When I was in early elementary school,1st or 2nd grade,I as many of my classmates at the grooviest school in the county,Fountain Rock Elementary,(remind me to write about that place on a future slow day) watched a program that would never fly today.My generation was the end of local television children's programming as it started with the beginning of television and slowly died out by the mid 1980's with the advent of cable networks.
Growing up in a rural area inside a somewhat rural county,television,as I've stated before,was a huge part of my life and one of the few good things was getting television from the Baltimore and Washington markets.
However,most of the time it was the smaller UHF stations that catered to children and the niche' markets.
That is not all that different than specialized networks today as I would wager that I spent tons of times watching terrific re-runs of old shows like Star Trek,ACC basketball and UHF channel WDCA 20 was the only place that you could watch the Washington Bullets or Washington Capitals.
But the main difference was the much weaker signal.
I had some problem picking up WDCA from River Road outside Washington,but we could not pick up WBFF,the Baltimore equivalent at all.
It was quite a while before my brother and I realized that in my aunt's bedroom,she could get WBFF.
That's right-we could pick up this station in one room in the house-go figure.
That fact is why I am writing about Captain 20 and not the Baltimore kids icon-Captain Chesapeake.
Channel 20 used Dick Dyszel as Captain 20 and they showed cartoons like the great Hanna Barbara stuff from 1960's etc,with my first exposure to Japanese import cartoons Speed Racer,Marine Boy and Kimba the White Lion along with things like monkey races to grab kids attention.
To this day,I often break into"who's the king of animals in Africa?" while the lovely Cherie and my kids look at me like I just fell from the sky.
I remember very well getting my Channel 20 Kids Card (sorry,have no idea what happened to it),which then made me eligible to have my name in a huge barrel which then had a name pulled out every day for a prize of some sort-sorry,kids never won one of those either.
Actually,in my entire life-I have won two prizes and only one of those was actually luck of the draw.
I answered a question correctly on the Mountain West conference website,which got me a t-shirt,which went to Ryan,so I see it here and there.
Dyszel played the role very well as Captain 20,but he might be better remembered for his run on late night horror movies on the network as Count Gore De Vol to most.
Dyszel was a hit in both spots,but it was pretty clear to even kids that Dyszel was playing both roles,although I don't remember either character mentioning the other.
As I wrote earlier,local TV kids shows were pretty much dead by the time Ryan came along in the late 80's,so his only memories about stuff like that comes from his nutty father.
They were campy and I don't know how well they would hold up on YouTube today,but I sometimes think they are going to miss some of the regional TV.
Good memories of Captain 20 and looking back at the groovy times of the middle 1970's......
Photo Credit: DCMemories.com
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