I am sitting in the waiting room area of Cal Worthington Ford. Football is on the 20” screen that is here for the comfort of their guests while their friends or loved ones purchase their dream new or used Vehicle.
Across from me is a bored salesman who came with the specific goal to hit on me. He’s wearing a yellow shirt and black pants, on a busy day it must look like a hive of bees around these cars.
I am staring at my computer screen ignoring him, while he taps his fingers annoyingly against the steal armrests of his polyester blue chair. Well, maybe he didn’t come in to hit on me and is anxious for the score, is today Superbowl Sunday?
Anyone who grew up in Los Angeles remembers Cal Worthington. Cal was on between Warner Brothers and Hanabarbara cartoons, talk shows and newscasts on local channels. Cal Worthington was old when I was in grade school. Somehow, he’s not dead.
In fact, the LA Times wrote an article on the old bastard. He still demands to do his own commercials, which are filmed in his enormous ranch style house, and they edit the takes later to have the car lot in the background, it is a farce!
His days of getting circus animals the announcer saying, “Its Cal Worthington and his do-o-g Spot!” are over. Besides, it never was a dog! It was a cow, bear, tiger, or an elephant, but it was not a dog.
One year Barnum and Bailey’s circus came to Inglewood, which in itself, is already a circus of sorts. Their tents housed in the World Famous Laker’s Forum. Cages like animal box crackers displayed with various animals as you walked in holding your ticket. Kids awing-ooing-gooing their cotton candy sticks, licking fingers and then spreading the sticky little matter on their pants giving it a pretty glitter appeal.
I remember one child was walking with her mother, a skinny woman in a tight blue dress. She wore glasses that looked like jack-o-lantern smiles over her eyes, face was covered in foundation still exposing her pores. Equally as awful, her daughter was short, even for a toddler, and round, stumbling around on a kid-leash. The little girl kept wandering from cage to cage (probably looking for a home) yelling, “Spot! Dog!” repetitively at whether it was a monkey, a billie goat, or a tiger. Her mother seemed perplexed by her daughter’s stupidity. I knew why, she had been educated by the television. She was watching the Tom and Jerry hour, which I thought was stupid anyway, mouse and cat who don’t talk – boring! Tom and Jerry must have needed a sponsor badly, aside from Tide and Tampax the only other sponsor that played during their show was Long Beach Cal Worthington and he probably used half an hour of advertising with various animals saying he’d stick his head in the lion’s mouth if you found a better deal. “I won’t be beat!” He would say in his white cowboy suit, sometimes a cigar in hand.
“I’ll stand on my head till my ears turn red to make you a deal!” We kids would think that was so funny. What we didn’t think was funny and didn’t know what it was, but knew at an early age was definitely a dirty word was in his jingle.
If you live in Los Angeles and you are reading this, you’re nodding right now.
This song is housed in the back of our minds like a dirty secret. Just like the time your Uncle just like the time an Uncle had you on his lap and his hand started to drift to “adjust” your undergarments because they were “all bunched up.” That’s when mom looks over from mashing potatoes and picks the child up before damage is done. I was raised by a single mom and had a lot of uncles, wished we had more mash potatoes. You’re never quite sure if it was a dirty moment, but you hold onto it that way just the same, as children, that’s how we felt about Cal’s song.
For most Los Angeles natives, the confession about Cal Worthington doesn’t come out until late teens or early twenties. This age is typical because in Los Angeles, unless the person had a predestine personality for addiction in their youth or exposure, people don’t start using cocaine until their around that age.
When a person first stands at that beautiful pearly gate, leaning above a mirror, practicing chopping skills (that we could’ve learned in a kitchen with a knife and say celery instead of a credit card and powdered rocks) we open a gateway in our minds called the confession zone.
I acquired listening skills somewhere along the line. Women in general love to speak, heard, and paid ample attention to.
Personally, I am not an attention whore outright. I am more subtle about it, which has given me longevity in the attention department. By being less demanding, quietly providing mordant remarks to an attentive audience, I have surpassed more coke whores.
