Amy Lu's View

A childhood mystery that has haunted me for years has been solved.

I’ve found the name of the bilingual Spanish/English public TV kids show I used to watch in the 70’s: Carrascolendas. It was pretty cutting edge–I’m pretty sure I didn’t have any clue that there were languages other than English before watching this show.

Up until now, I thought I was the only one in the world (even of people my age) who remembered this show. My brother suggested that I hallucinated it as a kid because I was hopped up on Sudafed–back when you needed a prescription for it!

I never successfully looked it up on the interwebs because I had NO idea how to spell it, and apparently couldn’t accurately describe it enough for Google to find it. I don’t know what the magic search terms finally were but I found it on Sunday. I not only have the name, but irrefutable proof that it existed. You can even watch episodes online!

I’ve only skimmed a couple of episodes so far and it’s much different than I remember. I thought it was brighter and sharper. I do remember that there was a character named “Pepper”–in fact she’s the only character I remember. In my version of reality, she used to wear those oversized sunglasses. I have not found any evidence of this, but I swear my family used to call those “Pepper glasses.”

We did not name our cat Pepper after her, but we totally could/should have (Chad of course has no memory of “Carrascolendas.” He apparently played outside/had friends who lived closer than 10 miles away as a child).

I even learned that the librarian featured prominently in the show! In this episode you can hear her tell another character the library is a “safe place”!

My inspiration for solving the mystery of Carrascolendas was searching for information on the seventies PBS show “Zoom.” Yes, in the midst of moving our social lives to the video conferencing platform Zoom, I wonder if I am the only person who remembers that it was a kids PBS show way back in the day? (Probably). I don’t think I particularly liked “Zoom,” but I watched it. I remember it had kids in matching clothes playing a clapping/snapping game. Sounds like a cult.

There was a more recent 1999-2005 remake that parents or young people might remember. I can’t speak to that.

I think I have a higher than average wealth of “knowledge” of 70’s kids PBS shows. The credit for this must go, at least in part, to my older sister Jenn who was charged with a large amount of my caretaking. I not only watched “New Zoo Revue” (SO weird and potentially offensive, I could do a post entirely on that) but “Reading Rainbow” LONG before Levar Burton was on it and it was hosted my an animated typewriter (my sister even ordered me the workbook to go along with it).

I DID watch the more well-know PBS shows, too. I loved Sesame Street, but especially The Electric Company. And I certainly don’t mean to throw shade on Mr. Rogers, but as a kid I genuinely thought his show was boring and the puppets were creepy. (My sister really tried to get me to like him!) As an adult, I totally love and respect what he did but he clearly was not meant for kids hopped on Sudafed.