When I drove by Outback Jacks’s mythic Main Street store of antiques and collectibles, I did a double take. I was alerted to the concrete frog sitting on his porch by Fate, who growled at it from the car. I called Jack on his cell phone and he picked up right away and i asked him where the frog came from, it felt familiar to me but I couldn’t instantly place it.

He said he wasn’t sure, he said he just picked it up over the weekend, and he thought it was a Disney figure from the 1960’s or later. I started negotiating with Jack for it – something inside of me said I had to have it in my office – and we settled on $150, plus the old table and marble slap it was standing on.

He said he would bring it at noon. Maria and I scrambled to find a space for the frog and I kept trying to figure out how I knew this very strange creature. I said I vaguely remembered a wise-ass talking frog on an infamous 1950’s children’s show called “Andy’s Gang.”

Maria remembered something about an impertinent frog from school, a friend of hers joked about it.

I loved the show for many reasons, one was that the frog, who appeared in a cloud of smoke when the host said “Plunk Your Magic Twanger,Froggy,” also had the habit of putting words in the mouths of pompous and imperious guest lecturers.

There he was on You Tube, in a rare clip of Andy’s Gang, the irreverent and throaty Froggy, driving his know it all guests crazy. I loved this creation when I first saw, but I must have four or five when I saw it, and when I watched the You Tube video, it came flooding back.

It seems a small miracle to me to have this piece of Americana and my own distant childhood come roaring back to – I will never forget that bow tie. I can’t even imagine who might have made a concrete sculpture of Froggy the Gremlin – above, one humiliated guest tried to shoot him – but I loved the character dearly.

He was my first exposure to satire and the idea of puncturing windbags and the pompous, an idea picked up and developed by my love for W.C. Field and the Marx Brothers a few years later. I don’t think Facebook and Twitter can touch it. There is no question Froggy had an influence of my writing and troubles with authority.

I remember thinking that people in power had to learn to laugh at themselves, and other people had to make a point out of keeping them humble, a major reason I  became a reporter.

Froggy has a permanent home in my study, in a corner where I can keep an eye on him. When I start to pontificate or get windy, he will poke and let all of the hot air out, as he did so brilliantly so many years ago.

I wouldn’t dare try to re-paint Froggy, he is sacred history. Jack thought I would put him outside, but he belongs near me and my work.

Twang  your magic Twanger, froggy.

And welcome home.