Photo by Warren Brant:

My fondest childhood memory is dressing up in costumes. This character was patterned after Gabby Hayes the comic sidekick of Roy Rogers on TV. My mother let me to dress up anytime I wanted, and allowed me to pretend to be my imaginary characters at anywhere. I was walking downtown St Paul with my mother in this costume with a red plastic soap bubble pipe clenched between my teeth.   I remember a hobo, or as they say today homeless person coming up to me, and placing a single grain of fresh tobacco in my pipe while my mother held my hand without fear. That night I kept that red plastic soap bubble pipe with that single grain of tobacco by my bed while I slept.

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