The J.P. Generation -- He's Not Gone, And He's Not Forgotten

This was funny?

Clown gets hit with pie; clown falls off tricycle. Clown gets hit with baseball bat; clown falls off chair. Clown gets hit with stepladder; clown falls off wooden crate.

No wonder J.P. Patches never worked from a script. If KIRO-TV's insurance company ever read one, it might have canceled J.P. years before the station got around to it in 1981.

In 10,000 shows over 23 years, the tattered king of Seattle kiddie shows took more falls and absorbed more blows than most prizefighters could suffer in a lifetime of overhyped pay-per-view bouts.

And J.P. was free!

But wait a minute ... what's that voice? It's J.P.'s invisible "Mr. Announcer Man," reminding us that a gazillion of you freeway-jammers moved here from Equity Valley, Calif., and Rustbucket, Ohio, and have no idea what we're talking about.

You are confused by your co-workers' nostalgia for J.P. and his burly girlfriend, Gertrude. You make no sense of their references to Ketchikan the Animal Man, Sturdly the Bookworm or the Swami of Pastrami. And you are puzzled by this piece of local history making a modest resurgence on videos, on T-shirts, at rock concerts, at Sonics games.

Shall we fill them in, Mr. Announcer Man? How about it, Patches Pals? (Camera nods up and down in silent, friendly consent.)

The simple answer is that Julius Pierpont Patches was a TV clown: a wide red tie with white polka dots, blue-and-black plaid shirt, gaudy yellow vest and a coat covered with a rainbow of fabric swatches. On top was a rumpled black hat, red nose, broad grin, stringy wig and enough square inches of rubber ear to make Ross Perot's look microscopic. Inside was Chris Wedes (WEE-dus), son of Greek immigrants, refugee from Minnesota, former paperboy, waiter, actor, radio DJ and all-around ham.

But that's just the character; J.P. the phenomenon was something bigger.

Think of it as a secret handshake among Northwest baby-boomers and post-boomers, a shared recollection connecting all things Seattle from 1958 to 1981. Before there was the Space Needle, before there was Interstate 5, before there were the Seahawks, Mariners or SuperSonics - and long before there were recycling bins, espresso carts and drive-by shootings - there was J.P.

What do Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Soundgarden lead singer Chris Cornell have in common? They watched J.P. Patches.

What does Wenatchee park ranger Colleen Crawford-Davis remember from her trip to the Ellensburg Rodeo at age 6? She met J.P. Patches.

What single thing does Seattle paralegal Cynthia Brown recall about a friend's birthday party a quarter-century ago? She got kissed by J.P. Patches.

J.P.'s spark seared the area's collective consciousness, not just because of the charm of the character or the magic of the medium, but because of the potency of the imaginations it touched - imaginations like that of little John Keister, hunched over a bowl of Sugar Smacks in his family's Seward Park home in the early 1960s.

In this memory, Dad has left for work as a Boeing physicist; Mom is puttering around in the kitchen. John, who one day will host his own comedy show, KING-TV's "Almost Live!," is in the family room with his little brother, devouring his sugary breakfast favorite at a metal-legged, turquoise-topped table that matches the refrigerator.

On a wheeled cart barely out of reach, the trusty old black-and-white flickers to life. In a half-hour, John will scamper out the door to Graham Hill Elementary, three blocks away. But for now his eyes are glued to the screen, where a clown who wants to go to space uses marking pens to draw a spaceship control panel on the wall.

Anyone can draw on the wall, John knows, but when J.P. pushes the pretend buttons, things actually happen: Smoke shoots across the scene, lights flash, a loud rumble rocks the set and the clown is shot into the heavens. Years before "empowerment" becomes an overused byword of management theory, the clown is showing his little viewers they can make stuff happen. "Look at all the creative people from here, cartoonists and whatnot," says Keister. "Talk to any of them and I know they watched J.P. Patches."

Even with visiting celebrities, J.P. was a prankster. He traded double entendres with Steve Allen, coaxed Tiny Tim into a skit in which his ukulele was stolen, and challenged one of the Harlem Globetrotters to a shoot-out, operating a secret lever that moved the basket each time the player shot.

