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Last Record Update: 11-20-2016
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Mosquitoes and Moon Pies - Okefenokee Swamp

Jean Shepherd's America

April 16, 1985

Season: 2 - Episode: 1

"MOSQUITOES AND MOON PIES" In "Mosquitoes and Moon Pies ," the season premiere, Shepherd travels to Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp in search of his roots. He encounters the ghost of Tom Slade, Eagle Scout, among the mangroves, and pays homage to Walt Kelly and the Pogo gang. Floating on the murky waters of the Cambrian fen, Shepherd snares a pickerel "so big you don't dare look it in the eye" - all in a day's work for Swamp Man.

Fan Comments

[ Courtesy: Pete Delaney - 09-18-2016 ]
           
Over 100 shows 1972-74. Also contributed photos of a Shep book signing, his Greenwich Village townhouse, and screen shots of his live show. Also he supplied a variety of radio and TV commercials that Shep did.
And much, much, much, more!

Additional Comments:

In the 1985 Press Kit Shep wrote a small piece

The Devil Has All the Best Lines
by Jean Shepherd

I'm not one for fantasies. In fact, I can't honestly say that l've ever consciously had one. As a kid, I never fantasized that I was Joe DiMaggio or Mickey Mantle or Humphrey Bogart. Sure I admired them. But fantasizing that I was them? Never.

But there are things that we all secretly would like to have done-or have been had time and circumstances allowed. I wonder how it would have felt to have been a knight during the reign of Richard The Lion-Hearted, or a buHalo hnnter on the Great Plains in the days of Cochise. 

I've always seen television, at least my television, as a kind of magic wand. You can go places and do things that nobody in his right mind could ever pull off. For example, who among us has never wanted to visit Death Valley? Now there's a  romantic name. Death Valley Soottyl The 20-mule team! .All of that. Well, why not go? And not just as a visitor, but as a  participant.

So, in my new public television series, I played the role of a grizzled prospector struggling across the salt flats under the blazing sun, my only companion my faithful burro Flower. Who wouldn't like to do that? And what red-blooded male hasn't
always secretly wanted to turn a few laos at Indianapolis - the Brickyard- the home of the legendary 500? Why not? So seated in a magnificent million-dollar Dusenberg, in another of my new shows dressed in the costume of an early Indy
race driver, I raced against the heroic "Duke" Nalon, a real race driver of the Indy's glory days. What a gas!

How 'bout playing the Dev.il, with cape and sinister Palm Beach hat, visiting night time New Orleans for a little recreation and a field trip to see how sin is progressing on earth? We did, and 1 can tell you l began to feel that I was typecast as Satan by the end of the shoot. I loved it. As George Bernard Shaw said, "The Devil has all the best lines."

Fantasies? No. Television is magic, and I love it.

Production Information:

Studio / Network:	WGBH - Snow Pond Productions	Exec Director:		Executive Producer:
Running Time:		Director:	Fred Barzyk	Producer:	Olivia Tappan, Leigh Brown
		Asst Director:		Asst Producer:
		Contr Director:		Contr Producer:

Associated Documents

Type	File Name	Description
•	1985_04_dd_022_JSA_Season_2_Press_Kit.pdf	Season 2 Press Kit

Photos:

May 1985
Article from the 1985 Jean Shepherd's America press kit which appeared in West Michigan magazine

Courtesy: Steve Glazer

Screenshots:

Jean Shepherd's America - Okefenokee Swamp

"Can you imagine 4,000 years passing, and you're not even a memory?
Think about it, friends. It's not just a possibility. It is a certainty." - Jean Shepherd - 1975