Smile if you know the name “Mr. Green Jeans.”
When I was a kid in the 1960s, my favorite television show was “Captain Kangaroo.”
If the children of the 1970s were co-parented by Fred Rogers, of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” and Kermit the Frog, of “Sesame Street,” we late-stage baby boomers were baby “roos.”
Captain Kangaroo’s sidekick was Mr. Green Jeans, who, predictably, wore green denim. I’m tempted to hyphenate Green-Jeans, because I don’t think Green was his first name. Sometimes he wore green overalls, and other times he sported a green denim jacket. In the days of black-and-white television, “green” was just another shade of gray anyway.
Mark KennedyView other columns by Mark Kennedy
“Captain Kangaroo” was the anchor for children’s programming in the 1960s. It aired nationally on CBS from the late 1950s until the early 1980s. The Captain himself had a bowl haircut with bangs that made him look like a geriatric Ringo Starr. He also wore a jacket with white piping outlining big front pockets. Hence, Captain “Kangaroo.”