Cal Worthington is somewhat of an advertising institution across the West Coast and especially Southern California.  Born Calvin Coolidge Worthington on November 27, 1920, he grew up in a family of nine children and dropped out of school at the age of 13 to be a veterinarian.  In spite of a host of hardships, he was able to parlay his personal charm and salesmanship into a multimillion dollar enterprise. 

Growing up in SoCal during the 80′s, one guy dominated the airwaves when it came to local TV– Cal Worthington. Whether it’s channel 9′s Saturday Kung Fu theater, KTLA’s Family Film Festival or reruns of iconic 60′s shows on channel 13, it seemed like Cal sponsored them all. What made him unique was that he was truly an old school pitchman. Usually dressed in a cowboy outfit, he’d hawk used cars while playing with some exotic animal that seemed to have fallen off a circus truck as his catchy jingle played in the background.  

Going with the ‘animals’ theme, I had always thought the lyric was genius because he came up with the term ‘pussycow’. Why? I had no idea. I was just inspired by the fact that he was outside the box and did whatever he wanted. I dreamed of one day being rich enough to buy commercial time and making up my own words. To my embarrassment, I realized in my teenage years that it wasn’t ‘pussycow’, but PussyCal. Of course, why would it be ‘pussycow’? That made no sense. His name is Cal Worthington. It had to be PussyCal. The dude played with animals and instead of a pussycat he called himself PussyCal. Still genius. Well, this week I found out that it’s neither ‘pussycow’ nor PussyCal. It’s actually ‘Go see Cal’. What the hell??? Watch it again…

Damn it. It is ‘Go see Cal’! Well, the silver lining is that I wasn’t alone. 56,000 people on Facebook thought the same thing. Oh well, I still dream of one day being rich enough to buy commercial time and making up my own words.

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