The buttons are what I remember first.

Before I can quite hear his voice, before the “Baby Elephant Walk” theme music starts up somewhere in the back of my head, I can see that sweater. All those little circles crowded together, with room somehow found for another one whenever a child brought him a gift.

And the kids kept bringing them.

To an Oregon kid watching in the 1980s (and now I’m really dating myself here), this was a perfectly sensible way for a grown man to dress for work. Of course his sweater was covered in buttons. He was Ramblin’ Rod.

For 33 years, Rod Anders welcomed children onto KPTV Channel 12, asked them questions, acknowledged their birthdays, checked their smiles, and sent the rest of us off to another cartoon. His show ran from 1964 to 1997, long enough for children who’d watched him in the beginning to grow up and bring children of their own.

I belonged to the ’80s contingent, watching from sleepy little Forest Grove, west of Portland a ways. As a Xennial, I’ve forgotten plenty about those mornings. The individual episodes have blurred together. I couldn’t give you a reliable inventory of the cartoons or tell you what every smile winner took home.

But I remember how familiar he was. So do a lot of other folks. Someone’s even dedicated an entire Facebook page to memories of Ramblin’ Rod Anders.

You don’t spend much time considering that as a child. Someone’s on television when you’re little, and then he’s there when you’re a little bit bigger. You assume he’ll just keep being there. You have school to get through and cartoons to watch. The adults can worry about how long things last.

Before the Buttons, There Was a Guitar

Rod Anders came to children’s television by way of Oregon radio.

Born Rodney Carl Andersen, he grew up in the Portland area and began broadcasting as a young man in Tillamook, singing and playing guitar on KTIL. Military service interrupted that early career; afterward, he worked his way through radio jobs in Klamath Falls, Hillsboro, and Portland. By the early 1960s, he was hosting a morning program on KPOJ.

Then a job opened at Channel 12.

Bob Adkins, who entertained children as Addie Bobkins, was leaving. Anders auditioned with his guitar and took over the station’s Popeye’s Pier 12 in 1964. The program eventually became The Ramblin’ Rod Show. Its beginnings were those of a working broadcaster accepting a new assignment, one that would turn into the defining work of his life. His early broadcasting history follows that progression from radio to the children’s studio.

Portland already had a lively population of television personalities who spoke directly to children. Rusty Nails, Heck Harper, and others had made careers of it, although they were way before my time or memories. Anders joined an established tradition, bringing his music and an easy willingness to talk with whoever happened to be sitting in front of him.

In the early years, he played guitar and appeared with a skunk puppet named Petunia. Over time, the show settled into the format many of us remember: Rod, children, cartoons, and enough room in the conversation for something funny to happen.

A grade-schooler could supply all the unpredictability a television host needed, not that we viewers ever thought about that fact at the time. We were just there to eat our bowl of cereal in front of the TV before mom or dad started bugging us to finish getting ready.

A Studio Full of Children, and Oregon Watching

A newspaper account from 1984 catches the production in the late afternoon. Children fill the bleachers inside KPTV’s studio. Some have brought Cabbage Patch Kids. Younger siblings have come along with older ones. Floor director Lois Karas helps get everyone situated.

It’s five o’clock pm.

The morning we’d watch at home was being assembled the evening before. At that point, the show aired from 7:30 to 8:30 a.m.; behind the familiar routine were reservations, parents, studio staff (Rod would refer them to the kids as aunt and uncle, like “Uncle Mark” and “Uncle Chuck” from the video below), and a daily gathering of children who’d been waiting for their turn. The contemporary account preserves those details.

On television, all that organization gave way to the pleasing possibility that a child might say absolutely anything.

In a surviving 1984 OPB profile, Rod asks a boy named Andy where he lives. Andy manages, “At somewhere! It’s over there.”

Fair enough, Andy.

That exchange is perfect because, looking back, you recognize the predicament. You know perfectly well where your house is until a television personality asks you to explain it with a camera pointed at your face.

Anders understood the appeal. “Kids like to see themselves on television,” he told OPB. He also talked about their uninhibited answers and the pleasure of working with children who said what they thought. The archived OPB interview offers a useful answer to why he stayed with the format: he enjoyed what the children brought to it.

For those of us at home, there was the additional possibility of recognizing somebody we knew. A cousin, a family friend, or somebody we actually went to school with.

A few kids from my own Central Elementary in Forest Grove actually did get on the show. That kid announced it (because who wouldn’t?), and pretty soon the news had spread like wildfire throughout the hallways of the building.

I remember being ridiculously jealous.

They’d crossed over into this place I could only watch, and there they were with Rod himself, getting in on that smile contest, as if being on a television show was just an ordinary thing a person from our school could do. That kid, the chosen one, attained a sort of celebrity status in the classrooms for at least the next week.

That proximity was thrilling. Portland television could reach all the way into our town and put somebody we knew on the screen. For rural Oregon communities and urban ones alike, that was huge.

The Coat We Helped Decorate

I still think of it as Rod’s coat, although the famous brown garment was actually a cardigan. Whatever you called it, the buttons had taken over. In later years it was easy to forget the color, because by that time it was absolutely encrusted with pin-back buttons, large and small.

Kids handed them to him on the show, adding their own small contributions to an outfit that had become instantly recognizable. Watching those exchanges, you could understand the transaction without a word of explanation. A child had brought something for Rod. Rod accepted it. Now it might turn up on television again. We thrived on that thought.

Broadcaster Greg Nibler remembered making buttons with his brother and mailing them in. Afterward, they searched Rod’s jacket for their handiwork, imagining they’d found it even when they hadn’t. That detail, recalled in a 2016 Portland Monthly, feels exactly right.