With that in mind, I have sat in on many conversations powered by the chemicals in which magically make us sudden philosophers, deep thinkers, and excellent conversationalists. It is almost impossible to not tell your dirty secrets when you are high on coke. Is cocaine a truth serum? A drug used in psychiatry to find out when the personality complexes began? Regardless, it does something to people that insists that they must not only over a course of six hours time (usually midnight to sunrise) tell you their life story, but also the intricate details they’ve “never told anyone else.”
It was one of those late nights, early mornings when a few of us were in my apartment in Venice, that we confessed our childhood secret of Cal Worthington.
During the course of the conversation after the main discovery, I was stunned to find out some in the crowd were younger than others were and did not believe that Cal Worthington ever had a dog spot. Their generation of commercials had been shut down by PITA. There was no dog, no cow, no monkey, tiger, or Lion. Barnum hadn’t been here in years and the mere thought of a dog named Spot being a cow – well, that’s ridiculous, we must have been pulling their legs. However, we all agreed on the gravity of the jingle.
Their generation had Cal and the “fake” car lot spinning around. By the time their welfare and disability earning parents could buy a car Cal had the whole block of car lots on Bellflower. “You name it, I can make you a deal on it, heck, I even have my own financing company, no one can tell me no! Good credit, bad credit, come on down!”
Cal’s competition is Long Beach at Southgate Cerritos Auto Square and Keyes on Van Nuys. They too had catchy tunes that while they stuck with you for your life, they did not make you keep it a secret.
Cerritos Auto Square had the orange ball that would help you sing jingle commercial Karaoke along with them instilling the directions like a Nazi mind experiment.
Keyes on Van Nuys stuck with a more traditional jingle “Keyes, Keyes, Keyes, Keyes on Van Nuys.” I am sure that if anyone in LA loses their keys, and says aloud “Keys…” telekinetically summoning their keys to appear that they end up singing that jingle in their searching frenzy. Shaking their head upon finding them in the sofa cushion next to chopsticks, and a pair of dirty panties, trailing off “Van Nuys…”
Cal’s jingle came at the end of the commercial after a myriad of promises he would not keep without high interest rates, his own reposition company, and many chop shops in the South Central area. Cal was a member of the western cowboy mafia and he loved women – fat, skinny, fake breasts, he didn’t care, he loved them all and his last marriage gave him a wife who is only twenty-six, roughly forty-five years younger than him which leads me to believe, the subliminal message is not so subtle.
As children, we could never sing this jingle because if your mother heard you sing the Cal Worthington’s Ford jingle you would surely have your mouth rinsed out with soap.
In that evening, when we shared the secrets of our youth and discovering when our personalities had become so flawed and which parent we could blame the most and our dirtiest secrets.
It was then, that one of my friends mentioned what most disturbed us growing up about mid-afternoon TV. (besides that Tom and Jerry didn’t talk)
“Did you guys ever think,” Davey trailed off.
“What?” My friend Gabbie said anxiously. We all leaned in for this one.
“That Cal Worthington said…” He rolled his hand out for someone to finish it, I took for the cue.
“Pussy Cow, Pussy Cow, Pussy Cow.” I sang at the top of my lungs.
It was at that point the room fell into scream laughter, as I the quiet attention getter, never could be imagined to say "pussy" but this time, it felt safe, I mean really, who heard of a pussy cow? A dog spot and pussy cow. What the fuck?
“Do you know what the real lyrics are?” My friend Erik said after he had regained his composure. “Go see Cal, Go see Cal, Go see Cal…”
“…and his Do-oo-g Spot!” Davey finished. We passed the CD, dribbling more coke out of our bags, still laughing but ensuring that we didn’t shake a crumb off that could possibly feed our nasal passages.
My friend has just stormed out of the Ford dealership. I must shut down. I walk out, follow her to my Nissan (Universal City Nissan is a whole other story).
"What's a matter?" I ask, still bored, disturbed from memories forgotten of the famous dirty jingle.
"Those fuckers won't sell me a car. My credit isn't good enough. Fucking Pussies!" she yells across at the bee who's greeting Juan and his seven children.
"That's Pussy cow to you." I say, then open the doors with the button on my key.
"Huh?" Kristen says.
