A sideways personal note: Back in fourth grade I was hooked on Mystic Mountain. Some kid-shows were just filler around the cartoons. This show was sooooo much better than the cartoons. You might argue that it isn't hard to beat the entertainment value of a silent Farmer Alfalfa TerryToon but Mystic Mountain didn't even need cartoons.

Wow. Just take a look at that "ma-cheen." (That's how the Professor said it ... That's what it was.) I have no idea what it was supposed to do but it had arms! How cool is that??!!

This show inspired me to develop a German accent and put together my own ma-cheens out of cardboard boxes and dysfunctional radios. I never thought the accent was German. I called it a "scientist's accent."

Then one bleak afternoon … No more Professor Friedel Furter, BeBop Buzzard, or Boris Blastoff. J.P. Patches was on instead!

Being only eight years old I didn't have a very clear idea about how things worked at a television station. It seemed to me that J.P. Patches had muscled my favorite show off the air. J.P. could have been content to have his morning show … But Nooooooo. He had to take over Professor Friedel Furter's time slot too.

I boycotted the Patches show for a couple of weeks but eventually I drifted back because he was funny and the cartoons were my favorite Warner Brothers but …

I always had a little grudge against J.P. for pushing Mystic Mountain off the air.

Years pass … 46 of them to be exact.

My sister gave me "J.P. Patches *Northwest Icon*" by J.P. and Bryan Johnston for my birthday. (By the way … if you know a Patches Pal of any age … Get them this book. I guarantee you they'll love it.)

I was reading it that evening and when I came to the chapter about Mystic Mountain I was shocked, stunned, and amazed to find out that J.P. and the Professor were played by the same guy!

I had it all wrong.

J.P. wasn't a power-mad clown out to rule the kid-program world. Professor Friedel Furter didn't have to go stand in the unemployment line. It was an "Upper-Management" decision. Adults know all about those.

All better.