Once you’d contributed a button, you had something to look for.

There’s a certain kind of generosity in allowing children to influence your appearance that thoroughly. The result was crowded, peculiar, and impossible to reproduce. Every new pin made the outfit a little less orderly and a little more Rod’s.

I can’t remember the wording on a single button with confidence. I remember the abundance of them, and the fact that there was always another kid with another one.

“And Now It’s Time for Another Cartooooon!”

That announcement is still living rent-free in my head.

Rod’s voice, the anticipation, and then the welcome interruption of whatever trouble a cartoon character was about to get into.

I’ve always associated those breaks with old Warner Bros. cartoons. The program did draw from Warner Bros., Popeye, and Walter Lantz shorts. Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck belonged to the mix remembered by viewers, including writer Brian Libby in his recollection of the show.

These cartoons were ancient before we were old enough to watch them, but their age hardly mattered. Throw an old Porky Pig short in from of a kid today, and they’re still going to be enthralled. A cartoon is a cartoon. Rod introduced them, and for the next few minutes they belonged to our morning.

One detail we never knew while growing up: the studio didn’t actually show the cartoons to the kids during the episode tapings.

Those children had to discover first-hand that unfortunate distinction between making television and watching it. Former guests have recalled their disappointment at not getting to see the cartoons during their studio visits. One viewer remembering an early-1990s appearance was still nursing that grievance decades later.

You have to admire the persistence. Some childhood disappointments apparently deserve a permanent place in the record.

But the cartoons were only part of what happened between the bleachers and the camera. There were birthdays to announce, buttons to receive, and the deep importance of deciding whose smile deserved recognition.

The Smile Contest Was Serious Business

The camera moved across the studio children, and everybody had a chance.

That’s the part I remember: face after face, each child trying to hold a smile long enough to be noticed.

Then that lucky kid won.

It seemed entirely reasonable to me that this should happen on television. Adults gave out awards for all kinds of things. Rod gave one out for smiling.

The music has survived in people’s memories almost as stubbornly as the contest itself. “Electronic Can-Can,” by Perrey and Kingsley, is identified in recollections of the show as smile-contest accompaniment. The recording dates to 1966, putting another little piece of an earlier decade into our ’80s mornings. There’s an official recording available to hear, for anyone whose memory needs a nudge (and an earworm that lasts into next week).

I don’t remember what the winners received. Other people remember very well.

Brian Libby, who appeared on the show as a third grader, recalled the Pop Shoppe soda reserved for birthday guests and smile winners. Missing out nearly brought him to tears. He also remembered Rod giving him extra time on camera, an experience he cherished despite the disappointment over the drink.

The distinction between winning and losing has proved amazingly durable. In viewer discussions, grown adults still announce their victories, sometimes specifying that they won twice. Others are looking for the family videotape. Someone remembers a sibling’s birthday being overlooked and intervening to make sure she got her due.

Think about that. GROWN ADULTS are still, all these years later, talking about about winning a smile contest on a local Oregon children’s morning show.

The bragging rights are still immense.

There’s affection in these accounts, but also the unfinished business of childhood. People remember who got chosen. They remember being shy. They remember having their moment and wanting somebody to have recorded it.

Nico Bella, a three-time winner [Seriously, Nico? You lucky duck, you.] interviewed by Portland Monthly, remembered the feeling most clearly: “He made kids feel special.”

That was a considerable achievement for a man with a microphone and a roomful of strangers’ children.

Rod Anders Had a Life Beyond the Bleachers

By the time many of us knew him, Anders had spent years doing the other work that kept a local television station running.

He recorded announcements, appeared in commercials, participated in telethons, and hosted the public-affairs program 12 in the Morning. In 1983, that work included an interview with Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. The conversation ranged from the moon landing to technology and humanity’s future.

It’s an agreeable adjustment to the childhood picture of him. The man who checked everybody’s smiles also sat down to discuss the future with THE GENE RODDENBERRY.

Back in 1989, Portland mayor Bud Clark even proclaimed a “Ramblin’ Rod Day” to honor Anders for, amongst many other things, for making “a significant impact on television programming for children in the Portland metropolitan area”.

Away from television, Anders loved flying. He built a private airstrip at his property near Buxton in 1994, a few years before retirement. His former home later became the site of Public Coast Farm; the local history of the property still includes the runway he constructed for his plane.

For someone who grew up in Forest Grove, Buxton puts him in unexpectedly familiar geography. The person on television had a home out in our part of the county, with interests and afternoons that had nothing to do with the show.

When the Morning Changed

By the end of Rod’s run, the economics of local television had shifted.

Morning news offered stations an attractive adult audience. Cable channels had become major destinations for cartoons. KPTV’s Good Day Oregon took over the weekday morning territory where Rod had been such a familiar presence, and his long tenure ended in 1997. A station representative later pointed to both audience demographics and the changing availability of cartoons when discussing the transition with Willamette Week.

Those are understandable business decisions. They’re also a rather dry explanation for why a child would no longer get to sit in a Portland studio and hand a button to the man on television.

For those of us who grew up with him, Ramblin’ Rod Anders occupied an ordinary part of each ordinary day, which gave us an extraordinary number of chances to remember him.

I couldn’t tell you the date of any episode I watched. I remember children from Forest Grove getting their turn. I remember trying to place that smile-contest tune years afterward. Most clearly, I remember the coat, and how natural it seemed that children could keep adding to it.

Somewhere, there are family recordings of those exchanges: a child approaching, Rod looking down, a little gift being held out.

I hope the families who have those tapes keep making copies.