"Oh that's right, you grew up in Florida." I say. She flicks her cigarette onto a used model car and we peel out.
The end.
Across from me is a bored salesman who came with the specific goal to hit on me. He’s wearing a yellow shirt and black pants, on a busy day it must look like a hive of bees around these cars.
I am staring at my computer screen ignoring him, while he taps his fingers annoyingly against the steal armrests of his polyester blue chair. Well, maybe he didn’t come in to hit on me and is anxious for the score, is today Superbowl Sunday?
Anyone who grew up in Los Angeles remembers Cal Worthington. Cal was on between Warner Brothers and Hanabarbara cartoons, talk shows and newscasts on local channels. Cal Worthington was old when I was in grade school. Somehow, he’s not dead.
In fact, the LA Times wrote an article on the old bastard. He still demands to do his own commercials, which are filmed in his enormous ranch style house, and they edit the takes later to have the car lot in the background, it is a farce!
His days of getting circus animals the announcer saying, “Its Cal Worthington and his do-o-g Spot!” are over. Besides, it never was a dog! It was a cow, bear, tiger, or an elephant, but it was not a dog.
One year Barnum and Bailey’s circus came to Inglewood, which in itself, is already a circus of sorts. Their tents housed in the World Famous Laker’s Forum. Cages like animal box crackers displayed with various animals as you walked in holding your ticket. Kids awing-ooing-gooing their cotton candy sticks, licking fingers and then spreading the sticky little matter on their pants giving it a pretty glitter appeal.
I remember one child was walking with her mother, a skinny woman in a tight blue dress. She wore glasses that looked like jack-o-lantern smiles over her eyes, face was covered in foundation still exposing her pores. Equally as awful, her daughter was short, even for a toddler, and round, stumbling around on a kid-leash. The little girl kept wandering from cage to cage (probably looking for a home) yelling, “Spot! Dog!” repetitively at whether it was a monkey, a billie goat, or a tiger. Her mother seemed perplexed by her daughter’s stupidity. I knew why, she had been educated by the television. She was watching the Tom and Jerry hour, which I thought was stupid anyway, mouse and cat who don’t talk – boring! Tom and Jerry must have needed a sponsor badly, aside from Tide and Tampax the only other sponsor that played during their show was Long Beach Cal Worthington and he probably used half an hour of advertising with various animals saying he’d stick his head in the lion’s mouth if you found a better deal. “I won’t be beat!” He would say in his white cowboy suit, sometimes a cigar in hand.
“I’ll stand on my head till my ears turn red to make you a deal!” We kids would think that was so funny. What we didn’t think was funny and didn’t know what it was, but knew at an early age was definitely a dirty word was in his jingle.
If you live in Los Angeles and you are reading this, you’re nodding right now.
This song is housed in the back of our minds like a dirty secret. Just like the time your Uncle just like the time an Uncle had you on his lap and his hand started to drift to “adjust” your undergarments because they were “all bunched up.” That’s when mom looks over from mashing potatoes and picks the child up before damage is done. I was raised by a single mom and had a lot of uncles, wished we had more mash potatoes. You’re never quite sure if it was a dirty moment, but you hold onto it that way just the same, as children, that’s how we felt about Cal’s song.
For most Los Angeles natives, the confession about Cal Worthington doesn’t come out until late teens or early twenties. This age is typical because in Los Angeles, unless the person had a predestine personality for addiction in their youth or exposure, people don’t start using cocaine until their around that age.
When a person first stands at that beautiful pearly gate, leaning above a mirror, practicing chopping skills (that we could’ve learned in a kitchen with a knife and say celery instead of a credit card and powdered rocks) we open a gateway in our minds called the confession zone.
I acquired listening skills somewhere along the line. Women in general love to speak, heard, and paid ample attention to.
Personally, I am not an attention whore outright. I am more subtle about it, which has given me longevity in the attention department. By being less demanding, quietly providing mordant remarks to an attentive audience, I have surpassed more coke whores.
