The CulturePulp Q&A: Bob "Bumpity" Griggs


As promised to readers of today's CulturePulp comic:



Bob Griggs served in the Korean War. He held important jobs at OMSI and Oregon Public Broadcasting. He's done stints as an actor and voice artist -- including voicing Mickey Mouse for some "Talking ViewMaster" reels. He's a Linux-loving FreeGeek.org volunteer. And he used to don full vampire regalia to co-host a late-night monster-movie show on Portland's KATU-TV.

But Griggs -- still spry at 75 -- will forever be remembered by kids of a certain age as the man behind "Bumpity."

"Bumpity" was a strange, mellow, no-budget kid's show that ran on KATU from 1971-85. (You can read more about the genesis of the show right here.) Griggs built, operated and voiced the titular puppet -- a talking lump of sod (often mistaken for a frog) who invited local librarians to "Bumpity Park" to read children's books.

This format -- and the psychedelic, falling-apart set, which looked like something Sid & Marty Krofft might throw up in an afternoon -- remained essentially unchanged for the entire run of the show. Griggs eventually expanded his cast to include Fred the Worm, who spoke in squeaks only Bumpity could understand; Scottie MacThistle, a talking flower; and Digger the Mole from Down Under, who apparently got lost tunneling from Perth to Sydney.

These days, all those puppets are sitting in a tan suitcase in Griggs' northeast-Portland home. Inspired by a resurgence of interest in the show -- including Crispin Rosenkranz's nostalgic documentary "Bumpity Returns," which makes much hay of the show's innocent strangeness -- I invited myself over last week to interview Griggs for a couple of hours. An edited transcript follows.

Click here to read the interview!

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MIKE RUSSELL: There’s been a sort of re-discovery of “Bumpity” in recent years. Crispin Rosenkranz made his documentary about you and Bumpity, and you were a guest on The Famous Mysterious Actor Show.

BOB GRIGGS: Well, of course, Crispin was a fan when he was a kid, and found out that I wasn't dead yet. [laughs] He contacted me and interviewed me and my wife JoAnn, who was in about four episodes.

Unfortunately, there's no one who has more than three or four episodes of the show on tape. Because of the way things worked at Channel 2, they'd tape three or four and then erase them.

We tried to get Channel 2 and Channel 10 to think about syndicating the show [nationally]. For some reason, nobody was interested. It was a very, very popular show while it was on.

"Bumpity Park," where the show was set, was supposed to be a little park somewhere in Portland. But we were never specific about it.


Q. Did you personally have a specific park in mind when you conceived of "Bumpity Park"?

A. I would say that it might have been Grant Park [in northeast Portland] more than anything. On Crispin's Web site, there was a story that came to me one time about how Bumpity came into existence:

There was this mushroom circle -- in fairy stories, they call it a "fairy ring." It was down under a big Ping-Pong table they used to have in the park. And a couple of rather fat Shriners or Elks were trying to show some kids how to play Ping-Pong, and a couple of balls fell off the table onto the grass in the center of the ring. And the tooth fell off one of the men's Elks-chains and also landed in the ring. And because of fairy magic, Bumpity came into existence. And he didn't know what his name was -- except that he'd heard a couple of workmen refer to "the bump in the lawn."

In real life, the name came from Wayne Brown, the originator of the show at KATU. He had a little nephew who was about 3, and he was coming down the stairs on his butt, yelling, "BUMPITY BUMPITY BUMPITY!"

I was working at OMSI at the time, but I'd been on another KATU show. Wayne told me the station didn't want another "Captain Kangaroo" or "Mister Rogers"-type show -- they wanted it to involve reading to kids.

And on the way home that night, for some reason or other, I pulled into this fabric place. And right as I walked in, I saw this piece of green, very bumpy material. I took some home, and at 2:30 in the morning, I finished making Bumpity. I called Wayne the next day, and I said, "I think I found Bumpity for you. It's hard to explain. You'll have to see it." So he came over to OMSI, where I was exhibits director at the time, and I pulled out the puppet. And he said, "What does he sound like?" And I did the voice. The expression on his face was absolutely marvelous -- he was just a young guy -- and he said, "That's Bumpity! That's Bumpity!" He was gobsmacked.

And so he said, "Would you do the first show as just sort of a test?" And then he kept asking me to do more. And I said, "Well, I have a job, and this is taking a lot of time." And he said, "They're willing to pay." Well, that made a difference. I think we ended up doing it for 16 years or something.