The clown's willingness to flirt with the rules of good behavior gave the show an edge that set it apart from what Keister calls the "warm and fuzzy" children's shows that stressed education and culture. "This guy would have feuds with people and there was always something dangerous happening. Things would blow up." But even though J.P.'s inventions, recipes or visitors might disappear in a burst of flash powder, good would always triumph over evil before the last commercial, and J.P. would remind his viewers that the 10 steps to becoming a Patches Pal included minding Mommy and Daddy.

(Playing with matches was a definite no-no for Patches Pals, says Wedes, wincing at the recent exposure on television of a pre-arrest photo of confessed arsonist Paul Keller with his arm around J.P. To Wedes, who did not know Keller, the man had been just another fan.)

"The J.P. Patches Show" hit Seattle's airwaves Feb. 10, 1958, the first live broadcast on newly licensed KIRO-TV. Although the crowded studios sat at the base of a Queen Anne Hill transmission tower, Patches told his young viewers he was Mayor of the City Dump. (So convincing was this particular assertion that many kids who tagged along on trips to the real dump - the old Montlake landfill - came away disappointed they didn't see J.P.'s shack.)

In the big-family homes of the day, the Patches show added to the potency of the one-eyed baby-sitter. Each weekday morning and afternoon, the city's tender, impressionable minds were carried into a place where clowning, clutter and general silliness ruled. And through his miraculous ICU2-TV, J.P. would look back and see those tender, impressionable viewers - a prospect that caused more than one pajama-clad tyke to dive behind the nearest piece of furniture.

At its peak, the Emmy-winning show played to 100,000 pairs of tiny eyes around Puget Sound. And though that had dropped to 16,000 by the time the show was canceled, the seeds of silliness planted in those young minds lived on.

They live on in people like Mark Vandermeer, flooring salesman in Lynnwood. Vandermeer, 31, was hawking his lines of vinyl flooring at a warehouse party in Tacoma last year when the image of J.P. Patches popped up on a big-screen television being raffled off. Instantly, Vandermeer and a customer plunged into a 15-minute bout of nostalgia, competing to name as many of J.P.'s bizarre characters as they could. "My boss thought I was half screwy," says Vandermeer. "He's not from here."

THE PATCHES SHOW, OF course, was by no means the only kids' program dishing up cornball humor, spinning cartoons and hawking breakfast cereal to a budding generation of superconsumers. Portland had Rusty Nail; San Francisco had Mayor Art; Cedar Rapids, Iowa, had gun-toting lawman Marshall Jay, who once shot himself in the foot at a small-town summer picnic.

Here in Puget Sound country, J.P. played opposite KOMO's Captain Puget, pipe-puffing sailor of the Windward 4; KING's Stan Boreson, Scandihoovian tunesmith and basset-lover, and KTNT's Brakeman Bill, ersatz engineer. Each had his faithful following, but none outlasted the dump-dwelling Patches, who claimed the longest-running locally produced children's program in America.

So what was the guy's secret? Take your pick:

-- He flubbed his first acting role.

-- He preferred radio, and lamented the creation of television.

-- He didn't want the "J.P. Patches" part.

-- His "J.P." debut lit up the switchboard - with complaints.

-- Federal authorities shut down one of his gags.

All of those are true, all acknowledged by Wedes as he sips coffee and munches pastry in the Edmonds home where he and his wife, Joanie, have lived for 35 years. Here, J.P.'s mellow tones and irreverent humor still surface as he flips the pages of a heavy scrapbook, and its yellowed clippings and faded photos slip out over the table. But don't look for any more headers over the three-wheeler; Wedes happily entered grandfatherhood last year and marked his 65th birthday yesterday.

The offbeat Patches showmanship that became a part of Puget Sound life tracks back six decades to a preschool pageant in St. Paul, where a bright-eyed 4-year-old makes his acting debut as the sun. It's a vital but rather limiting part: Chris is instructed to remain squarely behind the yellow cardboard orb, which will signal the flowers around him to rise and spread their petals. But once he is onstage, the budding ham takes over, and he peeks around the prop to flash a big grin to Mom and Dad.

At 11, he shouts the paperboy's time-honored call, "Extra! Extra! Read all about it" on a "Catholic Digest of the Air" radio drama. It's only a bit part, but Chris himself is bitten - by the radio bug.

Through Humboldt High School and Macalester College, he appears in skits, plays and community theater, always finding fun in roles and gimmicks that trigger a laugh. Irreverent, smart-alecky and sophomoric without apology - the Patches style is taking shape. When a detergent jingle boasts "F-A-B cleans everything" he impresses his fellow students with his own mutated version:

"Put MUD in your washing machine. Makes the housewife's face turn green. If you use MUD you will see, M-U-D ruins everything."

