CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT AND THE SECRET DECODER

On a mountaintop, high above a large city, stands the headquarters of a man devoted to the cause of freedom and justice... a war hero who has never stopped fighting against his country's enemies... a private citizen who is dedicating his life to the struggle against evil men everywhere... CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT!

Thus ran the overheated lead-in to one of my favorite TV shows when I was growing up as a kid in suburban Philadelphia. (The show's appeal no doubt had something to do with the fact that there were no mountaintops high above suburban Philadelphia.  Nor were there any private citizens dedicating their lives to the struggle against evil men everywhere -- at least not as far as I knew.)

The premise of the show was that a guy named Jim Albright – a crack ex-fighter pilot – headed up something called the Secret Squadron under the code name, Captain Midnight.  The Secret Squadron was a private cabal of freelance crime-fighters who took on assorted bad guys in the interest of truth, justice, and the American Way. The principal Squadron members, in addition to the Captain, were his comedy sidekick, Icabod (“Ikky”) Mudd, and his resident scientist, Aristotle (“Tutt”) Jones, who consulted on technical matters. While Captain Midnight took on a variety of villains in his brief TV lifespan of 39 episodes – a clear majority of them had ties to Communist espionage of one kind or another. This was, after all, the 1950s.

In those days, every show had a single, definable sponsor, and in the case of Captain Midnight, it was delicious, chocolaty flavored Ovaltine, a milk additive shamelessly hawked by the Captain in long-winded, face-on commercials of the kind common in the days when lax regulation and cheap ad rates went hand in hand.

“A single mug of hot, chocolaty Ovaltine builds muscles 12 ways; increases IQ; provides 100 percent of the minimum daily requirement of 27 essential vitamins and minerals.”

It didn’t matter what the Captain said about the product. What mattered was that he endorsed it. That was enough. I wanted Ovaltine. I believed in the essential indispensibility of Ovaltine.

And that was before the Captain announced that each and every one of us could become members of the Secret Squadron by obtaining our very own Secret Decoder Pin.  How?  Simple. Just write your name and address on a piece of paper, put it in a stamped envelope – along with the inside wax paper seal from the top of a jar of Ovaltine –  and send it to:

Captain Midnight

Box P

Chicago 77, Illinois

Needless to say, if there had ever been any doubt about the necessity of getting a jar of delicious, chocolaty Ovaltine, this erased it completely.

The way it worked, each week, in a special segment of the show, Captain Midnight gave the Secret Squadron members out there in television land a secret code, consisting of a series of numbers. Those fortunate enough to possess a Secret Decoder Pin could then, by spinning a dial on the Decoder, translate the numbers into letters, thereby deciphering the secret message. To a Captain Midnight fan like myself, this made Ovaltine a no-brainer.

Except for one small problem. Ovaltine – a mixture of sugar, malt, cocoa and whey – was just the sort of non-essential luxury food item my final markdown Mom would never dream of buying, or even allowing in the house – unless there was a coupon entitling her to obtain at least double her money back from the manufacturer.  Not only that, but my Mom was a precocious skeptic when it came to nutritional claims.

“The vitamins and minerals are in the milk,” she would say, “The flavoring adds nothing but sugar and fat and, from what I've read, those don't have minimum daily requirements.”

So, faced with these realities, how on earth was I going to get a seal from the top off a jar of Ovaltine?

I could nag, of course.  But nagging in our family was tricky.  Too little and you didn't get what you wanted, but but too much, and you ran the risk of  "upsetting your mother", which brought down the sure and awesome wrath of our father.

Being "a good boy" was a theoretical possibility, of course.  But while being good might bring occasional praise, it never seemed to accomplish much of a material nature.  Finagling from a friend at school was also possible, but experience had demonstrated that it would ultimately prove demeaning. I considered trading for it.  But trade what?  I never collected baseball cards. Toys were scarce at my house. Cap guns were forbidden; fireworks were illegal.  Realistically, there was only one course of action open to me.