There are conflicting stories about why it ended. The one I heard through the grapevine was different than the official one. The official story they put out was that "Bob was tired of doing the show." The other story that I heard was that they put their money into another show that they thought could pick up the young adults who out-grew "Bumpity." So they created a show called "Popcorn"…. And somebody said, "Why do we need two shows?" So they bumped "Bumpity." And I don't think "Popcorn" made it six more months.

"Bumpity" was an utter delight. Here I am, retired, 75 years old. Crispin asked me if I'd do the show again if I had the chance. And my response was, "In a New York minute."



Q. You do put on a sort of reunion show in "Bumpity Returns."

A. We took Bumpity to the previous Hollywood Library. (It's now a coffee shop.) I used to go out and do a special show with the children's librarians. But [for the documentary], we had to figure out how to get Bumpity from the park to the library. So Crispin brought over a wheelbarrow with a hole in the bottom -- and I laid under this wheelbarrow, in the grass, and we did this whole thing where I dug out Bumpity to take him to the library. Not typical 75-year-old behavior. [laughs]

There were a few times when we had to do personal appearances and I didn't have a stage. So I had a large flowerpot with a hole in the bottom, and I put Bumpity in there. I'm about as much of a ventriloquist as Edgar Bergen was -- you could see his mouth move all the time -- but the funny thing is that the kids would pay no attention to me. They were talking to Bumpity.


Q. I remember when my mother was a kindergarten teacher, she had this raccoon puppet that lived in a box. And the kids really seemed to 100-percent believe that it was sentient and actually lived in there.

A. That's what it was. One time in the '70s, I appeared at the opening of the Barnum & Bailey Circus when it came to the old Coliseum. They brought me out in the middle of the caged lions and tigers; one faulty cage door, and Bumpity would've been hamburger. And the clowns were all gathered around backstage before the show -- there must have been 20 at least -- and they're talking to my puppet! I used to think it would be wonderful to be in the circus when I was a kid, and here I am. Bumpity can be kind of a wise-ass sometimes, and they were trying to trip him up, asking him strange questions. And then I came out and there were 5,000 kids saying, "It's Bumpity!" I remember thinking, "My God -- this is my audience!"

As an actor, it never bothered me that I was holding up these guys and they were getting all the credit. It was just a wonderful experience.

Toward the end of the show's run, mothers would bring their kids to the library shows and tell me, "I used to watch your show when I was a kid." The first couple of times that happened, I felt very old. Then I realized I'd lasted through a generation.
If I did come back, I'm not sure how it would work. Everything's syndicated now. But every TV station used to have a kid's show. When I worked for KOIN-TV, there was "Mr. Duffy's Cartoon Circus" and "Ramblin' Rod" and Dave Alexander, who was "Paul Bunyan Jr." And then we had Bob Adkins and Heck Harper -- his was kind of a Western show.



Q. You're a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. Have you done a children's book?

A. I have one that only had 200 copies printed. A printer I knew asked me if I had any book ideas, because he wanted to do miniature books. And so the first sentence of my book was, "Elray the Elf lived in the attic over a print shop." It's about a little elf who decided he wanted to be a printer -- but because an elf is only as big as a mouse, that's very, very difficult for him to do.

I have yet to sell to the major children's magazines -- I've been working on that for the last 20 years. I came very close just about a month ago. I've been writing another children's book now for four years, and I'm going into my first major re-write.


Q. What's it about?

A. The working title is Stone Age Boy. It's about a young Cro-Magnon lad who's crippled and thrown out of his tribe by his father -- the chief -- because he can't be a warrior and hunter. He's got this bad leg. So he finds refuge with a man who's a master stonecutter who was also thrown out of his tribe. And the boy has talent, so the stonecutter becomes his mentor. And he finally has it out with the enemy who hurt his leg.


Q. Revenge through technology?

A. Yeah. It started out as a short story. It's got 26 chapters to it now.

I have had good luck selling stories to a magazine called Good Old Days, which is a magazine of nostalgia covering 1900 to about 1950 -- basically, people write stories about what happened to them. I laugh somewhat ruefully and say I don't seem to be able to sell stories to kids' magazines, but I've been able to sell 13 stories about my childhood. [laughs]


Q. And now "Bumpity" has inspired other people's nostalgic writings.

A. Absolutely.




Posted: Fri - December 2, 2005 at 12:00 AM        

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