But keeping a promise to his father, he spends his first year after college working at his dad's downtown St. Paul diner, where liver and onions is 45 cents and breaded pork tenderloin is a nickel more.

After a hitch in the Army in Korea, Wedes returns to the radio station, but soon is offered a director's job at WMIN-TV in Minneapolis. The call triggers mixed emotions; he loves using his many different voices on radio and the way the medium taps into listeners' imagination. But he cannot deny the power inside the box: "I could see that TV was going to become the primary source of entertainment ... and besides, they paid more."

In TV, there are basically two kinds of work: pointing the camera or being pointed at. Although Wedes starts at a director's job, he soon creeps around to the front of the lens, donning a fake mustache and cranking up a thick Greek accent (mimicking his mom's) to become Joe the Cook, lunchtime guest on a popular children's show. On Saturdays, Western garb and a folksy old-timer's voice turn him into Chuckwagon Chuck, host of Wild West serials.

Then comes a big opportunity, both unexpected and unwelcome: The station's on-air clown, the first J.P. Patches, heads across town for a different notch on the TV dial. Management can't stand the thought of being a clown down, and turns to Wedes. His first reaction is no thanks: He doesn't want the role's daily demand of heavy makeup, nor does he want to bump heads with his former co-worker, appearing on a competing station as "T.M. Tatters."

"But when you have a boss, and he tells you to do something ..." Wedes sighs, a sobering reminder that even carefree kiddie-TV characters march to the beat of the name on the bottom of the paycheck.

A chilling baptism awaits the reluctant clown as he takes over the Patches role with no notice to viewers of the change. "The first day, the station receive hundreds of phone calls from people saying, `Take that guy off the air. He's not J.P. Patches.' " But soon he converts the mini-Minnesotans, passing T.M. Tatters in the first rating period.

The big move west comes in 1958. The clown's former director, Fred Kaufman, moves from Minnesota to Seattle and wants J.P. Patches in the lineup when Queen City Broadcasting, operators of KIRO AM and FM radio, expands into television.

Seattle of the late 1950s was a place of relative innocence.

The week J.P. took to the airwaves, junior-high students defended a curfew that forced them off the street by 10 p.m.; a KIRO ad in the newspaper plugged its popular radio dramas: "Ma Perkins," "Young Dr. Malone" and the "Romance of Helen Trent." And The Bon Marche trumpeted "the most fascinating toy of the season" for $2.98, the scientifically designed, "escape-proof" ant farm.

Crime news serious enough for the front page included the account of a 20-year-old University of Washington student from Fremont slapped with a $30 fine. His offense: goat-hunting on Mount Si.

J.P. Patches quickly became a hit, working his way into the city's broadcast scene.

Of course, not everyone was amused with the denizen of the dump. There were always critics like the Bellevue mother who complained that J.P.'s antics were "pointless and based on roughhouse humor - not good examples of playtime endeavor." Some urged KIRO to show less J.P. and more of the network's Captain Kangaroo, with his gentle blend of wisdom, culture and good cheer.

But kids loved the kooky clown who didn't talk down to them, and sponsors liked his affordable, successful pitches. (Until children's-television watchdogs forced a change, kid-show hosts did their own commercials. When J.P. wanted Patches Pals to eat Kellogg's Corn Flakes, he simply walked over to his breakfast table and poured himself a bowl.)

OVER THE YEARS, Patches supporters included local charities, such as Children's Hospital, which he visited regularly to cheer up young patients. Although it may not have shown, those visits affected the clown as much as the youngsters; to this day, Wedes gets a catch in his voice and a sheen on his eyes when remembering some of the brave young patients and their difficult battles.

Back in the studio, no one knew just what each day's show would hold. In contrast to today's tightly scripted, planned-to-the-second programs, the Patches show took shape over a quick morning cup of coffee as Wedes and his crew roughed out a general story line. During commercials and cartoons, they'd huddle to plan the next few minutes.

Without a live audience (visitors were kept behind a glass partition until they were brought onstage after the last cartoon), the crew relied on one another to tell whether the impromptu humor was hitting or missing.

