Author: Ken Steinhoff

When I wrote about Bunny Bread the other day, folks immediately started remembering that Bunny Bread was a sponsor for Crusader Rabbit on KFVS-TV.

Crusader Rabbit was the first animated series produced specifically for television. The first episode, Crusader vs. the State of Texas, aired on KNBH in Los Angeles August 1, 1950.

Crusader vs. State of Texas

Kid Matt, who has a Bunny Bread T-shirt, but had never seen Crusader Rabbit, found a bunch of the cartoons on YouTube.

Episode 1 sounds vaguely topical these days. Crusader Rabbit is headed to the great Southwest because he heard a radio news report that “the Texans are chasing all of the jackrabbits out of Texas.” He was headed down to help his cousins, all of whom were named Jack. Along the way, he enlists the aid of his trust sidekick, Ragland T. Tiger (Rags).

Each episode broken into chapters

Each episode was broken into as many as 30 chapter, insuring that you’d have to be glued in front of the set every day to keep from missing the story line.

Budget wouldn’t buy lunch at Disney

Don Markstein wrote, “Television’s first cartoon series, Crusader Rabbit, embodied everything bad that came to be associated with TV animation. It was quickly and imperfectly produced on a budget that wouldn’t have bought lunch at Disney, it repeated the same episodes over and over, and its animation was limited almost to the point of stasis. It had only one saving grace — its young viewers thought it was funny.”

Crusader Rabbit had simple formula

“Crusader’s basic formula was simple — humorous adventure stories told (by narrator Roy Whaley) in short episodes, with cliffhangers, about a little smart hero (Crusader Rabbit, voiced by Lucille Bliss, who many years later was the voice of Smurfette), a big dumb hero (Rags the Tiger, voiced by Vern Loudon), and an inept recurring villain (Dudley Nightshade, voiced by Russ Coughlin). Ward would later become famous for another animated TV series with that very same formula — Rocky & Bullwinkle.

“Production ended in 1951, after 195 episodes had been made, and the creators went on to other things — in Ward’s case, bigger and better ones. The series was revived in 1957 (this time in color), and ran another 260 episodes; but without its creators (who had sold their interest in the characters), it never recaptured its earlier charm. The color episodes appeared in syndicated reruns as recently as the early 1980s.”

When I posted photos of a huge barn with a curved roof yesterday, I hoped someone would be able to identify it. There were a number of good guesses, but one of my regular readers who is too shy to post publicly – we’ll call her Shy Reader in the future – came up with the answer.

The mystery barn was on the I. Ben Miller Dairy Farm at N. Sprigg and Bertling. It was torn down in 1966.

I. Ben Miller Dairy Barn

The I. Ben Miller Dairy Barn was such a big deal that it got a got a two-column front-page writeup in The Southeast Missourian on Oct. 21, 1920. Click on this link to read the full account of all the modern features in the barn.

(The Missourian’s front page that day proclaimed that it had “more than 5000 paying subscribers and is delivered each evening in over forty Southeast Missouri towns by carriers.” It goes on to claim that “No other daily paper in a city of 10,000 has as large a bona fide circulation. The Missourian guarantees advertisers five times as many bona fide subscribers as any other paper ever published in Cape Girardeau.”

A landmark passes

Shy Reader, who is a much better researcher than I am, said she couldn’t find where The Missourian published the photos I ran yesterday, but there are some holes in the Google Archives for that period.

She DID find this photo taken about the same time, which shows the barn from a different angle. There’s no doubt that they’re the same building.

The negative sleeve is marked Round Barn 1966. There are some frames filed with the “Round Barn” shots that look like they might have been taken up around Old Appleton, but that doesn’t mean that these came from there.

Look at the craftsmanship in the curved roof trusses. It looks like the rounded part came off the bigger barn in the background. I don’t know if the building collapsed and was being stripped or if the whole thing was being torn down.

This looks like a new barn

Old barn wood used to be in high demand not so long ago, so I assumed this one was being torn down at first glance. On second glance, though, it’s in too good of shape to be razed. I’m almost positive that it’s a new barn going up.

Good-sized silos

Wherever this farm was, it had some pretty substantial silos. Again, look at the the way those curved pieces are fitted together out of 1-bys (from back in the days when a 1-by really was one inch thick). The white pieces in the foreground look like the side walls were pushed out when the roof came down.

Interior shot

I don’t know if this is the interior of the barn in the background of the first shot or if was another building. These are good-sized barns. I’m sure somebody will be able to identify them.