Beautiful Tribute to Bob Baker by Luis Alfaro: When I was in the third grade I had a terrible stutter. So much so that I would spend an hour after-school in speech therapy with this lovely young woman who was studying at UCLA. I remember her blond hair and her European accent, which seemed super odd in our Pico-Union neighborhood. I still remember the night she came to our house to do an assessment and my mom cooked up a Mexican feast, which made my tutor very happy. Anyway, every few weeks she would take me to the Bob Baker Marionette Studio at that triangle where Beverly Boulevard, 2nd Street and Glendale Boulevard meet. The white studio with the black trim and the marquee, did they ever paint that theatre? Coming over the hill from 10th Street Elementary on Olympic near Union always made me excited. Mr. Baker was part of my speech therapy and after the puppet shows my tutor and I would go backstage and sit with him and a puppet, which was waiting for me. The puppet would ask me questions and I would talk to it like an old friend. For some reason, and even though I was already in the third grade and of sound mind, when I would talk to the puppet that would ask me inane questions like “Tell me something funny about your neighborhood?” and other questions like that, I never had a stutter. I don’t even want to break that down, but the puppet was very comforting, even with Mr. Baker sitting there next to it. My clear speech without pause or break would make my tutor ecstatic and I can still remember sitting talking and holding the puppets hand as if it was real. Reading the news today brought a tear to my eye. Clearly, it makes sense that Mr. Baker was 90, but somehow I always imagined that he was timeless, like his marionettes, which all must be weeping for the man that gave them their voice and took the skipping track out of mine. Rest in Peace Bob Baker.
Posted on: Sat, 29 Nov 2014 08:26:15 +0000