Some gimmicks were more potent than expected, like when nefarious Boris S. Wort, shifty eyes peering through the brim of his towering black hat, stole the magic Twinkle Dust the kindly Swami of Pastrami used to predict the future. Facing the camera, J.P. asked help from the Patches Pals: "I know all you boys and girls must have some Twinkle Dust out there."

Within days, mail sacks to KIRO were bulging with envelopes of salt, sand, sugar and soap flakes, many of them spilling their contents. Two uniformed postal inspectors showed up, strongly suggesting J.P. call off his minions. The envelopes had been ripping open in the post office, spilling magic dust into the canceling machine.

As much as the J.P. show helped shape Seattle, it should be noted that few events shaped the J.P. show as much as a single, unplanned act by a square-jawed ex-Marine named Bob Newman. One morning in 1960, while Newman was working as a floor director, J.P. picked up his huge black telephone receiver to ring up his helpful operator, Gertrude. Until then, Gertrude had been silent and unseen, but this time, when J.P. asked for some soda pop and potato chips, Newman chimed in with a crack-your-glasses falsetto: "OK, dear, I'll send it right down."

The quip created the need to bring Gertrude on camera - a towering, lovesick Amazon in a not-so-convincing drag outfit of flowing dresses, kitchen-mop hair and a painted smile that looked vaguely, even at dawn, of 5 o'clock shadow. ("To this day, we don't know why people thought some of this stuff was funny," Newman confides.)

Newman became J.P.'s all-purpose foil/accomplice, playing roles lodged in local history: handyman Leroy Frump, Ketchikan the Animal Man, Boris S. Wort, the world's second-meanest man, and Ggoorrsstt the Friendly Frpl (FUR-pull), a 6-foot-tall mound of shag carpet that ate packing foam through its armpits.

Getting laughs from kids was fun, but Newman was sometimes even happier to toss a line right over their pointy little heads. So when J.P. didn't know the names of the unseen "Oogah-chugga Singers" chanting outside his shack, Gertrude speculated that it must be Patti, LaVerne and Maxene (first names of the Andrews Sisters). "Now that didn't mean a thing to the kids in front of the TV, but Mom's frying eggs in the kitchen and she gets it."

The man inside that jumble of costumes now works as a makeup artist who recently had himself branded with an arm tattoo: "Fabulous Bob Newman." Although his mobility is limited by multiple sclerosis, Newman, 61, still joins J.P. in appearances.

And he wants to set the record straight: Despite videotaped evidence of J.P. taking pies in the face, Newman says it was his countenance that became a pastry magnet. "I don't think the clown got hit with more than a dozen pies in all the time I've know him." Gertrude, on the other hand, withstood 675 pies in a half hour in an attempt to make the Guinness Book of World Records. (Should you try this at home, he offers this advice: a TV pie is just a paper plate covered with shaving cream. Use whipped cream "and you'll smell like a cow for three days.")

When J.P. wanted an authority figure to spar with, he didn't have to look far. Mythical director Sam Gefeltafish was played by the show's longtime director, Joe Towey, a key contributor to the program's off-the-wall humor. Towey, who died in 1989, was best known to Seattle viewers as the Dracula-style Count, host of KIRO's "Nightmare Theater" on Saturdays.

ALTHOUGH THE PATCHES show has been off the air for more than a decade, sporadic bits of evidence suggest that wherever locals gather, a current of Patches power runs just below the surface, waiting to be tapped.

How else can one explain that bizarre moment at a Soundgarden concert at the Paramount last year? One minute, revelers eager to hear pure Seattle grunge were tearing the place and each other apart, and the next, their attention was riveted to the stage, where a raggedy, rubber-nosed hero from yesteryear strolled out and told them to quiet down.

Wondering aloud what the heck he was doing there, J.P. bantered with the crowd before introducing the act they'd come to see. Singer Cornell, waiting in the wings, was awestruck: "I was blown away by how unruly our audience was, but he seemed totally in his element. He worked them in a way that probably only he could."

Is it because something of J.P.'s craziness, his pratfalls and his jousts with authority lives on in their stage-diving, screaming antics? Is it because, as Cornell noted, this was the last generation he helped raise?

Perhaps. But that jolt of collective recognition, that reassuring reminder of a simpler world, might have had a similar effect in a boardroom, courtroom or classroom. A central part of the Patches Pals experience is realizing that whatever brand of madness is going on, we're all in it together.

It's that common recognition the Museum of History and Industry hoped to tap in making a J.P. Patches tableau the central feature of its current "Seattle Hits" display.