With that in mind, I have sat in on many conversations powered by the chemicals in which magically make us sudden philosophers, deep thinkers, and excellent conversationalists. It is almost impossible to not tell your dirty secrets when you are high on coke. Is cocaine a truth serum? A drug used in psychiatry to find out when the personality complexes began? Regardless, it does something to people that insists that they must not only over a course of six hours time (usually midnight to sunrise) tell you their life story, but also the intricate details they’ve “never told anyone else.”
It was one of those late nights, early mornings when a few of us were in my apartment in Venice, that we confessed our childhood secret of Cal Worthington.
During the course of the conversation after the main discovery, I was stunned to find out some in the crowd were younger than others were and did not believe that Cal Worthington ever had a dog spot. Their generation of commercials had been shut down by PITA. There was no dog, no cow, no monkey, tiger, or Lion. Barnum hadn’t been here in years and the mere thought of a dog named Spot being a cow – well, that’s ridiculous, we must have been pulling their legs. However, we all agreed on the gravity of the jingle.
Their generation had Cal and the “fake” car lot spinning around. By the time their welfare and disability earning parents could buy a car Cal had the whole block of car lots on Bellflower. “You name it, I can make you a deal on it, heck, I even have my own financing company, no one can tell me no! Good credit, bad credit, come on down!”
Cal’s competition is Long Beach at Southgate Cerritos Auto Square and Keyes on Van Nuys. They too had catchy tunes that while they stuck with you for your life, they did not make you keep it a secret.
Cerritos Auto Square had the orange ball that would help you sing jingle commercial Karaoke along with them instilling the directions like a Nazi mind experiment.
Keyes on Van Nuys stuck with a more traditional jingle “Keyes, Keyes, Keyes, Keyes on Van Nuys.” I am sure that if anyone in LA loses their keys, and says aloud “Keys…” telekinetically summoning their keys to appear that they end up singing that jingle in their searching frenzy. Shaking their head upon finding them in the sofa cushion next to chopsticks, and a pair of dirty panties, trailing off “Van Nuys…”
Cal’s jingle came at the end of the commercial after a myriad of promises he would not keep without high interest rates, his own reposition company, and many chop shops in the South Central area. Cal was a member of the western cowboy mafia and he loved women – fat, skinny, fake breasts, he didn’t care, he loved them all and his last marriage gave him a wife who is only twenty-six, roughly forty-five years younger than him which leads me to believe, the subliminal message is not so subtle.
As children, we could never sing this jingle because if your mother heard you sing the Cal Worthington’s Ford jingle you would surely have your mouth rinsed out with soap.
In that evening, when we shared the secrets of our youth and discovering when our personalities had become so flawed and which parent we could blame the most and our dirtiest secrets.
It was then, that one of my friends mentioned what most disturbed us growing up about mid-afternoon TV. (besides that Tom and Jerry didn’t talk)
“Did you guys ever think,” Davey trailed off.
“What?” My friend Gabbie said anxiously. We all leaned in for this one.
“That Cal Worthington said…” He rolled his hand out for someone to finish it, I took for the cue.
“Pussy Cow, Pussy Cow, Pussy Cow.” I sang at the top of my lungs.
It was at that point the room fell into scream laughter, as I the quiet attention getter, never could be imagined to say "pussy" but this time, it felt safe, I mean really, who heard of a pussy cow? A dog spot and pussy cow. What the fuck?
“Do you know what the real lyrics are?” My friend Erik said after he had regained his composure. “Go see Cal, Go see Cal, Go see Cal…”
“…and his Do-oo-g Spot!” Davey finished. We passed the CD, dribbling more coke out of our bags, still laughing but ensuring that we didn’t shake a crumb off that could possibly feed our nasal passages.
My friend has just stormed out of the Ford dealership. I must shut down. I walk out, follow her to my Nissan (Universal City Nissan is a whole other story).
"What's a matter?" I ask, still bored, disturbed from memories forgotten of the famous dirty jingle.
"Those fuckers won't sell me a car. My credit isn't good enough. Fucking Pussies!" she yells across at the bee who's greeting Juan and his seven children.
"That's Pussy cow to you." I say, then open the doors with the button on my key.
"Huh?" Kristen says.
"Oh that's right, you grew up in Florida." I say. She flicks her cigarette onto a used model car and we peel out.
The end.
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