So, the next time I went to the supermarket with my Mom, I took a penknife acquired during a short stint in the Cub Scouts. When she wasn’t looking, I cadged a jar of Ovaltine from the shelf and hid it in the cart. Then, the next time she wasn’t looking, I managed to unscrew the cap, cut the circular seal from the top, screw the cap back on the jar, and put the seal in my pocket.

When we got to the checkout counter, my Mom picked up the Ovaltine. “What’s this?”

“Delicious, chocolaty Ovaltine,” I answered. “It gives you a hundred per cent of your minimum daily requirements of vitamins and minerals.”

She glanced at the ingredients, then at me. “So does a balanced diet.”

I sighed.  "Put it back?"

She nodded. "Put it back."

The announcer said to allow six to eight weeks for delivery, but frankly, I couldn’t see why it should take that long. After all, Chicago wasn't all that far from Pennsylvania. So, two days after I mailed away for the Secret Decoder Pin, I began checking the mail.

Five days passed, six days, a week. Eight days, nine days.  Time passed by at an agonizing pace. It seemed there was nothing in my life but the daily wait for the mailman.

I began to think maybe I had forgotten to put a stamp on my envelope to Chicago 77, Illinois.  I wondered if I had written my own address correctly on the slip of paper I enclosed. When three weeks had passed, I began to consider the possibility that I was jinxing things through the very act of expectation.  Maybe if I were more detached, more nonchalant, I would open the door for the Secret Decoder Pin to come to me. Sadly, detachment was not yet for me. The more I tried not to think about the Secret Decoder Pin, the more I thought about the Secret Decoder Pin.  As the days and weeks went by, rather than getting easier, the daily wait for the mailman grew more and more intolerable.

After a month, my impatience turned to anger. Anger at Captain Midnight, anger at the Secret Squadron, anger at the Secret Decoder Pin itself, and anger at the makers of Ovaltine. I began to turn off the show when the Captain got ready to announce the secret code.  I told myself I didn’t want the Secret Decoder; and I didn’t care about the secret code.

After six weeks, I had convinced myself that the promotion was a hoax, a cynical swindle perpetrated by the makers of Ovaltine to sell more of their wretched product to unsuspecting idiots like myself.  I told myself I didn't care whether the lousy Decoder Pin came or not; that I had been a fool ever to get involved with it; and that never, ever in my life again would I allow myself to be hoodwinked like this. 

Of course, in a way, I hadn't actually been hoodwinked, because I hadn't actually purchased the product. At first this made me feel better – because, at least the makers of delicious, chocolaty Ovaltine hadn't gotten their hands in my pockets.  But then, it dawned on me that maybe they had gotten their hands in something worse.  I remembered my heart racing as I unscrewed the Ovaltine; cutting out the waxed paper seal.  I remembered my little act,  pretending to be a good boy, reluctantly returning the Ovaltine to the shelf.  And the more I thought about it – stealing a little round piece of wax paper, scamming my Mom –  the more I felt, well ... pathetic.  

Then, on a Monday, just about eight weeks after I sent away for it, the Decoder Pin appeared in the mail in a plain, Kraft paper envelope. It was small, maybe an inch and a half in diameter, made of tin, with a jet plane on one side and, on the other side, a dial with letters printed on it, and around the dial, a circle of numbers, which were embossed.  For a moment, I looked at the pin, feeling a momentary sickness at how cheaply my integrity had been bought. Then, I dropped the pin in the pocket of my flannel shirt and quickly forgot.

I’m told the secret messages Captain Midnight delivered to the Secret Squadron each week generally had to do with drinking delicious, chocolaty Ovaltine, or sometimes getting your Mom to buy more. I don’t know that for a fact, though. Because a few days after the Decoder came in the mail, my Mom washed my flannel shirt with the Decoder in it, and all the letters came off.

I suppose it was time to move on.

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