he was born on a Cotton Plantation in Varner. What are the odds? I guess he could have been from Van Buren, or Vilonia, or even that Village near Hot Springs, but Varner has a better ring. The town is known of course for the prison you can spot through the haze on that annual summer morning when you’re headed to the Gulf. I’m glad to know that the area also gave us Cactus Vick.
Young Volmer was given the responsibility at the age of 15 of helping his mother, Berta Mae, support the family after the death of his father, K.P. Vick. He began selling peanuts on the streets of England. He graduated as president of his senior class at England High School in May 1930.
Vick’s entertainment career began in the late 1940s with a radio show called “The Safety-First Pals”, in which Vick spoke to kids as a toothless hillbilly named Uncle Arky. In 1954–1955, he used his comedic talents on Teentime Jamboree on KARK-TV. In his late twenties, Vick entered a radio talent contest called Major Bowes’s Amateur Hour doing humorous impressions. Although Vick did not win the contest, Dale Hart, who was a producer at KGHI, a short-lived Little Rock radio station in the early 1950s, noticed him. In 1954, when Hart was program manager at KARK television in Little Rock, he offered Vick the opportunity to put his talents to use with his own western-themed variety show. Vick accepted, and “Cactus” Vick’s Six Gun Theatre debuted on the air in 1955.
The show consisted of Vick, dressed in western attire, showing popular western movies to kids, along with occasional performances by celebrity visitors such as Gene Autry, sidekick Smiley Burnette, Gail “Annie Oakley” Davis, and Roy Rogers. Vick had chosen his stage name, “Cactus,” specifically for his role as host of Six Gun Theatre, but it stuck for the entirety of his career. The show was sponsored by Finkbeiner Meat Packing Company, and Vick participated in various marketing campaigns in his signature attire as spokesperson for its products.
He died on Dec. 18, 1978. When I read that I said to KM, “Did you know Cactus Vick died on your 22nd birthday?”
“No,” she answered. “Do you remember what you got me on that birthday?”
“Well, I hope it wasn’t a Cactus Vick birthday party.”
That made her laugh and forget the question I didn’t know the answer to.
So after I posted Triple V’s birthday on Facebook, I scrolled down to see what other postings had made the grade, whatever that means. One lady asked where a good drive would be to see the best fall foliage. The third comment posted to her post said, “Try where there’s lots of trees.”
I know, snarky. But it made me smile and like.
Then there was the photo of the airline pilot on Halloween, who was walking through some airport with a blind-man’s cane and wearing dark glasses. Like two.
An analysis from CNN was saying that on Oct. 22, a fact-checker reported that Donald Trump had lied 83 times. That seemed pretty high to me for just one day, but I didn’t comment and just moved on, which I’m trying to get better at doing on the political stuff.
And speaking of the president, Alec Baldwin was supposedly arrested in New York for assaulting a guy over a parking place. I don’t condone violence, but come on, we are talking about a Manhattan parking place.
Then someone recommended I go see “Free Solo,” which KM and I did. It’s amazing, and be sure and take your girl because they’ll spend the last half hour with their face buried in your chest. So, I had that going for me.
Source: Arkansas Encyclopedia of History & Culture