Although it stung Wedes to have his show canceled in 1981, he has no complaints about KIRO, where he worked on as a floor director until retiring in 1990. These days, the man who made J.P. Patches a part of the Northwest psyche enjoys triggering the J.P. nostalgia, although he is equally delighted to play to his favorite one-person audience, granddaughter Christina, who turns 1 later this month.

Recalling the countless hours in the clown outfit, he seldom talks in terms of lifetime achievement or his abundant collection of awards and certificates of merit.

But he does have certain points of professional pride.

"I'll tell you this," he offers, and even without makeup, the J.P. grin springs to life. "In all those years, only one kid managed to pull my nose off."

Now, that's funny.

Jack Broom is a reporter for The Seattle Times. Harley Soltes is Pacific's staff photographer.

-------------------------------- J.P.'S COMEBACK IS A FIVE-PART SERIES --------------------------------

WHEN DOUG BARNES GOT together with his softball buddies to hoist a few beers after their slow-pitch games, misty-eyed talk of Seattle childhoods always touched on J.P. Patches.

Barnes, a freight-forwarder, shared his observations with another confirmed Patches Pal, Doug Hamilton, sales manager for a record distributor. With the cooperation of Chris Wedes (J.P. Patches), the two Dougs formed City Dump Productions, producers of a five-part series of J.P. Patches tapes, three of which are now in stores (suggested retail, $16).

Volume 1: "Gertrude Reveals SuperKlown," built around moments from J.P.'s final show and highlights from other episodes.

Volume 2: "A Patches Pal Christmas." Christmas is threatened; J.P. goes to the North Pole to find out why.

Volume 3: "Patches Pal Pranks." Various skits and story lines, including the near-starvation of Ggoorrsstt the Friendly Frpl.

Still to come are a Thanksgiving-related video and one from the show's early black-and-white days.

A separate video, "J.P. Patches Memories Show," produced at KIRO, is sold at the Museum of History and Industry ($20), where a J.P. display forms the centerpiece of an exhibit called "Seattle Hits."

----------------------------------- A PATCHES WHO-WAS-WHO: -----------------------------------

Name: Julius Pierpont "J.P." Patches. Shtick: Left Ding-A-Ling Brothers Circus to settle at Seattle's city dump. Played by: Chris Wedes.

Name: Gertrude. Shtick: Telephone operator with unrequited affection for J.P. Played by: Bob Newman.

Name: Ketchikan the Animal Man. Shtick: Safari-garbed animal expert; guest-hosted when J.P. was out of town. Played by: Bob Newman.

Name: Sheriff Shot Badly. Shtick: Inept Western lawman in early J.P. years Played by: Don Einarsen.

Name: I.M. Rags. Shtick: J.P.'s evil brother, wanted to take over show. Played by: Joe Towey.

Name: SuperKlown. Shtick: Strange, powerful visitor from the planet Kronkton; strongly resembled J.P. Played by: Chris Wedes.

Name: Ggoorrsstt the Friendly Frpl (FUR-pull). Shtick: Friendly monster rescued from the island ORIK; ate through its armpits. Played by: Bob Newman.

NONHUMAN REGULAR FEATURES:

Grandpa Tick-Tock: Six-foot tall grandfather clock with eyes that rolled and a cuckoo that dumped water on J.P. to wake him up.

ICU2-TV: This J.P. invention let him see the viewers, acknowledging some Patches Pals on their birthdays. Could also be used as the Patches Teleporter, carrying J.P. to another location.

Sturdly the Bookworm: Arm-length puppet operated from behind the set, crawling out from J.P.'s crooked bookshelf.

Esmerelda: Ever-present Raggedy Ann doll, always ready to laugh at J.P.'s plights and pratfalls.

Tikey Turkey: Rubber chicken that found its way into a thousand gags; originally dubbed "Kevin Turkey" but renamed after viewers complained that kids named Kevin were getting picked on.

Pal-a-vac: Computer used at Christmas time to tell whether letter-writers had been good little boys and girls.

----------------------------------- J.P. SAYS: ----------------------------------- -- Mind Mommy and Daddy . -- Wash hands, face, neck and ears . -- Comb hair . -- Brush teeth . -- Drink your milk . -- Eat all of your food . -- Say your prayers . -- Share your toys . -- Put toys away . -- Hang up clothes .